There were far fewer big towns in England in those days than there are now. Probably at least two-thirds of the people lived in the country, and only the remaining third were townsfolk: nowadays the proportions are more than reversed. There was then no thickly populated 'Black Country'; there were then no humming mills in the woollen districts of Yorkshire, no iron and steel works soiling the pure rivers of Tees and Wear and Tyne. Most of the chief towns and industries at that time were in the South.
'London had a population of half a million. Bristol, the principal seaport, had about thirty thousand; Norwich, with a similar number of inhabitants, was still the largest manufacturing city. The publishers of Truth would now make these three places their chief fields of service, showing something of the same concentration of effort at strategic centres which marked the extension of Christianity through the Roman Empire, under the leadership of Paul.'[19]
A certain impetuous lad named James Parnell, already a noted Minister though still in his teens, was hard at work in the counties of East Anglia. In the next story we shall hear how Howgill and Burrough fared in their mission 'to conquer London.'
Splendid tidings came from the two Johns, John Audland and John Camm, of their progress in Bristol and the West: 'The mighty power of God is that way; that is a precious city and a gallant people: their net is like to break with fishes, they have caught so much there and all the coast thereabout.' The memory of the enthusiasm of those early days lingered long in the West, in the memory of those who had shared in them. 'Ah! those great meetings in the Orchard at Bristol I may not forget,' wrote John Audland many years later, 'I would so gladly have spread my net over all and have gathered all, that I forgot myself, never considering the inability of my body,--but it's well, my reward is with me, and I am content to give up and be with the Lord, for that my soul values above all things.'
Women also were among the first Publishers of Truth and helped to spread the message. Even before Burrough and Howgill reached London, two women had been there, gently scattering the new seed. It is recorded that one of them, named Isabella Buttery, 'sometimes spoke a few words in this small meeting.'