1747       

April
Mr. Fowden, the Constable of Manchester, and Mr. Ogden, the younger, were tried at Lancaster for high treason, but acquitted, as it was proved that they acted under the compulsion of the rebels. April.(7)

1747
“Methodism” now began to take an organised form in the town. Some young men “began a society and took a room.” The “room” was a small apartment in a house built upon a rock on the banks of the Irwell, on the north side of Blackfriars Bridge, at the bottom of a large yard, known by the name of the “Rose and Crown yard,” and which was filled with wood-built thatched cottages. The house containing the “preaching room” was three storeys high. The ground floor was a joiner’s shop; the rooms in the middle storey were the residence of a newly-married couple; the garret was the “room,” and was itself also the home of a poor woman, who there plied her spinning wheel, while her husband, in the same apartment, flung the shuttle. Such was the cradle of Methodism in Manchester. The room being too small to hold all the people, Wesley preached at the Cross. Few persons joined the society at first in this town; its members were suspected of being emissaries of the Pretender. The Rev. John Wesley himself was indecorously treated by the multitude, for, preaching at Salford Cross in this year, he looked with great apprehension on the “unbroken spirits” around him, one of whom threatened to “bring out the engine” and play it upon him. The story of the early progress of Methodism is told in Everett’s Methodism in Manchester and the Neighbourhood, p. 58.(7)

1747
Rev. Thomas Cattell died. He was chaplain and fellow of the Collegiate Church, and wrote some unpublished poems. He is the supposed author of a tract on the Manchester races, 1733, and of Human Laws Obligatory upon the Conscience, 1733. There is a long account of him in the Raines MSS.(7)