Gasquoine Manuscripts

A collection of 44 items, which include several volumes of sermon notes; commonplace books; minute book of the Bangor Civic Society, 1902-1904; evidences of Mr Gasquoine's activities as a pastor, mainly at Oswestry; and transcripts of House of Lords and Bodleian manuscripts relating to the sufferings of Anglican clergy during the Puritan interregnum.

The Rev. Thomas Gasquoine, BA, was an able, devout and highly respected Congregational minister, who after holding pastorates at Bradford, Oswestry, Northampton and Bedford, came to live in Bangor in 1900. His seventeen years pastorate at Oswestry (1864-1881) and his own penchant for inquiry, had made him intimate with the work of James Owen, one of the most constructive minds in the Annals of British Puritanism.

This accounts for the very satisfactory estimate of James Owen, the old Oswestry minister in Gasquoine's John Penry and other Heroes published in 1909. Though nearly seventy years of age when he came to Bangor, he threw himself with great zest into the many-sided activities of the city. He involved himself in preaching, publishing, lecturing, supervising the English Congregational Church and was secretary of the Bangor Civic Society and honorary librarian of the Bangor Independent College. He was also a member of the Bangor Free Church Council. Thomas Gasquoine was one of the staunchest of nonconformists, and delighted in recounting the tenacity of Puritan ministers in the dark days of persecution.

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