We must return for a little while to South Ormsby, small, but neat and picturesque, and the first home of Samuel and Susannah Wesley. Here they lived about five years. Here the rector’s wife brought him one child additional every year, and did her best to make £50 per annum go as far as possible. Here he plied his pen with unceasing diligence, and wrote many of his articles for the Athenian Gazette, and also his contributions to the “Young Student’s Library,” and “The Complete Library, or News for the Ingenious;” here he finished his “Life of Christ,” and here he composed two other poems, which must now be noticed.

Queen Mary died at the end of the year 1694; and her confidential friend and adviser, Dr Tillotson, died two months afterwards. In 1695, Samuel Wesley published, in a sort of folio pamphlet of twenty-nine pages, his “Elegies on the Queen and Archbishop.” The title of the first is as follows:—“On the Death of her late sacred Majesty, Mary, Queen of England, a Pindarique Poem.” The title of the second is—“A Poem on the Death of his Grace, John, late Archbishop of Canterbury.” The Elegy on the Queen consists of twenty-five verses of from twenty to thirty lines each; and that on the archbishop of sixty-two verses of four lines to a verse.

Both the poems are written in the highest style of eulogy. The following are the first lines of the Elegy on the Queen. The death of Mary is represented as a judgment inflicted on account of the sins of the nation, and is also considered as the harbinger of other judgments to follow. The reference to the Shechinah is in bad taste, and almost profane:—

The following is from the twenty-fifth stanza, and is meant to be descriptive of Mary’s admission into heaven. The extract is inserted with reluctance; but, in delineating character, faults as well as virtues must be noted:—

Notwithstanding our high veneration for Samuel Wesley, we feel bound to say that such lines are fulsome foolishness. Upon the whole, Mary was a good woman, but Wesley’s eulogy of her is sadly excessive:—

The poem on Tillotson is written in the same eulogistic strain. The primate is represented as one who excelled in pulpit, church, and state. As a preacher, he taught without noise, and differed from others without strife. As a prelate, he was watchful, humble, wise. As a statesman, unambitious and upright:—

Dr Adam Clarke properly observes, that “great and good as both the queen and archbishop were, both their characters are sadly overdrawn, and their praises are extended even beyond poetic licence. These, and some other of Mr Wesley’s early productions excited the ridicule of the wits, and made him the subject of such an occasional squib as the following, written by John Dunton:—

Mr Wesley, as we have seen, was an enthusiastic, an almost idolatrous, admirer of Queen Mary and of Archbishop Tillotson; and some writers have been pleased to intimate that this arose from special favours which her Majesty and the archbishop had shown him. This is an unwarranted and unworthy insinuation. It cannot be denied that Wesley received kindness from the queen; but there is no evidence to show that he was indebted to Tillotson for any favour whatever. Wesley himself declares, in a letter to be given hereafter, that because he dedicated his “Life of Christ” to Queen Mary, the queen gave him the Epworth living. He never asked for it. “It was proffered and given without his ever having solicited any person, and without his ever expecting, or even once thinking of such a favour.” He adds, “The favours which our blessed queen was pleased to bestow on me, after she had read my book, were as far beyond my expectation as my desert.”^[98]

There is no doubt that all this is substantially correct; though it involves a discrepancy in dates, which it is hard to reconcile. Wesley says that it was through the queen that he obtained Epworth living; and yet he was not inducted into that living until two years after the queen was dead. The probability is that the queen made some arrangement that Wesley should be the next presentee to Epworth benefice; and, after her decease, the arrangement was carried out. Be that as it may, it is an unquestioned fact, that Wesley was indebted to the kindness of Queen Mary; but it is an unwarrantable imputation to say that it was because of this that he used such excessive flattery in Queen Mary’s Elegy. We find the same extravagant praises used concerning her in the very book which led to the Epworth living being given; thereby showing that Wesley was a most warm admirer of the queen before he received any of her royal kindnesses. After having lauded the virgin mother of our Saviour, he adds:—

In this way we dispose of the imputation, that Wesley’s extravagant eulogies of Queen Mary would not have been written if Queen Mary had not shown him favour. The thing is false, for he wrote such eulogies before any favour had been granted. His eulogies may be foolish, but they are not fawning. He loved his queen, and therefore praised her.

As it respects the archbishop, there is not a scrap of evidence to show that Wesley was ever indebted to him for kindness of any kind; on the contrary, it was through Tillotson that Wesley was not made an Irish bishop. Hence the following extract from a letter written by his Grace only four months before Mary’s death. The letter was addressed to the Bishop of Salisbury, and is dated “Lambeth House, August 31, 1694.” The primate says:—

“My Lord Marquis of Normanby having made Mr Waseley^[100] his chaplain, sent Colonel Fitzgerald to propose him for a bishopric in Ireland, wherewith I acquainted her Majesty; who, according to her true judgment, did by no means think fit. Their Majesties have made Dr Foley Bishop of Down, and Dean Pulleyn Bishop of Cloyne.”^[101]

And so, in all likelihood, Dr Foley or Dean Pulleyn obtained the bishopric which the Marquis of Normanby wished to obtain for Samuel Wesley. We know nothing of the history and merits of these gentlemen. Perhaps they were well qualified for the Episcopal station to which they were exalted, or perhaps they were not; for bishoprics have not always been given to men the best qualified and the most deserving. It is not improbable that, in learning and talent, Samuel Wesley was vastly superior to Dr Foley and Dean Pulleyne; but we cannot, on this ground, commend the wisdom of the application made by the Marquis of Normanby, or argue that at present Samuel Wesley was fit to be made a bishop. Wesley was only thirty-two years of age; it was not more than six years since he had been ordained; and his ministry, during that period, had been, to a great extent, confined to a small parish of not more than two hundred and fifty inhabitants. He had neither age nor experience sufficient for the Episcopal office. Normanby’s application was hasty and imprudent; and the disapproval of the archbishop and the queen was seemly and right. At the same time, the letter of the archbishop above quoted, is written in terms so frigid as to lead to the conclusion that, however much Samuel Wesley admired the archbishop, the feeling was not reciprocal, and was of no advantage to the poor rector who cherished it.

We have already seen that the Marquis of Normanby was one of Wesley’s warm-hearted friends. It was through this nobleman that he obtained the living of South Ormsby.^[102] His lordship had a house in the parish, and Wesley acted as his chaplain. The Marquis was well acquainted with the poor, hard-working, literary parson, and was well able to estimate his character and his merits.

Normanby was a remarkable man, and was descended from a long series of illustrious ancestors. He was the son of the Earl of Mulgrave, and was born in 1649. He was early distinguished for his bravery and accomplishments. The inefficiency of his tutor induced him, at twelve years of age, to educate himself; and his literary acquisitions are the more wonderful, inasmuch as those years in which they are commonly made, were spent by him in the tumult of a military life, or the gaiety of a court. At seventeen, when war was declared against the Dutch, he engaged as a volunteer on board the ship in which Prince Rupert sailed, and was rewarded for his zeal by the command of one of the independent troops of horse then raised to protect the coast. When another Dutch war broke out in 1672, he went again a volunteer in the ship which the celebrated Lord Ossory commanded; and his behaviour was such that he was advanced to the command of the Catherine, the best second-rate ship in the navy. In 1674, he was installed Knight of the Garter, and made one of the lords of the bedchamber to Charles the Second, with whom he was a great favourite. He afterwards went into the French service to learn the art of war under Turenne. When the unlucky Monmouth fell into disgrace, he was recompensed with the lieutenancy of Yorkshire and the government of Hull. Having had the boldness to aspire at courting Lady Anne, afterwards Queen of England, King Charles,^[103] in 1680, sent him out to Tangiers, intentionally, it is said, in a leaky ship, hoping that he would either perish at sea, or in battle with the Moors on land. The Moors, without a contest, retired before him, and he returned to England in safety; was well received by the king, and continued a wit and a courtier as before. On the accession of James the Second, he was admitted into the Privy Council and made lord-chamberlain. He accepted a place in the high commission; and, having few religious scruples, he attended the king at mass, and kneeled with the rest, but refused to be converted. He lamented, but acquiesced in the revolution, and voted for the conjunctive sovereignty of William and Mary. For some years, he looked on King William with malevolence, and lived without employment; but, notwithstanding this aversion, he was made Marquis of Normanby in 1694, and, about the year 1700, was received into the Cabinet Council with an annual yearly pension of £3000. On the accession of Anne in 1702, he was made Lord Privy Seal, and then was created Duke of Normanby, and afterwards Duke of Buckingham. He died in 1720, at Buckingham House in St James’s Park, an edifice which he had erected himself, leaving a son by his third wife, a natural daughter of King James by the Countess of Dorchester. He was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, where a monument is erected to his memory, bearing an inscription of his own composition, beginning; “In doubt, but not in wickedness, I lived. In doubt, but not in fear, I die.” He wrote the “Vision,” and other poems; two tragedies, called “Julius Cæsar” and “Brutus,” and several prose works, consisting chiefly of historical memoirs, speeches in parliament, characters, dialogues, and essays. As a poet, he scarcely exceeds mediocrity; though Pope and others were sufficiently influenced by his rank and patronage, to place him high among the votaries of the muse. Johnson’s criticism is severe. “He is,” says he, “a writer that sometimes glimmers, but rarely shines, feebly laborious, and at best but pretty. His songs are upon common topics; he hopes, and grieves, and repents, and despairs, and rejoices, like any other maker of little stanzas; to be great, he hardly tries; to be gay, is hardly in his power. His verses are often insipid, but his memoirs are lively and agreeable; he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and fancy of a poet.”

The same authority describes his character somewhat harshly. He writes:—“His character is not to be proposed as worthy of imitation. His religion he may be supposed to have learned from Hobbes, and his morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opinions. His sentiments, with respect to women, he picked up in the court of Charles; and his principles, concerning property, were such as a gaming table supplies. He is said, however, to have had much tenderness, and to have been very ready to apologise for his violences of passion.”

Such, then, was the man who obtained for Samuel Wesley the living of South Ormsby, and in whose house Samuel Wesley acted as domestic chaplain. The year in which he asked that Wesley might be made an Irish bishop, was the year in which he himself was created Marquis of Normanby. Had his request been preferred to King James, or to Queen Anne, it would probably have been successful, but with King William and Queen Mary he was no favourite.

The Marquis of Normanby was a distinguished man, but his principles and morality were loose, and Samuel Wesley’s position, as domestic chaplain, was not always the most comfortable. There can be little doubt that the following question and answer in the Athenian Oracle, (vol. i. p. 542,) were written by Wesley, and refer to his own office in the family of the marquis:—

“Question.—I am a chaplain in a certain family, which is not so regular and religious as I could wish it. I am forced to see misses, drinking, gaming, &c., and dare not open my mouth against them, supposing from the little notice that is taken of me in matters of religion, and the great distance my patron keeps, that if I should pretend to blame anything of that nature, it would occasion nothing but the turning me out of the family. In the meantime unless I do speak, and modestly remonstrate, I think I do not what becomes a minister of religion, and am afraid may another day be justly condemned as partaker in other men’s sins. Therefore, gentlemen, my humble request is to know of you what I ought to do, neither to betray the cause of religion nor give offence. I would gladly be satisfied how far a chaplain is obliged to take care of the morals of the family he lives in. Your answer may be of use to a great many beside myself, for my case is far from being singular. I cannot believe that to say grace and read prayers now and then, when my patron is at leisure, is all the duty of a chaplain, yet I find that we all think we have done enough when we have done that.”

“Answer.—The pulpit is a privileged place, where, as custom has given you authority to speak, so you may with prudence so moderate your discourse as either to accomplish a reformation, or at least acquit yourself and discharge your own duty. Righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come, if reasoned upon, as they were almost seventeen ages since, may find a second Felix. The pulpit is the most proper, and sometimes the only, place to convince strangers of their faults, but private retirements are convenient for friends and familiars. These are rules of latitude, but all the world is reducible to one of them, and the practice is indisputable.”

No doubt “the misses, drinking, and gaming,” of the Marquis of Normanby’s house, occasioned the chaplain much uneasiness and distress of mind. The marquis was kind, but he was a rake; and Wesley was brought into company, not only with him but with his mistresses. To a man like himself, of the highest honour and strictest principles, this was extremely trying. At length matters came to a crisis. The following is given on the authority of Mr Wesley’s son John:—

“The Marquis of Normanby had a house in the parish of South Ormsby, where a woman who lived with him usually resided. This lady would be intimate with my mother, whether she would or not. To such an intercourse my father would not submit. Coming in one day, and finding this intrusive visitant sitting with my mother, he went up to her, took her by the hand, and very fairly handed her out. The nobleman resented the affront so outrageously, as to make it necessary for my father to resign the living.”

Such, then, was the occasion of Samuel Wesley leaving South Ormsby. This happened about the year 1696. While, however, Wesley resigned the South Ormsby living, he retained his chaplaincy in the house of the Marquis of Normanby. Four years after this, in 1700, when he published his “Short Discourse on Baptism,” he announced himself on the title page as “Chaplain to the Most Honourable John Lord Marquis of Normanby;” and a year later, in 1701, he dedicated his “History of the Old and New Testament” to the Marchioness of Normanby, in a prosaic but flattering dedication; while about the same time, to relieve Wesley from some of his financial embarrassments, the marquis, with his own hand, gave him twenty guineas, and the marchioness five! All this shows that, though his rupture with the marquis’s mistress rendered it expedient that he should remove from the parish in which she lived; he still, for years afterwards, retained his office in the marquis’s family, and participated in the practical friendship of both him and the marchioness his wife.

During the years that Mr Wesley spent at South Ormsby five or six children seem to have been born to him. Samuel, the eldest of the family, was born in London; the names of the five or six, born at South Ormsby, were Susannah, Emilia, Annesley, Jedidiah, Susannah, and Mary.

The first, Susannah, died in April 1693, when a little more than two years old. Emilia was baptized by her father in South Ormsby church, January 13, 1692. Arriving at womanhood she married a Quaker, an apothecary at Epworth, of the name of Harper, who left her a young widow. Her husband was a violent Whig, and she was an unbending Tory. About five years before her father’s death, she became a teacher at the boarding-school of a Mrs Taylor, in Lincoln, where she received bad treatment and worse wages. In 1735 she set up a school of her own at Gainsborough. For many years before her death, she was maintained entirely by her brothers, and lived at the preachers’ house adjoining the chapel in West Street, Seven Dials, London. She died at nearly eighty years of age, about the year 1770. She is reported to have been beautiful in face and figure, and majestic in her address and carriage, and to have had “strong sense, much wit, a prodigious memory, and a talent for poetry.” She was a good classical scholar, and wrote a beautiful hand. John Wesley said she was the best reader of Milton that he ever heard.

Annesley and Jedidiah were twins. They were baptized December 3, 16941694, and both of them died in infancy.

Susannah, the second, was born in 16951695, and, at the age of about twenty-six, was married to Richard Ellison, Esq., a man of good family, who farmed his own estate, and had a respectable establishment. She was good-natured, very facetious, and a little romantic, but behaved herself with the strictest moral correctness. She had a mind naturally strong and vivacious, and well refined by a good education. Her husband was little inferior to the apostate angels in wickedness. His mind was common, coarse, and uncultivated. He was the plague of his wife, and a constant affliction to her family. After bearing him several children, she left him, and hid herself in London, where she had considerable helps from her brother John. Henceforth she firmly refused to see her faithless and brutal husband, or to have any intercourse with him. Her son John lived and died an excise-officer in Bristol. Her daughter Ann married Mr Pierre le Lièvre, a French Protestant refugee, whose son Peter was educated at Kingswood school, took orders in the Church of England, and died at Lutterworth, in Leicestershire. Her daughter Deborah married Mr Pierre Collet, another French refugee; and her son, Richard Annesley, died at the age of twenty-seven, leaving two orphan daughters, of whom Mrs Voysey, the excellent wife of a pious dissenting minister, was one. Mrs Ellison’s husband was reduced to a state of poverty, and, through her brother John, obtained alms from Ebenezer Blackwell.^[104] It is pleasing to relate that, at length, he became a reformed man; and that, on the 11th of April 1760, Charles Wesley writes: “I buried my brother Ellison, and prayed by him in his last moments. He said he was not afraid to die, and believed God, for Christ’s sake, had forgiven him.”^[104]

Mary Wesley was born in 1696, and, therefore, just about the time that her father left South Ormsby. She was married to John Whitelamb, whom we shall have to notice in a future chapter. Through afflictions, and, probably, through some mismanagement in her nurse, she became considerably deformed, and her growth in consequence was much stinted: but all written and oral testimonies concur in the statement that her face was exquisitely beautiful, and was a fair and legible index to a mind and disposition almost angelic. Her humble, obliging, even, and amiable temper, made her the favourite and delight of the whole Wesley family. She died in early womanhood in becoming the mother of her first child. John Wesley preached her funeral sermon at Wroote; and her sister Mehetabel wrote an elegy, which was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1736, an extract from which, on account of its delineation of character and exquisite poetry, is here subjoined:—

Little South Ormsby, to all interested in the history of the Wesley family, will always be an attractive place. Here Samuel Wesley spent about six of the best years of his life, and wrote some of his ablest works. Here he had at least five children born, and here he buried three. Hither he took his young wife, and his first-born son, Samuel. Here he had to join his wife in mourning the death of her father, Dr Annesley; and from here to Epworth he and his wife took four young children, the eldest only six years old,—Samuel, Emilia, Susannah, and Mary.

Before finally quitting South Ormsby, it ought to be added, that Samuel Wesley, who took his degree of A.B. at Oxford in 1688, took his A.M. at Cambridge in 1694. The following notice is from the University Register, Cambridge:—