Richard Conyers

[1][6] A tradition states that he was Senior Wrangler in the Cambridge Tripos; the year 1745 of his graduation precedes the period when this title was given in public.

It including Bilsdale to the north, and Harome somewhat to the east of the town of Helmsley; also Laskill, Pockley, Rievaulx and Sproxton.

[17] Initially Conyers also held the living of Kirkdale, a valley to the east beyond Kirby Misperton, but asked to be relieved of it in 1763.

[19] Linen and linsey-woolsey manufacture was a predominant local occupation, with flax brought by pack horse from Kingston upon Hull, during the 18th century.

[29] Two changes considered significant in the narrative of this conversion are his turning away from an anti-Trinitarian author, and his adoption of extempore preaching, rather than speaking from a text.

[34] Running a monthly communion service at Helmsley, at which a collection was taken, with a regular reported (i.e. quarterly) attendance of 450, Conyers was able to finance school places for 40 children.

[35][36] Robert Hay Drummond, his archbishop, made clear his dislike of Conyers's preaching in 1764, an opinion formed after hearing a visitation sermon at Malton, saying "Were you to inculcate the morality of Socrates, it would do more good than canting about the new birth".

[42] Having had a private chapel built next to the vicarage, Conyers carried out study and worship there, in a fashion that has been compared to John Berridge and William Bromley Cadogan.

[1] From a Wesleyan point of view, Conyers was a revivalist, who before conversion was tending to Socinianism, but then leaned in the Calvinist direction; he prepared the ground locally for a Methodist chapel.

[50] In 1767 Conyers was staying in Olney, and asked Newton to call on Cowper and his friend Mary Unwin, whose husband had just died, in Huntingdon.

[27] Wesley accepted an invitation to visit Conyers, coming on 17 April 1764 after discussion with Selina, Countess of Huntingdon.

[53] A couplet, from a poem sent by Augustus Toplady to Erasmus Middleton in 1775, imagines Wesley reciting a list of his Calvinist rivals:[54] William Romaine was in Helmsley in 1766.

[26][57] In 1775, Conyers was brought to St Paul's, Deptford, south of London, by John Thornton, his brother-in-law, on the death of James Bate.

[59] Conyers gained a reputation as a spiritual adviser, and converted outbuildings at Deptford to continue his pattern of religious study built up at his Helmsley chapel.

His funeral sermon was preached on 7 May by John Newton, and he was buried in the parish churchyard of St Paul's, Deptford.

At this period a number of evangelicals within the Church of England were compiling hymn books, and Conyers put his together to replace the use of metrical psalms and paraphrase singing by his own congregation.

[73] It proved influential, with Baptists in particular adopting hymns from the Collection, as well as from the Selection of John Rippon, to add to the repertoire handed down from Isaac Watts.