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LIST OF AUTHORITIES.

Memorials of the Wesley Family, by the Rev. G. J.

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The Life of John Wesley, by the Rev. Luke Tyerman. 1870.

Memoirs of the Wesley Family, by Dr. Adam Clarke.

1823.

Life of Wesley, by Robert Southey. 1820.

Original Letters by the Rev. John Wesley and his Friends, by Dr. Joseph Priestly. 1791.

Life of Charles Wesley, by John Whitehead, M.D. 1805.

The Mother of the Wesleys, by the Rev. John Kirk.

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The Wesley Banner. April and May, 1852.

Mrs. Wesley's original Papers.

SUSANNA WESLEY.

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 fiftyseven 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

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