| Description | Marked with the label of the Vestry Library, number 958. Bound, handwritten historical notes made by various members of the congregation of the Church of the Messiah each year, which provide a summary of developments of the affairs of the congregation since the late eighteenth century. A note in the front of the volume reads that the minutes of the General Meetings of the Congregation from the earliest records were collected in 1838 by a sub-committee of the Vestry Committee and '"transcribed in a handsome Volume"', from which the history was developed, with the key events presented to successive Congregational Meetings in a series of papers. The note states that they present an interesting account of Unitarian Dissent in Birmingham, and various debates on civil and religious liberty during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. |