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Selina, Countess of Huntingdon

Biblical benefactor

SELINA, COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON
By Faith Cook
Banner of Truth. 478 pages. £19.95
ISBN 085151 812 5

A current best-selling biography is Amanda Foreman's Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, which describes in lively detail the life of an 18th-century aristocrat caught up in pleasure and politics, and unable to resist the lure of gambling. Faith Cook's Selina provides a contrast - a godly woman from a similar social circle but concerned to use her energy, position and resources for God.

Chapels of the quaintly-named 'Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion' have now largely disappeared, as they have changed their designation, merged with other groups or closed, but there was once a considerable phalanx of them. Who was the mysterious Countess?

The last 20 years have seen a resurgence of interest, with a number of articles, theses, lectures and books on her. This attention is entirely justified, as Selina held a central role in the 18th-century awakening. To read her life is to follow its course. All the principal figures were closely connected to her. Converted at the age of 32, partly through Benjamin Ingham, who had been a member of the Oxford 'Holy Club' with John and Charles Wesley, Selina soon became a friend of the Wesleys, and within a few years of George Whitefield, William Grimshaw, John Berridge, Howell Harris, and, perhaps surprisingly, the nonconformists Philip Doddridge and Isaac Watts.

With her concern to promote gospel preaching, and using her position as a peeress, Selina appointed Whitefield as her private chaplain, so that she could invite members of the nobility and politicians, actors and writers to her homes to hear her chaplain preach. Gradually she built chapels (with a house for herself attached) in Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Bath, Hereford, London and elsewhere, and appointed other itinerant chaplains to preach there.

As the Church of England and the universities turned increasingly against the Evangelical revival, Selina began a college at Trevecca in south Wales to train preachers. The hymnwriter William Williams of Pantecelyn ('Guide me, O thou great Jehovah') and the preacher Daniel Rowland were frequent visitors. Students, travelling great distances on horseback, were the means of founding congregations, for whom Selina would build or acquire chapels.

Selina exemplifies taking initiatives for the gospel, and this despite illness and family tragedy. Faith Cook's biography does not ignore her faults and failures, but highlights the challenge of a woman taken up with gratitude to God and determined to use her 'little all' for him.

Joy Horn, Purley