In August 1662, Thomas Lowry of Market Harborough and Matthew Clarke of Narborough were among several thousand ministers ejected from the Church of England for refusal to agree to the forms of worship and organisation of the national church. People of a Congregational persuasion believed that the church should be made up only of believers rather than automatically including everyone in a parish. They also believed that there should be no other authority in the church than Jesus Christ and hence had no truck with bishops or hierarchy of any kind.
Though they were allowed to worship openly after 1689, Congregationalists were still barred from the universities and from public office at local and national level. As a result, they set up their own educational academies, one of which was established in Harborough in 1749 by Rev Philip Doddridge, though later the same year he moved, with his academy, to Northampton. Dr Stephen Addington, minister 1753 to 1781, also established an academy, in his case in the Mile End, London. These academies taught a wide range of arts and sciences. Soon after this the Sunday School began in the town teaching children to read, as well as grounding them in the Bible and Christian faith. At its height in the 1880s, the Sunday School had around 500 pupils and the Jubilee Hall was built to house them.
Denied access to public office, many Congregationalists put their energy and enterprise into business and the professions. Through the last few centuries they controlled much of the commerce in the town in businesses as diverse as wool merchant, hat maker, tinsmith, blacksmith, cabinet maker, saddler, butcher, baker, grocer, postmaster, agents for the railways and insurance companies, as well as solicitors, architects and bankers. At the end of the eighteenth centu
In the 19th Century the Congregational Chapel sent missionaries to what is now Zambia, Madagascar, India, Samoa and Kiribati.
In the middle of that century many Harborough Congregationalists became embroiled in the Church Rates Controversy. Local government was still under the control of the Church of England parish priest and his church wardens. Everyone had to pay taxes to them which went in part to pay the running costs of the parish church. Those of other denominations objected and withheld their rates. As a result several Congregationalists had property seized in lieu and some were arraigned before the Kings’ Bench. In the end, their stand contributed to the changing of local government law, with the introduction of Urban and Rural District Councils. Once these were established, Congregationalists, by now allowed to enter government, played major roles into the middle of the 20th Century, including H H Pickering who was chairman of Harborough UDC 1923-24 and 1928-45.
In July 2015 Rev Stephen Haward MA was called to the ministry of this church.