When Berned Foskett came to Bristol Broadmead as the assistant to Pastor Peter Kitterell in 1720, the regional Baptist Association, called the Western Association, had already entered an unhealthy period. There had been a Baptist association of churches in western and south-western England since the middle of the 1600s. But it was an amalgam of various beliefs. There was no confessional basis for union. Some churches were Particulars, some were Generals and some were becoming something very different. Under various influences, the associational orthodoxy declined. The causes included the effects of the instability and heresies of Thomas Collier which strongly influenced some churches negatively and the rationalistic pressures brought in by the Age of Reason which produced Arianism and Unitarianism in some General Baptist churches. It seems the Western Association churches were agreed on believer’s baptism but often on little else.