Grindletonians

John Wilson, who led the congregation at Kildwick before Grindletonianism appeared, has been called a religious radical and may have introduced some of the basic concepts of the sect.

[3] He was brought before the High Commission of the Archdiocese of York in October 1616 to answer charges that he was a radical nonconformist, that he relied on the motion of the spirit and that he thought that all doubt about salvation could be removed from believers.

[2] His successor as curate at Grindleton, John Webster (1610-1683), taught ideas similar to Brearley's,[1] and Grindletonianism continued to grow between 1615 and 1640, gaining a large number of followers in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and spinning off other antinomian sects.

[7] In a sermon preached at Paul's Cross on 11 February 1627, and published under the title The White Wolfe in 1627, Stephen Denison, minister of St. Catherine Cree, charged the "Gringltonian [sic] familists" with adhering nine points of antinomian tendency.

They thought the Spirit is privileged over the Letter (meaning the Bible), that anyone who has the inner light is qualified to preach, whether ordained or not, and that a person could live without sin and attain Heaven on Earth.

[10] Grindleton stands at the foot of Pendle Hill, where George Fox (1624–1691), the founder of Quakerism, received the visions that convinced him to launch his sect.