Susanna Wesley

Front matter

Eminent Women Series

EDITED BY JOHN H. INGRAM

SUSANA WESLEY

Chapter I. Birth and Ancestry

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND ANCESTRY.

The armies of the Church Militant throughout the world were never commanded by a better general than John Wesley. The military instinct was strong in every fibre of his keen mind and wiry body, and his genius for organizing has probably had far more to do with keeping the hosts of Methodism in vigorous marching order for the last hundred and fifty years, than any of the tenets he inculcated. He had, moreover, the gift of an eloquence that was magnetic, that drew men after him as the multitudes followed Peter the Hermit, and that compelled self-surrender as did the teaching of Ignatius Loyola. He was a born leader of men, who went straight to his point, and carried it by force of personal superiority. He made a very effectual lieutenant of his brother Charles, who, had it not been for John, would probably have lived a peaceful, pious life, and been a diligently decorous parish priest with a spice of scholarly erudition like his father before him. Men like John are not born in every generation, and, when they do arise, are usually the outcome of a race which has shown talent in isolated instances, but has never before concentrated all its strength in one scion.

In the records of such a race there are sure to be certain foreshadowings of the coming prophet, priest or seer, and consequently the lives of his progenitors are full of the deepest interest. Boys usually reproduce vividly the characteristics of their mothers, so in the person of Susanna Wesley we should seek the hidden springs of the boundless energy and grasp of mind that made her son stand out so prominently as a man of mark among his fellows. Had it not been for him it is probable that her memory would have perished, for, as far as outsiders saw, she was only the struggling wife of a poor country parson, with the proverbial quiverful of children, a narrow income, and an indomitable fund of what is termed proper pride. She was the twenty-fifth and youngest child of her father, Dr. Samuel Annesley, by his second wife, and was born in Spital Yard on the 20th of January 1669. On both sides of the house she was of gentle birth. Her mother's father, John White, born at Higlan in Pembrokeshire, like so many other Welshmen, graduated at Jesus College, Oxford; he afterwards studied at the Middle Temple and became a bencher. He was probably a sound lawyer and a prosperous man, for we find that he had a goodly number of Puritan clients, and in 1640 was elected M.P. for Southwark. In the House he was known as an active and stirring member of the party opposed to the King, Charles I., and in the proceedings that led to the death of that ill-fated monarch he seems to have taken some considerable share. He was by no means silent or passive when Episcopacy was under discussion, and would fain have seen the offices of deacons, priests, and bishops abolished. He was chairman of the Committee for Religion, and in that capacity had to consider the cases of one hundred clergymen who lived scandalous lives. These cases he published in a quarto volume of fifty-seven pages, a copy of which, under the title of The First Century of Scandalous and Malignant Priests, may be seen in the British Museum. Mr. White was, moreover, a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines; and what with the excitement and unrest of the times, his natural zeal, and the heat of party spirit, he wore himself out at the comparatively early age of fifty-four, and was buried with a considerable amount of ceremony in the Temple Church on the 29th of January 1644. Over his grave was placed a marble tablet with this inscription:—

Here lyeth a John, a burning, shining light, Whose name, life, actions all were White.

It was no doubt to his maternal great-grandfather that Charles Wesley alluded many years after, when his daughter Sally refused to believe that kings reigned by Divine right; and in his anger at her contumacy exclaimed, "I protest, the rebel blood of some of her ancestors runs in her veins!"

Dr. Annesley was himself of aristocratic lineage, and looked it every inch. His father and the Earl of Anglesey of that date were first cousins, their fathers being brothers. Samuel Annesley was an only child, and received the Christian name that has been transmitted to so many of his descendants, at the request of a saintly grandmother who was called to her rest before his birth. He was born in 1620 at Haseley in Warwickshire, and inherited a considerable amount of property. He had the misfortune to lose his father when only four years old, and was brought up by his mother, who seems to have been an eminently pious woman. Religion, it must be remembered, was the burning question of the day, and Puritanism was at its height; though there were many godly and exemplary people in the opposite, or what we should now call the High Church party. Young Annesley entered at Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of fifteen, acquitted himself well there, and in due course took his M.A. degree. When he was twenty-four years of age and had deliberately chosen the Church as his profession, the affairs of the nation had reached a crisis. Charles I. had declared war against the Parliament, and his queen had sailed from Dover with the crown jewels, hoping to sell them, and thereby procure munitions of war for the husband to whom she was so deeply attached. The Royalist party withdrew from their seats in the House of Commons, whereupon the remaining members drew closer together, enrolled the militia, and appointed the Earl of Warwick Admiral of the Fleet. He it was who, having a kindness for his young county neighbour, and receiving a certificate of his ordination signed by seven clergymen, procured for him his diploma as LL.D. and appointed him chaplain to a man-of-war called the Globe. This post, however, did not suit Samuel Annesley, and we speedily find that he quitted it and accepted the living of Cliffe in Kent, worth about four hundred pounds a year. This cure had been left vacant by the sequestration of the previous vicar for immorality, so that his appointment probably marks his acquaintance with John White, whose daughter he married in after years. But before settling at Cliffe he had espoused a young wife, who bore him a son, named Samuel after his father. She died, and was buried in the chancel of the church where her husband officiated, and her little boy survived her only four years, and was buried there in 1653. Dr. Annesley was much opposed when he first went to Cliffe, for the people were tarred with the same brush as their previous vicar, and received the new one with spits, pitchforks, and stones. Nothing daunted by this, he assured them that he was the last man to be frightened away from his post, and he should stay at Cliffe till they were prepared by his means for the ministry of someone better. He was as good as his word, and had the pleasure of seeing great improvement among them before he was called elsewhere.

In 1648 a solemn national fast day was proclaimed, and Dr. Annesley sent for to preach a sermon before the House of Commons. His sermon won him much favour and was printed by command: it contained a passage very acceptable to the Parliament in its then temper, but which gave great offence to the Royalists, who justly regarded it as a reflection on the King, who was at that moment imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle. According to the young divine's own account, which is still to be found in the State Paper Office, when the King was executed the following year he publicly asserted his conviction that it was a "horrid murder," spoke against Cromwell as "the arrantest hypocrite that ever the Church of Christ was pestered with," and said other disrespectful things of the ruling powers, which, being repeated, led to his leaving Cliffe, or possibly being turned out of it, to the great regret and sorrow of his parishioners, who had learned to love and trust him.

The inhabitants of the parish of St. John the Evangelist, Friday Street, Cheapside, unanimously chose him as their minister in 1652; and though he speaks of it as the smallest in London, it is evident that he remained there six or seven years. He must have married Miss White on his first settlement in the metropolis. That he would gladly have gone elsewhere is rendered probable by his declaration that Cromwell twice refused to present him to a living worth four hundred pounds a year, though he was the nominee of the patron. In July 1657 the Protector, however, gave Annesley the Lord's Day evening lecture at St. Paul's, which brought him one hundred and twenty pounds a year; and twelve months after, through the favour of Richard Cromwell, he was made vicar of St. Giles', Cripplegate, against the wish of some of the inhabitants, who at the Restoration petitioned Charles II. for his removal. That monarch, however, confirmed him in his living—possibly because he did not wish to make too rapid or sweeping changes.

Dr. Annesley had been a prominent man among the Puritan divines, whether he approved of the execution of the "martyred King" or no, for he had been one of the commissioners appointed by the Act of Parliament for the approbation and admission of ministers of the Gospel after the Presbyterian manner. No doubt he would have liked to have retained his living and won the favour of the King, for his ancestral instincts were likely to make him Royalist rather than Roundhead. But when it came to a question of conscience he was firm to his principles, and in 1662, when the Act of Uniformity was passed, he refused to subscribe to it, and, like Howe and Baxter, and two thousand of the best and most prominent clergy of the time, was ejected on St. Bartholomew's Day. The Earl of Anglesey strove hard to persuade his kinsman to conform, and promised him preferment; but it was impossible to move him, and he frequently preached in private, though ten years elapsed before the Declaration of Indulgence made it safe for him to get the Meeting House in Little St. Helen's licensed, where he officiated to a large and affectionate congregation till his death. He was a remarkably handsome man, tall and dignified, and of a very robust constitution, and several of his children resembled him in personal beauty. Comparison of his portraits with those of living types, show that his aquiline nose, short upper lip, wavy brown hair, and peculiarly strong and durable sight, have been largely transmitted to his descendants. Few of them, however, have been tall, although the majority have been strong and hardy.

He was devotedly fond of his wife, and their family increased annually and even oftener. There were two boys, Samuel who died in India, and Benjamin who was executor to his father's will, but most of the children were girls. Judith was a very handsome and strong-minded woman, whose portrait was painted by Sir Peter Lely; Anne was a wit as well as a beauty, and married a rich man; Elizabeth, who married Dunton, the eccentric bookseller, was very pretty, sweet-natured, and perhaps as near perfection as any mortal can be. There was also a Sarah and three others, of whom all we know is that they grew up to womanhood and married. Susanna was slim and very pretty, and retained her good looks and symmetry of figure to old age, although she was the mother of nineteen children.

There is a well-known anecdote of the Rev. Thomas Manton, who, after christening Susanna, was asked by a friend how many olive branches Dr. Annesley had; he replied that it was either a couple of dozen or a quarter of a hundred. It is probable, however, that out of this large number several died in infancy. Still, the quiver was very full indeed, though, the parents not being by any means poor, all who survived were well cared for and solidly educated.

Chapter II. Youth and Marriage

CHAPTER II.

YOUTH AND MARRIAGE.

Whatever accomplishments Susanna Annesley may have lacked, she was perfect mistress of English undefiled, had a ready flow of words, an abundance of common sense, and that gift of letter-writing which is supposed to have vanished out of the world at the introduction of the Penny Post. She probably had sufficient acquaintance with the French language to enable her to read easy authors; but at an age when a girl of her years and capacity ought to have been reading literature, she appears to have been studying the religious questions of the day. It is true that they were uppermost in all minds, but it is equally true that her father, Dr. Annesley, had laid controversy aside and did not add a single pamphlet to the vast army of them which invaded the world at that epoch. He was a liberal and a large-minded man, and no stronger proof of it can be adduced than that his youngest daughter, before she was thirteen, was allowed so much liberty of conscience, that she deliberately chose and preferred attaching herself to the Church of England rather than remaining among the Nonconformists, with whom her father had cast in his lot. Perhaps he sympathised with her, at all events he neither reproached nor hindered her; to the end of his life she remained his favourite child, and it was to her care that he committed the family papers, which, unfortunately, were destroyed in the fire that many years after wrecked the parsonage at Epworth. Among the many visitors to the hospitable house in Spital Yard was Samuel Wesley, the descendant of a long line of "gentlemen and scholars," as they were termed by one of his grandsons. He was an inmate of the Rev. Edward Veal's dissenting academy at Stepney, and was a promising student with a ready pen. The pedigree of his family was traceable to the days of Athelstan, when they were people of some repute, probably the remnants of a good old decayed stock. They were connected with the counties of Devon and Somerset, always intermarrying with the best families; some of them fought in Ireland and acquired property there. It need only be added that Lord Mornington, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Ker Porter and his sisters, the famous novelists, were among their kith and kin, to show that many and rare talents and a vast amount of energy were hereditary gifts. Samuel Wesley was the son of the Rev. John Wesley, sometime vicar of Winterborn, Whitchurch, in Dorsetshire, one of the ejected clergy, and a grandson of the Rev. Bartholomew Wesley, who married Ann Colley of Castle Carbery, Ireland, and was the third son of Sir Herbert Wesley, by his wife and cousin Elizabeth Wesley of Daugan Castle, Ireland. These few facts will probably make clear to most minds the main points respecting the family connections and their proclivities.

Samuel Wesley had been from his youth a hard worker, and as the course of his education did not for many years take the direction he desired, he contrived to earn for himself the University training essential to a scholar. The foundation of a liberal education was laid at the Free School, Dorchester, where he remained till nearly sixteen, when his father died, leaving a widow and family in very poor circumstances. The Dissenting friends of both parents then came forward and obtained for the promising eldest son an exhibition of thirty pounds a year, raised among themselves, and sent him to London, to Mr. Veal's at Stepney, where he remained for a couple of years.

There are two things almost inseparable from a tincture of Irish blood at all events in the upper and cultivated classes a wonderful facility for scribbling and a hot-headed love of engaging in small controversies. Both of them speedily came to light in Samuel Wesley, for he at once became a dabbler in rhyme and faction, and so far pleased his patrons that they printed a good many of his jeux d esprit. Some words of sound advice were given him by Dr. Owen, who was, perhaps, afraid that the intoxication of seeing himself in print might lead to neglect of severer studies. He counselled the youth to apply himself to critical learning, and gilded the pill by a bonus of ten pounds a year as a reward for good conduct and progress. In consequence of continual magisterial prosecutions, Mr. Veal was obliged to give up his establishment, and his clever young pupil was transferred to that of Mr. Charlea Morton, M.A., of Newington Green, which then stood foremost among Dissenting places of education. Samuel Wesley's mother and a maiden aunt appear to have migrated to London, and with them he made his home. Literary work and remuneration opened before him, for he was engaged to translate some of the works of John Biddle, regarded as the father of English Unitarians ; but it is said that as he could not conscientiously approve of their tendency, he threw up the affair.

The passion of writing lampoons, however, remained strong, and was further fanned by his meeting at Dr. Annesley's with John Dunton, the bookseller, who was then wooing Elizabeth Annesley. The two became firm friends, as is not unusual when a wealthy publisher meets with a young man of literary ability, whose peculiar line of talent runs parallel with the taste of the times. From that hour his literary earnings went far towards his support, and he needed them, for he was becoming discontented with the Dissenters and beginning to find fault with their doctrines. Dr. Owen wished him and some others to graduate at one of the English universities, with the notion that the tide might soon turn, and that Dissenters might be allowed to take the ordinary degrees; but the idea that any of them would prove recreant to Nonconformist principles does not appear to have entered the good man's head. It also appears that a e: reverend and worthy" member of the Wesley family came to London from a great distance, and held serious converse with his young kinsman against the "Dissenting schism"; so it is probable that several influences combined to induce Samuel, at the age of one-and-twenty, to quit his non-conforming friends and join the Church of England. He had, moreover, made up his mind to go to Oxford, and, as a young man of spirit, could surely not have wished to be hampered and baulked in his University career by entering that abode of learning without belonging to the Established Church. It was the reaction of the frame of mind in which he had written squibs and lampoons on the opposite side of the question, and the scars of persecution and controversy were still too recent to enable the friends who had hitherto watched his career, to reflect that " our little systems have their day" and ultimately "cease to be."

Hearts are the same in all centuries, and, considering that Susanna Wesley was some years younger than her future husband, one cannot help thinking that Cupid had something to do with the change of views she avowed so early in her teens, and that her kind and warm-hearted father had some suspicion of the truth, and no objection to it.

Samuel Wesley did not care to encounter home opposition; consequently, he rose before dawn one August morning in 1683, and with forty-five shillings in his pocket walked down to Oxford, where he entered himself as a servitor at Exeter College. Here he maintained himself by teaching, by writing exercises, &c. that wealthy undergraduates were too idle to do for themselves (a practice he ought not to have countenanced), by whatever literary employment Dunton could put into his hands, and by collecting and publishing his various scattered rhymes and poems in a volume, which appears to have rather more than paid its own expenses. He passed his various examinations creditably, and in June 1688 took his B.A. degree. The fact that he was the only student of Exeter who obtained that very moderate distinction in that year, does not say much for the abilities or industry of his companions as a body.

Samuel Wesley left Oxford just at the time when James II. had issued his fresh Declaration of Indulgence, which the clergy for the most part refused to read in their churches, while Archbishop Sancroft and six of his suffragans protested, and were in consequence imprisoned in the Tower. Thus it came to pass that, in the enforced absence of the Bishop of London, Samuel Wesley received deacon's orders at the hands of Dr. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester. The curacy that gave him a title was worth only twenty-eight pounds a year ; but he did not remain in it more than twelve months, when he was ordained priest by Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, at St. Andrew's, Holborn, on the 24th of February 1689, exactly twelve days after William and Mary had been declared sove- reigns of Great Britain. It is said that he wrote and printed the first pamphlet that appeared in support of the new government. It is possible that this procured for him the appointment of chaplain on board a man-of-war, where he was comparatively rich with seventy pounds a year, and had leisure for a good deal of writing, most of which he employed in the composition of a curious poem on the Life of Christ.

He was most likely anxious to be in London, for he soon resigned the chaplaincy, and became again a curate in the metropolis, with an income of thirty pounds, which he doubled by his pen. Money was worth much more then than now, yet it was hardly prudent to marry on so small a pittance; but lovers have so much faith in one another, that he and Susanna Annesley seem to have had no misgivings but plighted their troth in the spring of 1689. It is not known in what church they were married, nor who married them, but it is believed that the bride's new home was in apartments near Holborn.

Chapter III. Early married Life

CHAPTER III.

EARLY MARRIED LIFE.

Susanna Wesley must have been an economical woman and a good housekeeper, for she and her husband lived for two years in London lodgings, during which time their eldest son Samuel was born, and managed to pay their way and keep perfectly free from debt on their small income. The young husband now entered into a literary project, which he hoped would add considerably to his resources. He joined Mr. Dunton and a few others in establishing the Athenian Gazette, a weekly publication, that lived for some years. The meetings of the coadjutors were held at stated periods at Smith's Coffee-house in George Yard, now George Street, near the Mansion House. It is calculated that during the existence of this periodical Mr. Wesley contributed about two hun- dred articles to its pages, and it is from the pen of one of his fellow- workers, Charles Gildon who afterwards wrote a history of the "Athenian Society"-that we have the best sketch of what manner of man Susanna's husband was in his early prime.

"He was a man of profound knowledge, not only of the Holy Scriptures, of the Councils, and of the Fathers, but also of every other art that comes within those called liberal. His zeal and ability in giving spiritual directions were great. With invincible power he confirmed the wavering and confuted heretics. Beneath the genial warmth of his wit the most barren subject became fertile and divertive. His style was sweet and manly, soft without satiety, and learned without pedantry. His temper and conversation were affable. His compassion for the sufferings of his fellow-creatures was as great as his learning and his parts. Were it possible for any man to act the part of a universal priest, he would certainly deem it his duty to take care of the spiritual good of all mankind. In all his writings and actions he evinced a deep concern for all that bear the glorious image of their Maker, and was so apostolical in his spirit, that pains, labours, watchings, and prayers were far more delightful to him than honours to the ambitious, wealth to the miser, or pleasure to the voluptuous."

Looking back at this distance of time on Samuel Wesley's literary work, it is evident that he was a learned theologian, and had the gift of fluent versification. His mind and style were narrowed by being continually bent on controversial theology, and he wrote so much and so rapidly in one groove, in order to earn the wherewithal to bring up his large family, that he never attained the high standard of which his youth gave such fair promise. But he was a good man, and a faithful pastor of souls in the obscure corner of Lincolnshire where his lot was afterwards cast; although, had he remained in London, it is probable that he would have come more to the front, and have become one of the shining intellectual lights of his day. The Marquis of Normanby had in some way heard of the young divine and his straitened circumstances, and, in 1690, when the little parish of South Ormsby became vacant by the death of the rector, he mentioned Mr. Wesley to the Massingberds, who then, as now, were lords of the manor and patrons of the living. Their offer of it was at once made and readily accepted, and regarded as a step in advance. The stipend was fifty pounds a year ; there was a house to live in, though a very poor one, and, as the pastoral work was by no means onerous, there was the prospect of abundant leisure for writing. The new incumbent was just eight- and-twenty, his wife was in her twenty-second year, and their babe only four months old, when they left London for the country place that was to be their future home, and with which their memories are indelibly connected. The monotony of country life and the utter absence of the excitement to which Mr. Wesley had been accustomed must very soon have chafed his spirit, though he tried to be thankful, as may be seen from his own description : -

"In a mean cot, composed of reeds and clay,

Wasting in sighs the uncomfortable day:

Near where the inhospitable Humber roars,

Devouring by degrees the neighbouring shores.

Let earth go where it will, I'11 not repine,

Nor can unhappy be, while Heaven is mine.'

There were only thirty-six houses and about two hundred and sixty inhabitants in the parish, wherein the ancient church of St. Leonard stood on rising ground just above the parsonage. The young couple arrived in June, and got settled before the winter came. As the months passed, and little Samuel began to walk, his mother was distressed to observe that, though healthy and extremely intelligent, he showed no sign of talking. This made her very anxious, and the care of a child who she feared was dumb, as well as the very natural tenderness for a first-born son, caused " Sammy," as they called him, to be her favourite, a predilection which she, as well as others, fully recognised. In 1691 a little girl was born, and named after her mother, and in January of the following year Emilia made her appearance. In April 1693 the infant Susanna died, making the first break in the circle. In 1694 twin boys, Annesley and Jedediah, were born, but died in infancy, and a few months after their death came another girl, who was also named Susanna, and lived to a ripe old age. Mary, the last born at South Ormsby, through a fall became deformed and sickly ; so that it is evident that Mrs. Wesley's hands were always full and her strength sorely tried.

It might have been imagined that in this remote village no social difficulties were likely to arise; but it was not so. The Marquis of Normanby, like many others of his time, was a man of sadly loose morals, and kept a "lady" at a house in South Ormsby. She took a great fancy to the Rector's pretty wife, and would fain have been very intimate with her. Mrs. Wesley, secure in her own position as a happy wife and mother, does not seem to have harshly discouraged her fallen sister ; but her hot-tempered and high-handed husband was not going to endure it, and, it is averred, coming in one day when the peccant woman was sitting with his wife, he handed her out of the house in a sufficiently peremptory manner. John Wesley says that this conduct gave such offence to the Marquis as to necessitate his father's resignation of the living ; but this statement is not borne out by facts. If the story were absolutely correct, the Marquis must have recognised the natural indignation of a gentleman, and have respected him accordingly, for Mr. Wesley did not cease to be his private chaplain, nor to dedicate books to him and the Marchioness, nor did the nobleman forget to mention the Rector of South Ormsby at Court. The actual rencontre may very possibly have been with some woman connected with Lord Castleton, who rented the Hall and lived a very dissolute life there. It all happened long before John Wesley was born, so he may easily have been mistaken as to the facts.