Clerk Jasper Bailey c 1740-1782 and William Bailey 1771-1844

Jasper Bailey (c 1740-1782) was a wool stapler in Bourton, that is a person who buys wool from a producer, grades it and sells it to a manufacturer. He was also the clerk or precentor in the Baptist church for many years. In 1768 he married Mary Paxford (1746-1788). Mary was the daughter of Andrew Paxford, a doctor, and Sarah Collett Paxford. Her siblings were Sarah (married to John Collett) and the twins John and Ann (married to James Beale). Their children were Ann, Esther, Thomas, William (1771-1844), Elizabeth, Benjamin, Sarah. We know that in 1765 their maid died.
Bailey's early death must have meant tough times for his widow and her many children, one of whom, William, became a pastor in Datchet, Oxfordshire. He wrote in a letter of the religious education his mother gave him, "owing to which," he observes "I was kept, by the grace of God, from many snares and temptations to which others have been a sacrifice." He served an apprenticeship with a grocer and draper at Bedworth, Warwickshire, before removing to a situation at Gosport, Hampshire, where he came under the ministry of David Bogue (1750-1825). It was through Bogue that he was saved, although hardly even aware of it at the time.
From Gosport he moved to Henley and then to London, where he was baptised by William Smith (1749-1821) of Eagle Street, on October 9, 1796, then aged 25.
He did not join the church at this time and there is a gap in his history until 1811 when "moved by a weakly state of health and a growing sense of the importance of eternal things, he began to record many of the exercises of his soul, and keep a strict watch over his heart." He records seven years of domestic happiness and a prosperous run of business, thankfully, but expresses much concern lest these should lead him astray.
At this time he belonged to the Independent church in Windsor but was increasingly unhappy about not being in a Baptist church. He eventually resigned while still maintaining a friendship with the church and its pastor, Alexander Redford (1759-1840). He then joined the Baptist church in Datchet under John Young from Staines, soon becoming a deacon. He began to preach from time to time and in 1815, when Young stepped down because of illness, he became the regular preacher, being ordained in 1819. Although not blessed with great success he was enabled to sustain the work.

In 1817 he married Ann Redworth and they had eight children.
In 1832 he wrote the Association letter. Ill health only interrupted his ministry seriously late in 1843. The church was able to install his successor (John Tester) before his death, which came on June 30, 1844.

Hymn Singing in Bourton

As far as we know, in Beddome's day hymn singing was unaccompanied and would have used Beddome's own hymns plus available books. Lining out would have been the norm, led first by Jasper Bailey (c 1740-1782) and later by William Palmer (1726-1807), with William Snooke (1730-1799) standing in on occasion. The hymn book compiled by Ash and Evans appeared in 1769 and Rippon's selection in 1787. Before that the book in general use was Isaac Watts psalm versions, first published in 1719.

In Wikipedia the entry on "lining out" says:

The practice of lined-out psalmody was first documented in England by the Westminster Assembly, which prescribed it in 1644, though only for those congregations with an insufficient number of literate members or printed psalters. It became however the norm in English Dissenting churches of all levels, and American ones as well, even after psalters and then hymn books became more readily available.

Lining out became prevalent in the seventeenth century both in Great Britain and America, gradually developing a distinctive style characterised by a slow, drawn-out heterophonic and often profusely ornamented melody, while a clerk or precentor (song leader) chanted the text line by line before it was sung by the congregation. Though attacked by musical reformers as uncouth, it has survived to the present among some communities and contexts, including the Gaelic psalmody on Lewis, the Old Regular Baptists of the southern Appalachians (USA) and for informal worship in many African American congregations.

The tide turned against lining out in England and New England in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, with greater literacy, improved availability of texts such as New Version of the Psalms of David (1696) by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, and more widely available and better-printed tune collections. Influential clerics in England and America disliked the ragged nature of the singing that resulted as the congregation struggled to remember both the tune and the words from the lining out.

Lining out was in most places replaced by "regular singing," in which either the congregation knew a small number of tunes like Old Hundredth that could be fitted to many different texts in standard metres such as Common Metre, or a tunebook was used along with a word book. There began to be "singing societies" of young men who met one evening a week to rehearse. As time went on, a section of the church was allocated for these trained voices to sit together as a choir, and churches voted to end the lining out system.

Lining out persisted much longer in some churches in the American South, either through theological conservatism or through the recurrence of the conditions of lack of books and literacy, and in some places is still practiced today. In African American churches this practice became known as "Dr Watts Hymn Singing," a historical irony given Watts' disapproval of the practice.