ster, the Rev. J. Proud, aided by a judicious
distribution of what cash he had in his pocket, prevailed over their
burning desires, and they carried their torches elsewhere. On the 10th
of March, 1793, however, another incendiary attempt was made to suppress
the New Church, but the fire was put out before much damage was done.
What fire and popular enmity could not do, however, was accomplished by
a financial crisis, and the congregation had to leave their Zion, and
put up with a less pretentious place of worship opposite the Wharf in
Newhall Street. Here they remained till 1830, when they removed to
Summer Lane, where a commodious church, large schools, and minister's
house had been erected for them. In 1875 the congregation removed to
their present location in Wretham Road, where a handsome church has been
built, at a cost of nearly L8,000, to accommodate 500 persons, with
schools in the rear for as many children. The old chapel in Summer Lane
has been turned into a Clubhouse, and the schools attached to it made
over to the School Board. The New Church's new church, like many other
modern-built places for Dissenting worship, has tower and spire, the
height being 116ft.

_Presbyterians_.--It took a long time for all the nice distinctive
differences of dissenting belief to manifest themselves before the
public got used to Unitarianism, Congregationalism, and all the other
isms into which Nonconformity has divided itself. When Birmingham was as
a city of refuge for the many clergymen who would not accept the Act of
Uniformity, it was deemed right to issue unto them licenses for
preaching, and before the first Baptist chapel, or the New Meeting, or
the Old Meeting, or the old Old Meeting (erected in 1689), were built,
we find (1672) that one Samuel Willis, styling himself a minister of the
Presbyterian persuasion, applied for preaching licenses for the
school-house, and for the houses of John Wall, and Joseph Robinson, and
Samuel Taylor, and Samuel Dooley, and John Hunt, all the same being in
Birmingham; and William Fincher, another "minister of the Presbyterian
persuasion," asked for licenses to preach in the house of Richard
Yarnald, in Birmingham, his own house, and in the houses of Thomas
Gisboon, William Wheeley, John Pemberton, and Richard Careless, in
Birmingham, and in the house of Mrs. Yarrington, on Bowdswell Heath. In
Bradford's map (1751) Carr's Lane chapel is put as a "Presbiterian
chapel," the New Meeting St