Groves never resided in Dublin, but availed himself of the privilege that Trinity College, unlike the old English universities, allowed, of merely coming up for examination term by term. On these visits, he consorted, apparently from the first, with certain Christians who met together to promote their mutual edification by the study of Scripture and by prayer. Professor Stokes treats these little gatherings as some of “the drawing-room meetings for prayer and study of the Scriptures, which even still take the place of lighter amusements in a somewhat extensive circle in the Irish metropolis, and which were then quite the rage with all serious minds”. Whether this identification is wholly correct, or whether, as Groves’ Memoir states, the friends he found in Dublin were men who already, “with him, desired to see more devotedness to Christ and union among all the people of God,” and were in the habit of meeting more or less definitely “to promote these objects,”—it seems clear that Groves soon led his own company to take a very significant step in advance. The circumstance is related in his Memoir on the authority of his friend, Miss Bessy Paget, a lady afterwards well known among the early Brethren. She had accompanied Groves to Dublin in
Orders”. The reference is clearly to the fortune that Mrs. Groves came into at her father’s death in March of that year. If H. W. P. will undertake the task of arranging chronologically the mass of information contained in the opening chapters of the Memoir of A. N. Groves he will ascertain that Groves had closed his connexion with Trinity College as a fellow-commoner some time before his father-in-law’s death; that he carried on his professional practice for a time concurrently with his reading for his degree; and that he broke off his connexion with Trinity College entirely in the summer of 1827. The early chapters of the Memoir are certainly very badly arranged, but a careful study of them, however laborious, is indispensable to any one who undertakes to dogmatise on the connexion of Groves with the beginnings of Brethrenism.
