George A., weeping like a desolate child, held up his hand. In it was a huge onion, easily as big as a man’s fist. Three bites had been taken from it already, and even as Matthew watched, George A. took another big bite, just as though he were eating an apple.
Heber shook his head. “Which just goes to show, there’s no explaining a man’s tastes.”
Chapter Notes
The last five of the Twelve—Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Parley and Orson Pratt, and George A. Smith—arrived in Liverpool on 6 April 1840. Matthew, of course, is a fictional character, but the incident with George A. Smith and the onion is true (see
MWM,
p. 133).
The results of the Herefordshire mission were astounding. Eventually all but one of the six hundred members of the United Brethren joined the Church, as well as hundreds of others in the area (see
CHFT,
p. 230).
Chapter Twenty-One
Willard Richards strode steadily along in the April sunshine, his walking stick swinging back and forth as he covered the last mile or two to Preston. He was humming softly to himself, his mood as buoyant as it had been for several months. Two things were responsible for that. First, Jennetta seemed in much better health, something remarkable for someone as frail as she had been of recent months. It had been so poor recently that three weeks before, Willard sent her to live with her parents while he traveled for the Church. Second, just last evening her father had invited Willard to stay the night with them. Jennetta’s father was a minister and bitterly opposed to the Mormons, so this was indeed something worth celebrating. It was the first time it had happened since their marriage.
As he rounded the corner of his street, he looked up. Jenny Pottsworth was coming out of the door to his home.
She reached the street and turned the other direction, walking swiftly. “Jenny?” he called.
She swung back around. Instantly she began to wave, and then broke into a trot toward him, her long hair bouncing on her shoulders. “Oh, Brother Richards! You’re back.”
“Hello, Jenny. What brings you out this way?”
To his utter amazement, she grabbed his hand and started dragging him toward his house. “Come on, Brother Richards, I have a surprise for you.”
“What? What is it, child?”
“Just never you mind,” she laughed. “You must see this for yourself.” They had reached the front gate, and she pulled him through it and up to the front door. “All right,” she commanded. “Close your eyes.”
“What is it?” he asked again. He was weary and not in much of a mood for girlish games.
“Close your eyes.”
Exasperated, he finally complied. He heard the door open and then Jenny had him by the elbow. “Don’t open them. Not yet.”
He felt for the step with his foot, then was inside.
“Now!” she said.
He opened his eyes and looked around, then he gasped. Heber C. Kimball and Brigham Young were standing by the small fireplace, grinning at him like bankers looking at a pot of gold. “Brother Richards, I presume,” Heber said, stepping forward and holding out his hand.
About a hundred miles south, a very different kind of welcome was starting to transpire. As they approached the small pool that would be their baptismal site here in Hawcross, Derek felt the hair on the back of his neck start to rise. The men were waiting for them, and they were muttering angrily as they saw the Mormons coming. Derek looked around, hoping to see a constable, but conveniently, none was around. That was partly due to the lateness of the hour—it was near midnight—but Derek also suspected that the constable didn’t want to know what was going on. It was easier that way. The rowdies could make trouble for a constable too.
The fantastic success Wilford Woodruff was having in Herefordshire and the surrounding areas was not without its attendant problems. Anglican ministers railed against the Mormon missionaries Sunday after Sunday. There was talk that one group of ministers were even thinking about writing the archbishop of Canterbury and asking him to go to Parliament and have laws passed making it illegal for the Mormons to preach in England.
All of that was to be expected, and Wilford and Derek went about their business, ignoring it as much as possible. But as it often had in America, the invective and bitterness being spewed from the pulpits stirred up a different kind of problem. Young toughs—“rowdies,” as the locals called them—began appearing at the preaching meetings, and more especially the baptisms. The missionaries had come a week ago to Leigh, a small village a few miles out of the town of Gloucester, and had worked there and in the surrounding areas. As usual they had great success, and on Sunday they prepared to baptize ten people. One of the members offered the use of a pool on his property as the baptismal site. But as the preliminary services were drawing to a close, a mob of about a hundred people showed up. Hollering, jeering, threatening violence—they succeeded in frightening the member to the point that he withdrew permission to use the site.
As Derek and Wilford moved off, looking for another place to do the baptisms, the mob followed them, elated with their success. “Where you gonna wash your sheep now, Mormons?” they yelled.
Finally, the mob broke up, and the member, a little chagrined at his previous loss of courage, relented and offered his pool again. Before they were able to finish, the rowdies were back, pouring out a constant tirade of sneers, taunting gibes, and catcalls, but Wilford ignored them and went ahead and was able to baptize nine people, stopping only briefly when the mob threw a yelping dog into the pool.
After continuing their labors in Leigh and the neighboring areas for another three days, Wilford and Derek had moved on and arrived in the village of Hawcross earlier this evening. But the same spirit of opposition followed them. Only here, if anything, the mood was darker, uglier. At the preaching service where the missionaries had spoken upon their arrival, a mob had done what they could to break up the meeting, preventing the people who wanted to be baptized from receiving the ordinance. But among those who believed in Wilford’s words, there were some who wanted baptism so badly that Wilford finally agreed to meet them just before midnight. There had been no general announcements. They came as quietly as they could. But somehow, as it always did, word got out, and the rowdies were waiting for them.
Derek counted quickly. They were only shadows against the light of the street lamps, but he estimated there were ten or more—enough to be a serious problem. He turned to Wilford, not wanting the candidates for baptism to see his concern. “What shall we do?” he asked softly.
The Apostle’s face was grim but his jaw was set. “Why, we shall baptize them,” he said.
They had reached the small pool now, and the jeers and catcalls began in earnest. Derek saw that some of the women were fearful.
“Sister Bundy,” Wilford said calmly, reaching out his hand to the nearest one who had asked for baptism. “Shall we proceed?”
She looked around at the mean-spirited faces that half surrounded them; then her chin came up and she nodded. “Yes.”
“Go home, Mormons!” “Get out of our town, Americans!” “Leave our people alone!” “Get outta that water!” The mob swore and they cursed as Sister Bundy and then Brother and Sister Rook and Elizabeth Collett were baptized. The rowdies shook their fists in the air. From the slurred speech of some of them, it was obvious most of them had come here straight from the only pub in Hawcross. Derek shook his head. He had seen that enough in Missouri. Take a natural tendency to hate, stir in a generous share of hard liquor, add some encouragement from the local preachers to make it a religious “mission,” and you quickly had the recipe for anti-Mormon violence. It worked every time. The one fortunate thing was that courage was typically not a part of the mix. The group hung back, noting that Derek and the other brethren were not backing down.
But the mood of the rowdies was growing more threatening now. As Sister Collett came out of the pool and Wilford called for Benjamin Hill to join him, Derek saw one of the men in back raise his arm. It flashed against one of the street lamps in the distance, and there was a splash of water. “Take that, you blasted Mormons,” someone shouted.
Suddenly, arms were swinging everywhere.
“They’re throwing stones!” one of the women yelled, throwing up her arms to shield her head. They all turned their backs and held up their arms as rocks came pelting down. A few were larger rocks, but most of them were only about the size of the end of one’s thumb. But even that size stung sharply when they hit exposed flesh. The splashes and ripples on the surface of the pool made it look like a rainstorm was going on as the mob targeted the two men in the water, determined to stop the baptism. Derek saw two or three stones bounce off Wilford’s body and he flinched in pain. “Hey!” Derek shouted, holding up one arm to shield his head. He stepped forward, angry. This was more than just harassment now. But just then he saw a heavy black object flash against the light from a window. A rock about half the size of a man’s fist was arcing overhead. “Wilford, watch out!” Derek called.
Wilford jerked, ducking away. But it was too late. The stone caught him on the back of his head, just above and behind his left ear. There was a solid thud, a cry of pain, and Wilford staggered forward, nearly going down into the water before Brother Hill grabbed him and steadied him. The water was splashing all around them now.
“Here comes the constable!” Derek shouted.
There was a momentary flurry of excitement. “He’s lying!” “I don’t see no one!” “Let’s get out of here.”
Behind him, he heard Wilford’s voice. “Brother Benjamin Hill, having been commissioned of Jesus Christ. . . .” Stones still rained down into the water.
A rock thudded onto the ground next to Derek, and then the group of rowdies lost heart and fled. In moments, they were alone again.
“It’s a nasty bump,” Derek said, “but the flesh isn’t split.”
Wilford winced sharply as Brother Kington pressed his finger gently against the lump on Wilford’s head. “You’ll be smarting for a time, but I think it will be all right,” he agreed.
“I’ll be fine.
After the baptisms at Hawcross, Wilford and Derek had immediately left to go to the village of Dymock, a distance of about nine miles. In Dymock they went to the residence of Brother Thomas Kington, the man who, until his baptism nearly three weeks before, had been the superintendent of all the United Brethren congregations. It was late, but the Kingtons didn’t mind attending to the missionaries for whom they felt so much gratitude and affection.
Hannah Kington was watching anxiously from one corner. “Brother Woodruff, how can you go on with this kind of opposition?”
He turned slowly, then walked to where his coat hung on a chair. He reached and extracted a letter from the inside pocket. He looked at it for a moment, then smiled at their hostess. “This is how, Sister Kington.”
Both she and her husband were surprised at that. “What is that?” Brother Kington asked.
Wilford grinned at Derek. Derek grinned back. The letter had come just as they left Leigh to come to Hawcross. “It’s from Brother Taylor in Liverpool,” Wilford said, “and it contains wonderful news.”
“What?” Sister Kington asked.
Wilford was beaming. “They’re here!” he exclaimed.
“Who’s here?” the Kingtons asked as one.
“The rest of the Twelve. Brigham, Parley, Heber. They’re all here.” He looked upwards and his eyes closed for a moment. “They’re here,” he breathed. “They’re finally here.”
Sometime after midnight, in the early morning hours of April twenty-sixth 1839, seven members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles had quietly gathered in the public square of Far West, Missouri. They had come at great risk. Their purpose? To formally begin their mission to England. Now, just twelve days short of one full year after that meeting, once again seven members of the Quorum of the Twelve assembled together. This time it was far across the ocean in a small house in the town of Preston, Lancashire, England.
It was a happy time of reassembly. Friendships and bonds forged in times past were now renewed. News from America was greeted by Willard Richards and Joseph Fielding like water after a drought. In the case of Derek and Matthew, it was a happy family reunion. As part of the gathering, a conference of all members in the British Isles had been called for the fifteenth. Important business would be sustained there. But equally important were the items to be dealt with by the Quorum of the Twelve in private meetings. Brigham had come. It was time to get to the business of running a mission in a foreign land. Thus, in the next three days, between conference and council meetings, numerous items of business were decided on and approved.
The first thing that needed doing was to ordain Willard Richards to the Quorum. The Lord had designated him as an Apostle in a revelation in July of 1838, but at that time he was still in England. Until his fellow Apostles crossed the sea to reach him, he couldn’t be ordained. Acting now with the majority of the Quorum present, they ordained Willard, officially giving them their eighth quorum member, a clear majority. As they finished, someone noted that there were more Apostles in England at the moment than there were in America.
Next, the brethren formally sustained Brigham Young as President of the Quorum.
It was unanimously decided to immediately write to America and ask Joseph to send twenty more missionaries.
Various priesthood ordinations were performed, including the calling and ordination of a patriarch “to perform patriarchal blessings on the fatherless.”
Brigham Young proposed that arrangements begin immediately to print the Book of Mormon, a hymnbook, and a monthly publication in England, a concept that was greeted with great rejoicing by the Saints. Wilford Woodruff suggested the publication be given the name
The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star.
Elder Parley P. Pratt was chosen as its editor.
All of that was well and good and important for the work of the kingdom, but something else was to have a far greater and more lasting impact on the Church. To this point, many of the Saints converted during the first mission and the continuing labors that followed wanted to emigrate to America. America was where the Prophet Joseph and the Church were. America was Zion. America was the land of opportunity. For people who suffered extreme poverty and widespread unemployment, America was like a paradise in their minds.