Sunday 2nd January 1848
“Funeral sermon for my departed friend, Benjamin Steedman, who died 27th December last, aged eighty-five years. His grandfather was among the first Methodists in Warminster: he had preaching in his house about ninety-one years ago, at Rehobath, Warminster Common. When a boy, our departed friend attended the Methodist preaching. He was a witness of, and a sharer in, all the bitter persecution of the poor Methodists in this town, in and about 1773. He afterwards helped to fit up the preaching-room in Pound Street, where, for fourteen years, the services were kept up, and where the usual reproach was shared. He heard the Rev. Mr. Wesley preach his last sermon in Frome, (I think it was when King George the Third was at Longleat) and was acquainted with all the old preachers that then visited this town.”
“There was a crowded congregation. And how marvellous the occurrence that I should preach his funeral sermon, nearly forty-seven years after the period when he first invited me to hear the gospel.”
William Daniell, The History Of Warminster Common, published 1850.