Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, was, together with George Whitefield, co-founder and leader of the Calvinistic branch of Methodists. As a consequence, this church movement was known as The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion’. During her lifetime the Countess financed some sixty-four chapels and is said to have given over £100,000 to charity. Yet she herself lived on £1,200 a year and was known often to possess no more than the gown she was wearing.
The Prince of Wales said to one of her critics at court, ‘When I am dying I shall be happy to seize the skirt of Lady Huntingdon’s mantle to lift me up to heaven’. Such was the esteem of her among the poor that during the Gordon Riots the mob refrained from burning Spa Fields Chapel when they learned she was associated with it. The Countess, a relative of the royal family on both sides, became a Methodist through the influence of her sister-in-law, the Lady Margaret Hastings, after the death of Selina’s husband and two sons. She early joined Wesley’s Fetter Lane Chapel, and in 1747 she made George Whitefield one of her chaplains. Later she sided with Whitefield in the controversy with Wesley over Calvinism.
The Countess opened her home in Park Street for preaching services, and her chaplains ministered to the wealthy socialites of the Countess’s acquaintance. A charity school was later built nearby on the site of the Countess’s garden.