The Trial and Conviction of John Church: The Preacher of the Surrey Tabernacle, Borough Road, at the Surrey Assizes, at Croydon, on Saturday, the 16th of August, 1817, for an Assault with Intent to Commit an Unnatural Crime.

In August 1817, a Methodist preacher named John Church stood trial at the Surrey Assizes, accused of a grievous assault against a young apprentice in his care. This slim, electrifying document preserves every wrenching detail of that proceeding: the victim's testimony, the cross-examinations, the courtroom tension that hung like smoke. What emerges is not merely a legal record but a fractured mirror reflecting Georgian England's anxieties about power, class, masculinity, and the terrible vulnerabilities of those who serve. Church was a man of God, trusted with souls, and the accusation struck at something deeper than mere scandal. The trial reveals how truth was constructed and contested in an era before modern forensics, where a young man's word stood against a preacher's reputation. For historians of sexuality, of the law, of the long Reformation's complicated legacy in English life, this document is indispensable. It is also, briefly and uncomfortably, a page-turner.