“Lady Huntingdon never intended her chapels or societies to be organised into a denomination—­she never thought of providing for them an ecclesiastical constitution as such.  As she intended and sustained them they were simply evangelising agencies.  The spiritual necessities of her day induced her to become a builder of chapels for Evangelical preaching and worship.  These she sustained and ruled as her own private property, devoted by her to the service of Christ, but disposable by her own uncontrolled will.  No elements of ecclesiastical constitution or permanence are to be found in such an agency.  Nor are there in the trusts declared after her death.  The trustees of her chapels are invested with absolute powers of government, like her own.” [1]

[Footnote 1:  Address by Dr. Allon in the Centenary Celebration of Cheshunt College, p. 33.]

By her will dated January 11,1790, Lady Huntingdon bequeathed “all her chapels, houses, furniture therein, and all the residue of her estates and effects to Thomas Haweis and Janetta Payne, his wife, Lady Ann Erskine, and John Lloyd.”  These persons were thus constituted trustees of all her property, to administer it all to the best of their ability, in harmony with what they knew to be her wishes.  Many of the buildings associated with her name and ministers were local trusts, so that the power of the Connexion trustees never extended over more than a portion of the churches which her evangelistic zeal had founded or strengthened.  It was almost inevitable that such an arrangement should be fatal to development, and so it has proved.

The latest sketch of Lady Huntingdon’s life thus sets forth the present position of the Connexion:  “The Fifteen Articles are the bond and doctrinal basis of administration in the Connexion; and in the words of the Countess, written when she left the Church of England, ’Our ministers must come recommended by that neutrality between Church and Dissent—­secession.’  Beyond this the Connexion has no act of uniformity.  The worship, according to the varying needs of different localities, may be liturgical or non liturgical.  Congregations are allowed much liberty in the form of their self-government.” [1]

[Footnote 1:  The Countess of Huntingdon and her Connexion, edited by Rev. J.B.  Figgis, M.A., p. 48.]

[Illustration:  L:  Huntingdon]

When Lady Huntingdon died there were only seven chapels in the legal possession of her representatives; but there were in all about one hundred in close union with and considered as together forming her Connexion.  In the century succeeding her decease, while the number vested in the trustees of the Connexion increased from seven to thirty-three, the total number diminished to less than one half.  Not a few of those included in the latter half became Congregational Churches, and remain in that fellowship up to this time.  Some have been swept away by modern improvements,