A letter from the vicar of Bosbury, Rev. John Lodge, which was included in a report of ‘The
Society for the Support and Encouragement of Sunday Schools in England and Wales’, and also published in ‘The Christian
Observer for the year 1804’, The Third Volume, 1814
Bosbury, Herefordshire.
“About two years ago, I was presented to the Vicarage of Bosbury, at which time found the parish in a wretched
state with respect to religion; very few people attended the church on the Lord’s-day, and hardly any children
were ever seen at the church, although the population of the parish, when taken about two years ago, was 777 souls.
After admonishing my parishioners very frequently upon the subject of attending divine service, but all in vain, I
at length, in October last, began to try what I could do with the rising generation, and established a Sunday School.
We have now about sixty-three children who regularly attend the school, and after that the Church, every Sunday morning,
and who have repeated the catechism once publicly in the Church; although, when I first took the School in hand,
there were very few of them that knew their letters. I allow a man and his wife two shillings a week for teaching the
School, and the master of the Grammar-School attends before the Church begins, to examine them in the catechism.
I also attend them myself frequently, and examine them in the principles of the Christian religion.”
Christian Observer No. 31.
