 The first Nonconformist congregation began in 1662 when the vicar of Cullompton , Revd William Crompton , was ejected from the established church . He continued to preach and a Protestant Dissenters meeting house was built in 1698 which became the Unitarian Chapel . In the eighteenth century there was a prevalence of Dissent with the local vicar recording in 1736 that of a population of <unk> there were 508 Presbyterians , 133 Anabaptists and 87 Quakers . By 1743 the first Baptist Chapel had been built . John Wesley 's journal records preaching near the town in 1748 . 
