¹ I acknowledge the help during a long gestation of Irene, James and Ruth Common, Barbara Dainton, Geoffrey E. Milburn, Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Patricia J. Storey and E. Tinker (City of Sunderland Community and Cultural Services).

² For Parker and Spurgeon, see R. Tudur Jones, ‘Parker, Joseph (1830–1902)’ and Rosemary Chadwick, ‘Spurgeon, Charles Haddon (1834–1892)’, both ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35386> and <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/26187>, respectively; for Common, see Sunderland Daily Echo, 14 February 1896, 4; Parker, Joseph, ‘Andrew Common, J.P.’, Evangelical Magazine 3rd series 39 (1897), 17–23, at 17Google Scholar.

³ The following account is largely drawn from Joseph Parker, A Preacher's Life, 5th edn (London, 1903); Congregational Year Book [hereafter: CYB] 1903, 208b–e; Albert Clare, The City Temple 1640–1940: The Tercentenary Commemoration Volume (London, 1940), 76–137.

⁴ Banbury (1853–8); Cavendish Chapel, Manchester (1858–69); City Temple, London (1869–1901).

⁵ In 1893, the Metropolitan Tabernacle seated 4,880, with a further 4,050 in its 19 mission stations and 25 Sunday and Ragged schools. It had 5,179 members, 8,034 scholars and 611 Sunday school teachers: Baptist Handbook 1894, 227. In 1898, the first year for which the CYB published such statistics, the City Temple seated 3,000; no figures were given for membership but 225 scholars and 25 teachers were listed: CYB 1899, 288. In 1901, no figures were given beyond the 3,000 sittings: ibid. 1902, 206.

⁶ W. Robertson Nicoll, Princes of the Church, 4th edn (London, ?1921), 181–2.

⁷ Ibid. 181. Leaving Parker with himself and God is something that historians cannot do. Parker's pivotal, indeed posthumous, influence on Congregationalism informs Argent, Alan, The Transformation of Congregationalism 1900–2000 (Nottingham, 2013), especially 1–9Google Scholar. He figures significantly in Bebbington, D. W., The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1870–1914 (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Munson, James, The Nonconformists: In Search of a Lost Culture (London, 1991)Google Scholar; M. R. Watts, The Dissenters, 3: The Crisis and Conscience of Nonconformity (Oxford, 2015).

⁸ CYB 1898, 5–6.

⁹ Jones, J. D., Three Score Years and Ten (London, 1940), 67–8Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Jones, R. Tudur, Congregationalism in England 1662–1962 (London, 1962), 324Google Scholar.

¹¹ Gammie, Alexander, Preachers I have heard (London, 1945), 40Google Scholar.

¹² So Dr Ernest A. Payne (1902–79), whose father was in the congregation, told the present writer.

¹³ Gammie, Preachers, 40–1.

¹⁴ CYB 1903, 208e.

¹⁵ According to the 1881 census return, the household at North Holme, Highbury Park, included cook, housemaid and assistant cook: RG11/0255/113/27; Clare, City Temple, 128.

¹⁶ Charles Herbert Melland, ‘Memoirs Part I’ (typescript, 1950–1; in possession of the Melland family when I consulted it in 1974), 142–3; for Melland (1872–1953), see Who Was Who 1951–1960 (London, 1961), 756.

¹⁷ For John Comyn (d. 1306), see Alan Young, ‘Comyn, Sir John, lord of Badenoch (d. 1306)’, ODNB, online edn (2004), at: <https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6046>.

¹⁸ ‘Mr. Andrew Common, JP: His Separation from Sunderland. Biographical Sketch’, Sunderland Daily Echo, 8 February 1895, 3.

¹⁹ CYB 1882, 408.

²⁰ For Candlish (1816–74), see Michael Stenton, Who's Who of British Members of Parliament, 1: 1832–1885 (Hassocks, 1976), 65.

²¹ Ann (Kipling) Common's brother, Edward Kipling (1807–80), was mayor of Darlington in 1869; her great-nephew, Charles Herbert Melland, was the young medical student who called on the Parkers in 1898; his much older half-sister, Helen Melland (1854–91), was H. H. Asquith's first wife; Ann's ship-owning grandson was Sir Lawrence Common (b. 1889), director of the Ship Management Division of the Ministry of War Transport, 1940–6. I have not been able to verify the relationship which the Darlington Kiplings claimed with the Nidderdale Kiplings, also Methodists, of whom Rudyard Kipling was the best-known scion.

²² For Sir Edward Temperley Gourley (1828–1902), see Who Was Who 1897–1916 (London, 1920), 288; for Samuel Storey (1840–1925), see Who Was Who 1916–1928 (London, 1929), 1004. For their religious context, see Geoffrey E. Milburn, Religion in Sunderland in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Occasional Paper 3, Department of Geography and History, Sunderland Polytechnic (Sunderland, 1983). I must acknowledge the meticulous help of Patricia J. Storey in navigating Sunderland's political history and in alerting me to the Sunderland Daily Echo, of which her forebear was proprietor.

²³ ‘Death of Mr. A. Common, J.P.: A Sketch of His Career’, Sunderland Daily Echo, 14 February 1896, 4.

²⁴ Parker, ‘Common’, 17.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid. 19.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Ibid. 20.

³² Ibid.

³³ Ibid.

³⁴ For Robert Teasdale (1809–83), see Julie Nichol, ‘Aspects of Public Health in Darlington’ (Undergraduate dissertation, University of Sheffield, 1986), 42.

³⁵ Northern Echo, 10 August 1883, 3. The MP was from a local Quaker dynasty: (Sir) Theodore Fry (1836–1912), MP for Darlington 1880–95. Marmaduke Miller (1827–89), who ministered in Darlington from 1862–6, held positions of national responsibility in Free Methodism from 1858–83.

³⁶ Northern Echo, 10 August 1883, 3.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Jones, ‘Parker, Joseph (1830–1902)’; Nicoll, Princes, 170; CYB 1902, 9–10.

³⁹ Sunderland Daily Echo, 12 October, 6; ibid. 13 October 1903, 6. Francis Common (1847–1903) was a trustee and deacon of the Royalty Union Congregational Church, Sunderland, and treasurer of the Parker Memorial Home for Girls, founded in memory of his sister, Emma Jane Parker.