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Independents (Also known as Congregationalists)
Snow Hill Congregational Church in the 1920s. transcripts
of some Nonconformist registers pre-1837
The origins of Independency date back to Elizabethan and Jacobean Protestant religious dissent. More immediate origins can be found in a group of Calvinist ministers reacting against the Laudian Church of England of the 1630s. They did not believe in the authority of ministers, nor any form of national church. Instead they were governed by their Church Meeting. They chose their own ministers whose authority lasted only as long as the congregation wanted it to. They collaborated with Presbyterians culminating in the formation of the 'Happy Union' of 1691. This actually re-awoke the fundamental differences between them and the union did not last long. Despite their desire for autonomy, local chapels began to form County Unions, the first being Bedfordshire in 1797. From 1832 the County Unions came together nationally as the Congregational Union of England and Wales. Most Congregational and Presbyterian Churches came together in 1972 to form the United Reformed Church.
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