Congregationalists, or Independents as they were originally known, emerged during the English Civil War. They believed in liberty of conscience and the independence of each congregation. They first appeared in Ireland during Lisle's short lord lieutenancy in 1646-7, and returned in force with Oliver Cromwell. They survived after the restoration as a minor dissenting sect. In 1695 there were reported to be six Independent congregations in Ireland.
The Puritans were English Reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were frustrated by the slow progress of the Reformation in the Anglican Church. Their doctrine tended to be Calvinistic and Presbyterian, and their finest writings were both polemic and devotional treatments of theology. Mountmellick, a settlement in the fifteenth century. Situated on a narrow river called the Owenass (river of the falls) with an encampment on its banks at Irishtown. Over looking this valley with its trees and wild life was a small church called Kilmongan (Ivy Chapel) which was closed by Penal Laws in 1640. To this setting the Society of Friends (The Quakers) came in 1657 led by William Edmundson, they saw a future for this settlement and built it into a town. With twenty-seven industries which included Breweries, Distillery, Woollen Mills, Cotton, Tanneries and Glass, it was a boomtown in the late nineteenth century.
The Quakers in the 1650s were a radical group and were perceived as a threat to the government. (William) Edmunson was one of the most prominent of the Quakers and this lead to frequent imprisonments. William's imprisonment in Armagh jail was the first of many sentences, which found him in jail in Cavan, Belturbet and Maryborough (Portlaoise). Edmundson decided to take up farming and moved with his family and several other Quaker families to land owned by a Col. Nicholas Kempston in County Cavan. The Quaker community increased in Cavan as a result of the conversion of a number of other settlers, including John Pim and William Neale. They moved to Cavan in the hope of starting a new life free from prosecution.
Cornet Walter Corry is recorded in the Book of Survey and Distribution as owning 16 townlands, amounting to 1,321 [Irish] acres, in the parish of Ematris, an estate which he had considerably enlarged by 1679. He built the town of Newtowncorry, later re-named Rockcorry, the market and petty sessions house in the town in the yeare 1805, and the Methodist meetinghouse under the patronage of the same landlord in 1807. In 1833, a statement of [his] title to the Rockcorry estate showed ownership of the towns and the lands of Corkeeran, Corvoo, Drumilla, Glenhorick, Corriskeerin, Boyagager, Drumlona, Aughafad, Lisnaspeenan, Corraghy, Cortober East, Cortober West, Lossett, Cremoyle, Dromore, Lislynachahan, Dundrennan, Feddan Glen, Aghadrumkeen, [and] Cribby or Newtowncorry with the customs and fairs and markets thereof.
Missionary Beginnings
Samuel J. Mills, when a student in Williams College, gathered about him a group of fellow students, all feeling the burden of the great heathen world. One day in 1806 four of them, overtaken by a thunderstorm, took refuge in the shelter of a haystack. They passed the time in prayer for the salvation of the world, and resolved, if opportunity offered, to go themselves as missionaries. This "haystack prayer meeting" has become historic. These young men went later to Andover Theological Seminary, where Adoniram Judson joined them. Four of these sent a petition to the Massachusetts Congregational Association at Bradford, June 29, 1810, offering themselves as missionaries and asking whether they might expect support from a society in this country, or whether they must apply to a British society. In response to this appeal the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was formed.
Judson finally established themselves at Rangoon in the Burman Empire, in 1813. In 1824 war broke out between the British East India Company and the emperor of Burma. Dr. and Mrs. Judson and Dr. Price, who were at Ava, the capital of the Burman Empire, when the war commenced, were immediately arrested and confined for several months. The account of the sufferings of the missionaries was written by Mrs. Judson, and is given in her own words.