But Bourne and his friends persisted against both Conference and the local super intendent, who issued bills declaring that no camp-meeting would be held at Norton in August 1807.
The societies which Bourne formed were for a time allowed to go under (Wesleyan) Methodist protection, but the crisis came in 1810, when the Stanley class of ten members declined to wash their hands of the Camp-Meeting Methodists, and so were refused admission.
But irrepressibles like John Benton broke through the "non-mission law," and pressed forward through the "Adam Bede" country to Derby (which became the 2nd circuit in 1816); Nottingham, where a great camp-meeting on Whit Sunday 1816 was attended by 12,000 people; Leicestershire, where Loughborough became the 3rd circuit, with extensions into Rutland, Lincolnshire and Norfolk; and ultimately to Hull, which became the 4th circuit, and where a meeting which deserves to be called the First Conference was held in June 1819.
Simultaneously with this work in the north, Tunstall circuit, having thrown off its lethargy at the Wrine Hill camp-meeting on the 23rd of May 1819, was carrying on an aggressive evangelism.
The revivalist group led by Bourne had become known as ' Camp Meeting Methodists '.
