Then he gave out the chapter again, read it, and preached.

He was just about to conclude with prayer, when up started the singers and screamed forth another hymn.

These disgraceful scenes were continued for many weeks, and so violent was the feeling, that the different parties could hardly keep from blows as they came through the chapel-yard.

The minister, at last, left the place, and along with him went many of the most temperate and respectable part of the congregation, and the singers remained triumphant.
"I believe that there was such a violent contest respecting the choice of a pastor, about this time, in the Upper Chapel at Heckmondwike, that the Riot Act had to be read at a church-meeting." Certainly, the _soi-disant_ Christians who forcibly ejected Mr.Redhead at Haworth, ten or twelve years before, held a very heathen brotherhood with the _soi-disant_ Christians of Heckmondwike; though the one set might be called members of the Church of England and the other Dissenters.
The letter from which I have taken the above extract relates throughout to the immediate neighbourhood of the place where Charlotte Bronte spent her school-days, and describes things as they existed at that very time.
The writer says,--"Having been accustomed to the respectful manners of the lower orders in the agricultural districts, I was at first, much disgusted and somewhat alarmed at the great freedom displayed by the working classes of Heckmondwike and Gomersall to those in a station above them.

The term 'lass,' was as freely applied to any young lady, as the word 'wench' is in Lancashire.