Samuel Wesley was born at Winterborn-Whitchurch, at the close of the year 1662. He was educated at the Free School, at Dorchester, by Mr Henry Dolling, to whom, out of respect, he dedicated the first work that he published.[13] Dorchester Free School was built by Edward Hardy, of Wyke, near Weymouth, about the year 1579. Young Wesley remained here until he was a little more than fifteen years of age, when he was sent to an academy in London. He continued in London until August 1683, when he had nearly arrived at the age of twenty-one.
Perhaps there is no period in English history more pregnant with painful interest than the first twenty-one years of Samuel Wesley’s life. He came into the world four months after that dark day of St Bartholomew, when his father, and his grandfather, and more than two thousand other godly ministers of Christ, were ejected from their churches, and driven from their homes. When he was yet a child, the great plague of London swept away one hundred thousand of its inhabitants; and the great fire made nearly the whole city a sightless heap of cinders, from the Tower to Temple Bar. Taking advantage of the confusion produced by these terrible events, the Covenanters in the West of Scotland rose up, and demanded redress of their grievances, and the removal of Episcopacy. Archbishop Sharp, exchanging the crosier for the sword, took the field against them. Forty were killed on Pentland Hills, and one hundred and thirty taken prisoners. Ten were hanged in Edinburgh upon one gibbet, and thirty-five more were sent back to the west of Scotland, and there hanged, in front of their own dwellings, the ministers of the Established Church declaring them damned to all eternity for their rebellion, and the archbishop employing his Episcopal genius in the invention of a new infernal instrument of torture, and spending his hours out of the sacred pulpit, not so much in sacred exercises as in studying how to make “the boots” excruciate the surviving associates of those executed men. Clarendon, who had much to do with the passing of the Act of Uniformity, was now deprived of the great seal, was accused of treason, and obliged to flee to France for safety. Sir Matthew Hale, Bishop Wilkins, and others, made an effort to have the Presbyterians comprehended in the Established Church, and to secure toleration for all the other dissenting sects; but the orthodoxy of parliament was as intolerant as ever, and it was a common saying at the time, that whoever proposed new laws about religion ought to do it with a rope round his neck. The bishops and High Churchmen continued to preach the divine right of kings and passive obedience, and the court plunged more deeply than ever into debauchery and sin.
In 1668, the Puritans and apprentices about Moorfields took the liberty to pull down a number of brothels, and then to say, with some significance, that having demolished the little ones they ought not to spare the great one at Whitehall. Colonel Blood, the villainous desperado, after nearly murdering Lord Ormond, and after stealing the crown of England from the Tower, was not only pardoned, but admitted into the privacy and intimacy of the court, became a personal favourite of the king, was constantly seen about the palace, and had granted to him, for his base and bloody deeds, an estate in Ireland, worth £500 a-year. In 1673 the Test Act was passed, which provided that all who refused to take the oaths, and to receive the sacrament, according to the rites of the Church of England, should be debarred from public employment. In 1677, Charles not only permitted his nephew, the Prince of Orange, to come to England, but hastily made up a marriage between the prince and his niece, Mary, the elder daughter of James, the Duke of York, by Anne Hyde,—Charles alleging that this measure was forced upon him by the jealous fears of the nation, particularly since the Duke of York had declared himself a Papist.
In 1678, the year in which Samuel Wesley was sent to school in London, the popish plot of Titus Oates was developed. Titus was the son of an Anabaptist ribbon weaver. After acting as chaplain to one of Cromwell’s regiments in Scotland, he took orders in the Church of England, and obtained the living of Hastings in Sussex.[14] Whilst discharging his sacred duties, he was twice convicted of perjury. He was then appointed chaplain on board a man-of-war, but was dismissed with added infamy. Two years before the development of his plot, he was admitted into the service of the popish Duke of Norfolk, and suddenly became a Papist. He was now sent to a Jesuits’ College in Spain, from which, in a short time, he was disgracefully expelled. He recrossed the Pyrenees, and presented himself, as a mendicant, at the gate of the Jesuit College, at St Omar. Here, for a while, he lived among the students and novices, and was then cast out with shame, and was obliged to return to England without cassock and without coat. It so happened that, just at this juncture, Dr Tonge, rector of St Michael’s, in Wood Street, London, was a great Protestant alarmist. Titus obtained access to him, worked upon his fears, and, by his means, was brought before the Privy Council. Here, in a new suit of clothes and a sacerdotal gown, he alleged that, by the authority of the pope, a number of Jesuits were plotting the murder of the king, and of his brother James, the Duke of York; that these Jesuits had £60,000 a-year at their command, to assist in carrying out their murderous intentions; that repeated commissions had been given to shoot the king, and that the queen’s physician had been urged to poison him; that a wager had been laid that the king should eat no more Christmas pies, and that if he would not become R. C. (Rex Catholicus) he should no longer be C. R. (Charles Rex;) that the Jesuits had been the authors of the great fire in London, and were now concocting a plan for the burning of Westminster, Wapping, and all the ships upon the river; and that, with the full expectation that all these things would be done, the pope had already, by a secret bull, filled up all the bishoprics, and had made appointments to most of the high offices of state.
The Privy Council heard these statements of Titus Oates with astonishment. Meanwhile, Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, who had taken Oates’ depositions, suddenly disappeared from his house in Westminster, and was found brutally murdered in a ditch near Primrose Hill. The ghastly body was exhibited to many thousands, who shuddered and wept at the sight of one whom they deemed to be a Protestant martyr. The funeral was attended by an immense procession, having at its head seventy Protestant divines, in full canonicals. The panic spread, and Protestants, of all classes, conformists and non-conformists, royalists and republicans, considered their lives in danger. Titus Oates was summoned before parliament. Lord Stafford and four other Catholic lords were committed to the Tower. Common prisons were crammed with Papists. The House declared “that there hath been, and still is, a damnable and hellish plot, contrived and carried on by the popish recusants, for assassinating the king, for subverting the government, and for destroying the Protestant religion.” Titus Oates was proclaimed the saviour of the nation, and had a pension awarded of £1200 a-year. Charles yielded to the storm of agitation, and Catholics were expelled from their seats in both Houses of Parliament,—seats which were not regained, by their successors, for one hundred and fifty years afterwards, until 1829. Titus Oates went further still, and even accused the Queen of England, at the bar of the House of Commons, of high treason, declaring that he himself had heard her say, “I will no longer suffer such indignities to my bed; I am content to join in procuring his death, and in the propagation of the Catholic faith.” This accusation, however, was allowed to drop; but Stayley, the banker, Father Ireland, the Jesuit, and five other persons, were tried and convicted, and then executed at Tyburn for their complicity with the alleged popish plot.
Space forbids further details, except to add, that as soon as King James ascended the throne, Titus Oates was thrown into prison, and was tried for perjury in reference to his assertions respecting the popish conspiracy. He was found guilty, and was sentenced to be stripped of his clerical habit, to be pilloried in Palace Yard, to be led round Westminster Hall, with an inscription over his head declaring his infamy, to be pilloried again in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and, after an interval of two days, from Newgate to Tyburn. If he survived this horrible infliction, he was to be kept close prisoner for life, and, five times a-year, he was to be brought forth from his dungeon, and exposed in the pillory in different parts of London.
The whipping, says Neal, was inflicted with a severity unknown to the English nation. Dr Calamy tells us that he saw Oates at the cart-tail from Newgate to Tyburn, and that his back, fearfully swollen with the first whipping, looked as if it had been flayed. He adds: “Oates was a man of invincible courage, and endured what would have killed a great many others; and yet, after all, he was but a sorry, foul-mouthed wretch.” Macaulay says: “Whilst he was being whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, the blood ran down in rivulets, and his bellowings were frightful to hear. When brought out again, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn on a sledge. A person who counted the stripes on this second day, said that they were seventeen hundred.” The whipping was so terribly cruel, that it was evidently the intention of the court to kill him; but, by the care of his friends, he recovered. During many months, he remained ironed in the darkest hole in Newgate, sitting whole days, uttering deep groans, with his arms folded, and his hat over his eyes. He lived to the reign of King William, when a pension of about £300 a-year was settled on him,—a sum which he thought unworthy his acceptance, but which he took with the savage snarl of disappointed greediness. About the year 1698, he was restored to his place among the Baptists; but, in a few months, was ejected from their communion as a disorderly person and a hypocrite. He died in 1705.
But to return. Such was the excitement created by Oates’s allegations, that, in 1679, one of the first acts of the House of Commons was to pass a resolution, “that the Duke of York, being a Papist, and the hopes of his coming such to the crown, had given the greatest countenance to the present conspiracies and designs against the king and the Protestant religion.” The House also voted an address to the king, requesting him to banish all Papists in London twenty miles from its borders, and to put all sea-ports, fortresses, and ships into trusty hands. In the meantime, Charles induced his unpopular popish brother to retire to Brussels; but, before he went, James exacted from the king a formal declaration that the young Duke of Monmouth was illegitimate. The Commons, not satisfied with what they had already done, proceeded with their famous Bill of Exclusion, by which the crown of England was to pass from Charles to the next Protestant heir, as if the Duke of York were dead. This bill was read a second time, when Charles suddenly dissolved parliament.
Whilst all this was going on in England, exciting events were occurring in Scotland. There, dragoons were dispersing field-meetings, and many a moor was made wet with the blood of Covenanters. At one field conventicle, upwards of one hundred men were killed in cold blood. Balfour had mortally wounded Archbishop Sharp; and Russell had finished the work by hacking his skull to pieces; while the rest of their companions retired to a cottage on the moor, and spent the remainder of the day in thanksgiving to Almighty God for the accomplishment of a work so glorious. The Duke of Monmouth was sent, with five thousand troops, to put an end to a state of things like this; and the battle of Bothwell Bridge was fought. Then James, Duke of York, succeeded him, and exercised the functions of a Viceroy, under the title of “King’s Commissioner.”
Shortly after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, a band of the most enthusiastic of the Covenanters rallied round a man called Cameron, a preacher, from whom they derived the name of Cameronians. Cameron affixed to the market-cross of Sanquhar “A Declaration and Testimony of the true Presbyterian, anti-prelatic, anti-erastian, and persecuted party of Scotland.” In this document, he renounced and disowned Charles Stuart, and declared war against him as a tyrant and usurper. Cameron, with a mere handful of men, was surprised by three troops of dragoons, and, with his brother and ten of his followers, died fighting. A few escaped with Cargill, another preacher, who, at Torwood, pronounced excommunication against Charles II., king of Scotland, for his mocking of God, his perjury, adultery, incest, drunkenness, and dissembling with both God and man. Cargill was taken prisoner on July 26, 1681, and, with four of his followers, was the next day hanged. Farther proceedings followed. Lord Belhaven was imprisoned; and the Earl of Argyle was committed on the charge of treason, but escaped from a murderous death by escaping from his dungeon. Covenanters, Cameronians, and all who were suspected of associating with them, or of rendering them merciful assistance in their hour of need, were punished. Courts of judicature, with their “boots” and other instruments of torture, were set up, both in the south and west of Scotland. Above two thousand persons were outlawed; and the soldiers were authorised to shoot all delinquents refusing to renounce Cameron’s and Cargill’s declarations. Thousands of Presbyterians, who had taken no part with these desperate enthusiasts, began to think of emigrating to America.
In June 1683, the famous Rye-House Plot against Charles’s life was unfolded. The Duke of Monmouth immediately absconded, showing a delicate regard for his own safety, and a cowardly disregard for the safety of his friends. William Lord Russell was committed to the Tower. Howard, his relative, was discovered hidden in a chimney; was taken in his shirt, and carried before the Council; where the kneeling, puling, sobbing caitiff made such confessions as led to the immediate arrest of the Earl of Essex, Algernon Sydney, and Hampden, who were sent to join Lord Russell in the Tower. Many others, Scots as well as English, were arrested, and were true, to the edge of the axe, to their friends and party. When Baillie, of Jerviswoode, was offered his life if he would turn evidence, the proud Scot smiled, and said, “They who make such a proposal know neither me nor my country.” The steps taken by the authorities produced a different effect upon others. The magistrates of London and of Middlesex were terrified into loyalty, and presented petitions, praying for the suppression of dissenting conventicles; for justice upon “atheistical persons, rebellious spirits, infamous miscreants, and monsters;” and for the condign punishment of those “execrable villains and traitors” convicted of a design against his Majesty’s precious life. A month after his arrest, Lord Russell was brought to trial; and, on the same day, the Earl of Essex either committed suicide, or was murdered by the procurement of the king and the Duke of York. The base Howard was the principal witness against Russell. The Earl of Bedford offered to the king £100,000, if he would release his son; but Charles replied, “If I do not take his life, he will soon take mine.” And, accordingly, on July 21, attended by Tillotson and Burnett, the unfortunate Russell was led to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and was beheaded. On the same day, the University of Oxford published its decree in support of passive obedience, or the right of kings to govern wrong, without resistance or challenge from their suffering subjects. Seven weeks after, Algernon Sydney was brought to trial before Judge Jeffries, the legal bravo, who was as bold with his law books as Charles’s other personal favourite, Colonel Blood, was with pistols, daggers, and dark lanterns. Lord Howard was again the chief witness; and Sydney, on the 8th of December, was decapitated on Tower Hill.
This brings us down to the time when Samuel Wesley’s school days ended; and, with this brief survey of the reign of Charles II., we must content ourselves, only adding a few remarks respecting the morals of this disgraceful period of English history.
The Restoration brought with it a tide, not only of levity, but of licentiousness;—an inundation of all the debaucheries of the French court, in which Charles and his followers had chiefly spent their exile. The passions and tastes of the people, which, under the rule of the Puritans, had been sternly repressed, and, if gratified at all, had been gratified by stealth, now broke forth with ungovernable violence; and, as soon as the check was withdrawn, men flew to frivolous amusements, and to criminal pleasures, with the greediness which long and enforced abstinence naturally produces. Little restraint was imposed by public opinion; and there was no excess which was not encouraged by the ostentatious profligacy of Charles, and of his favourite courtiers. It is an unquestionable, and a most instructive fact, that the years during which the political power of the Anglican hierarchy was in the zenith, were precisely the years during which national virtue was at the lowest point.[15]
Swearing and profligate conversation were now so prevalent, that a young nobleman or man of family, was accounted no gentleman, that allowed two hours to pass in company without inventing some new modish oath, or without laughing at the fopperies of priests, or without making lampoons and drolleries on the Holy Bible. In the highest ranks, talent was employed in bedizening the carrion carcase, and rouging the yellow cheeks of the foul goddess of wantonness. Worthless actresses, and royal and noble concubines, became the patronessespatronesses, and even the wives of the highest nobility. Gaming was a fashionable phrenzy, and a noble house was incomplete without a basset-table. Court ladies became so equivocal in character, that few cared to venture the selection of a wife from among them. Mrs Jenyngs, a maid of honour, afterwards Duchess of Tyrconnel, dressed herself like an orange wench, and cried oranges about the streets. Gentlemen arrayed themselves like ladies, and ladies disguised themselves like gentlemen, Duelling was of daily occurrence. Members of Parliament adjourned to refresh themselves at taverns, from which they returned half drunk to finish their senatorial discussions. Younger sons of good families, heirs of wealthy citizens, and raw young country squires huzzaed for the king, and then broke the king’s peace, to show their love for him; scoured the streets in nocturnal bands; stormed taverns; broke windows; wrenched off door-knockers; daubed and defaced tradesmen’s signs; routed apple-merchants, fishmongers, and butter-women; attacked and knocked down all chance passengers; and generally ended by a conflict with the watch. Gallantry was general, from the half-fledged stripling fresh from the teacher’s rod, to the hoary-headed veteran, whose dim eyes could scarcely see the charms with which his heart was smitten. Foppery in dress resulted, and gallants endeavoured to make themselves irresistible by the newest cut of a French suit, or an enormous fleece of periwig.
Still, amid all this profligate frivolity of the higher classes, the bulk of the community retained much of the old English spirit. Many still adhered to the primitive hours of their forefathers for going to bed, getting up, and transacting business. In diet, notwithstanding the French cookery that had become prevalent, they stoutly stood by old English fare. The people, also, were intensely musical, and almost every person of education could sing by the scale, and play upon some kind of instrument. These were days, when the banks of the Thames were as melodious as the shores of the Adriatic. In the country, the baronial table was still heart of oak, and was laden with the old festive hospitality. Huge sirloins and mighty plum-puddings seemed to laugh to scorn the continental innovations that had become so fashionable in the capital. Country squires gave landlord-feasts to their tenants; while farmers gave harvest-homes and sheep-shearings to their labourers. Swimming, foot-racing, skating, horse-racing, bear and bull-baiting, tennis, and bowls were the people’s favourite out-door sports; whilst cards, billiards, chess, backgammon, cribbage, and ninepins, furnished amusement within. On Valentine’s day, gentlemen sent presents of gloves, silk stockings and garters, to their fair valentines; and, on the morning of May-day, young ladies, and even grave matrons, repaired to the bright green fields to gather dew to beautify their complexions; while milk-maids danced in the public streets, their milk-pails wreathed with garlands, and a fiddler playing tunes before them.
The age was light-hearted, frivolous, and wicked; and yet there flourished in it some of the greatest men that England has ever had. Abraham Cowley, replete with learning, was embellishing his poetic pages with all the ornaments that books could furnish him. Samuel Butler, marvellously acquainted with human life, was furnishing, in the grossly familiar versification of his “Hudibras,” sententious distiches and proverbial axioms for the use of future generations. Edmund Waller was honoured as the most elegant and harmonious versifier of his time. Dryden’s prolific, but extremely licentious pen, displayed a versatility of talent almost without parallel. Otway wrote some of the most pathetic tragedies in the English language, and terminated a miserable life at the early age of thirty-four. Ralph Cudworth was employing his extensive learning and profound philosophy in the production of his “True Intellectual System of the Universe.” Henry More was weeping over the miseries of his country, and studying how to check the Atheism of Thomas Hobbes. Isaac Barrow was labouring for words to express the amplitude and energy of his thoughts, often preaching sermons three hours long, and immoderately using tobacco as his “panpharmacon” to compose and regulate his mind. John Bunyan was preaching his wondrous sermons when out of prison; and, when in it, making tagged laces for a livelihood, and writing his “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Peter Lely was commanding admiration and acquiring a fortune by his portrait-painting; and Christopher Wren, a great philosopher, and one of the most eminent of architects, was drawing plans for rebuilding London and St Paul’s Cathedral.
It was amid such events, in the midst of such profligacy, and surrounded by such men, that Samuel Wesley spent his school-days’ life.
Young Wesley remained at the Free School, Dorchester, until he was fifteen years of age. For some time past, his father had been dead. His mother was a widow, and was poor. The boy, as he himself tells us, “was almost fit for the university,” but the difficulty was to find means to send him there. Like his father, and his two grandfathers, he was evidently intended for the Christian ministry; but, considering the treatment which all the three had experienced at the hands of the Episcopal party, it is scarcely probable that their youthful descendant would, at this early period of, his history, feel a wish to enter the ministry of the Established Church. His father and his grandfathers, though they had all been the occupants of Church livings, were, so far as Episcopacy and the use of the Liturgy are concerned, Dissenters; and there can be no question, that, as a boy fifteen years of age, his sympathies were with them.
But, had it been otherwise, there was little prospect of a youth like him being able to become a minister of the Established Church. To become such, he must receive Episcopal ordination; and to receive that, he must go to the university: but to go there was impossible, for he was without money, and was without Episcopal friends to send him.
His Dissenting friends showed him kindness. Without any application being made to them, either by his mother or by himself, they sent him, at their own cost, to London, for the purpose of being entered at one of their private academies, and of being trained for the Dissenting ministry. He tells us that Dr G. had the care of one of the most considerable of these seminaries, and had promised him tuition; but, on his arrival in London on the 8th of March 1678, he found that Dr G. was just deceased, and so his hope for a time was thwarted.
He was now sent to a grammar-school, where his progress was such, that the master wished him to proceed to the university, and actually promised him a handsome subsistence there. At this crisis, his Dissenting friends again came forward. He was a youth of promise; and, for their own sake, as well as out of respect for his dead father, they were unwilling to have him wrested from them.
At this time, a fund existed, raised by the collections and subscriptions of a certain Dissenting congregation, for the purpose of meeting cases like that of young Wesley. Out of this fund, he was granted an exhibition of £30 a year; and was sent to Mr Veal’s academy at Stepney. Wesley says that his relatives considered the offer of the Dissenters to possess greater advantages than the offer which was made to him by the master of the grammar-school to send him to the university, but in what respect it was considered more advantageous we are left to guess.
Edward Veal, the principal of the Stepney Academy, was, in the first instance, a student of Christ’s Church College, Oxford, and afterwards of Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained at Winwick, in Lancashire, August 14, 1657. When he left Ireland, he brought with him a testimonial of his being “a learned, orthodox minister, of a sober, pious, and peaceable conversation; who, during his abode in the college, was eminently useful for the instruction of youth, and whose ministry had been often exercised in and about the city of Dublin with great satisfaction to the godly, until he was deprived of his fellowship for nonconformity to the ceremonies imposed in the Church, and for joining with other ministers in their endeavours for a reformation.” This testimonial was signed by seven respectable ministers, one of whom was the celebrated Stephen Charnock, at that time exercising his ministry in Dublin, and residing in the house of Sir Harry Cromwell. On leaving Ireland, Edward Veal became chaplain to Sir William Waller, in Middlesex, and afterwards settled as a Nonconformist minister at Wapping, and likewise opened the academy at Stepney. He died June 6, 1708, aged seventy-six. Four of his sermons are published in the “Morning Exercises.” Dunton says he “was an universal scholar, and a man of great piety and usefulness. His principles were very moderate. He assisted in preparing for the press the posthumous works of Stephen Charnock;” and wrote the annotations on the Epistle to the Ephesians, published in the Commentary of Matthew Poole.
Samuel Wesley was a student in Mr Veal’s academy for about the space of two years, during which his tutor read to him a course of lectures on Logic and Ethics. He was now eighteen years of age; and, as he himself tells us, “was a dabbler in rhyme and faction, and had already printed several things with the Party’s” (the Dissenters) “imprimateur.” His patrons were evidently satisfied with his behaviour and his progress, for, before the two years spent at Veal’s academy had expired, he received an additional bonus of £10 per annum from the hands of Dr O(wen,) who encouraged him in the prosecution of his studies, and advised him to have a particular regard to critical learning.
Mr Veal was so annoyed and prosecuted by the neighbouring magistrates that he broke up his academy, and relinquished the office of a tutor. In consequence of this, young Wesley was again cast afloat, and he was now recommended to the academy of Mr Charles Morton, of Newington Green, where he remained until the summer of 1683.
Charles Morton, M.A., of Wadham College, Oxford, was a descendant from an ancient family at Morton, in Nottinghamshire, the seat of T. Morton, secretary to King Edward III. He was born about the year 1626. His father was rector of Pendavy, (Pendene-Vau?) in Cornwall; and his two brothers, also, were ministers. When about fourteen years of age, his grandfather, who was a stanch royalist, sent him to Oxford, where he was exceedingly studious, and, at the same time, zealous for the rites and ceremonies of the Established Church. He now began, however, to apply himself seriously to the controversy between the Prelatists and the Puritans; and, after mature reflection, joined himself to the latter. While a fellow of the college, he was highly esteemed by Dr Wilkins on account of his mathematical genius. This was no small honour, for Wilkins was the brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell, was the warden of Wadham College, and, in after years, became the founder of the Royal Society, and, in 1668, was raised to the see of Chester. Morton began his ministry in Oxford, and here for several years he lived as a Conformist. After his ejectment by the Act of Uniformity, he resided in a small tenement of his own in the parish of St Ives, and preached privately to a few people in a neighbouring village. Having sustained a large loss by the great fire of London, he removed thither to watch over his affairs. Several of his friends prevailed with him to open an academy at Newington Green. Here he had many pupils, who became exceedingly useful both in Church and State. Scores of young ministers, as well as many others who were eminent for scholarship, were educated by him. He was in all respects an excellent man; but this failed to save him from persecution. During the time that young Wesley was his pupil, he was obliged to leave his school and to hide himself. Wesley writes: “He had once before been excommunicated, and a capias issued out against him, on which he was taken. But while in custody of an officer, in whose house he was kept previous to being sent to prison, the officer died; and there being none to detain him, he returned home again. He was now in danger of a second capias, on which he used the mediation of my Lady R. to get some respite, and sent his sister several times to London House on the same errand. My Lord of L. promised him all reasonable favour if he would leave Newington Green and his employment; but he could not suffer him to continue in that, because it was so much to the detriment and prejudice of the Established Church, and so much an affront to the laws and universities. This threat caused Mr Morton to abscond some time at a friend’s, absenting himself from us, and leaving the senior pupils to instruct the junior.” After about twenty years’ continuance in the office of a tutor, he was so harassed with legal processes from the Bishops’ Court that he was obliged to relinquish his academy; and, in 1685, two years after Samuel Wesley left him to go to the Oxford University, he went to America, where he was chosen pastor of a church at Charleston, and became vice-president of Harvard College. Here he died in 1697, at the age of about seventy-one. He was a man of a sweet natural temper, and of a generous public spirit, an indefatigable friend, pious, learned, ingenious, useful, and beloved by all who knew him. He published nearly twenty treatises and other works,—all of them, however, compendious, for he was an enemy to large volumes, and used to say, “A great book is a great evil.”
Dunton states, that his “high character led many of the persecuted Nonconformists to join him in America. He was the very soul of philosophy, the repository of all arts and sciences, and of the Graces too. His discourses were not stale or studied, but always new; high, but not soaring; practical, but not low. His memory was as vast as his knowledge. He was as far from ignorance as from pride; and, if we may judge of a man’s religion by his charity, he was a sincere Christian.”
Samuel Wesley himself says: “Mr Morton was an ingenious and universally learned man; but his chiefest excellency lay in mathematics. He had many gentlemen of estate, who paid him well; but he thought more of the glory of God than of his own private profit. He only wished to save himself harmless; and, therefore, if he had little for some, he valued it not, so as it was barely made up by others, and he could send out new ministers to be ordained by presbyters.” While, however, Mr Wesley speaks so commendably of Mr Morton, his language is widely different in reference to Mr Morton’s pupils. He writes: “The pupils entertained a mortal aversion to the Episcopal order; and there were but very few but what abhorred monarchy itself. The king-killing doctrines were generally received and defended.”
On one occasion some of the students went out at midnight to a little hill not far from Newington, and, with a speaking trumpet, alarmed the town, and then, through the trumpet, bellowed scandalous stories respecting the clergyman of the place, the Rev. Mr S.
Those among them who composed the bitterest and most ill-mannered sarcasms on the public prayers and liturgy of the Church, were caressed, hugged, encouraged, and commended by the heads of the Dissenting party, Wesley himself sharing in the applause awarded.
The students, also, were in the habit of reading “the most lewd, abominable books that ever blasted Christian eye;” but it is right to add, that this was done without the knowledge of their tutors.
Mr Morton’s was the principal Dissenting academy in the land, containing forty or fifty pupils, and having annexed to it “a fine garden, a bowling-green, a fish-pond, and a laboratory furnished with all sorts of mathematical instruments.”[16]
The two gentlemen under whose care Samuel Wesley was placed in London were men of learning, of piety, and of general excellence; and well would it have been if he had had no worse advisers than these; but he writes: “Some of their (the Dissenters) gravest, eldest, and most learned ministers encouraged me in my silly lampoons, both on Church and State. They gave me subjects, and furnished me with matter; some of them transcribed my writings, and several of them revised and corrected them before they were printed.”
Wesley began to write his “silly lampoons” soon after he came to London. Some of his first squibs were thrown at a worthy man, who deserved more respectful treatment, both from him and some others. The Rev. Thomas Doolittle, whom he wantonly attacked, was a man of distinguished merit. Born at Kidderminster in 1630, and educated in the College of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, he was, for nine years, the incumbent of the parish of St Alphage, London. After being ejected by the Act of Uniformity, he opened a boarding school, and, though against the law, a meeting-house in Bunhill Fields. Here he preached to a numerous congregation, and had many seals to his ministry, until at length, on a Saturday, at midnight, the train bands came to arrest him; but he managed to escape. Next morning, while another person was preaching for him, the soldiers rushed into the chapel, and the officer, addressing the preacher, shouted, “I command you, in the king’s name, to come down.” The preacher replied, “I command you, in the name of the King of kings, not to disturb His worship, but to let me go on.” The officer ordered his men to fire. The undaunted preacher clapped his hand upon his heart, and said, “Shoot, if you please; you can only kill the body.” Great confusion followed, in the midst of which the brave-hearted preacher escaped; but Doolittle’s pulpit was pulled to pieces, and the doors of his meeting-house were fastened, and were branded with the king’s broad arrow. After this Doolittle opened a private academy at Islington, where, among other distinguished pupils, he had the care of Matthew Henry, the author of the most practical Commentary on the sacred Scriptures ever published; and also of Edward Calamy, the well known writer of the “Nonconformists’ Memorials.” It was at this time that Mr Doolittle published his work entitled, “The Lord’s Last Sufferings,” and prefixed to it a copy of Greek verses. Doolittle’s academy at Islington, and Veal’s at Stepney, seem to have been sworn enemies to each other, and eagerly longed for an opportunity to display their prowess in academic conflict. For want of a more proper subject, they made the verses, prefixed to Doolittle’s book, the occasion of the clash of arms; and, as young Wesley was already “celebrated for his vein at poetry,” he took, as Dunton tells us, a prominent part in a skirmish, which seems to have been wantonly begun, and not too honourably carried on. The squibs which Wesley published are lost—a thing not to be regretted.
Doolittle was far too good a man to be lampooned by the clever, impertinent striplings belonging to a neighbouring school; but the man whose goods had been seized and sold, and whose house and person had been threatened by persecuting foes, was not likely to be crestfallen on account of the pretentious swagger of young Wesley and his coxcomb companions.
Another of Wesley’s lampoons, written while he was at Morton’s Academy, was directed against Dr Williams, Bishop of Chichester, a man whom Dunton describes as “of solid worth and distinguished goodness.” Wesley says he was requested to write his satire against Williams by a Dissenting minister of no mean fame, and that the occasion of it was as follows:—A man, killed by a mob, had been buried, and Williams had ordered his body to be taken up, that a coroner’s inquest might be held upon it. Wesley knew nothing of the affair himself, but obtained full instructions from a minister near Clapham, who also gave the young Horace a guinea or two for encouragement. The lampoon was written, and Dr Williams, together with the whole order of bishops, abused to the very utmost of the young poet’s power, while his juvenile satirical performance, as he tells us, “was sufficiently applauded” by the unwise and dishonourable ministers who had prompted him to undertake such a work. The bishops of that period might not be as praiseworthy as was desirable; but it was a mean action for Christian ministers to do dirty work by proxy, and to employ a young fellow, cleverer than themselves, to write a pasquinade which, perhaps, they had not the ability to write.
All this was discreditable, both to young Wesley and to his prompters; but there was something else, which, but for his own good sense, might have been even worse. In the same year that Samuel Wesley was born, Biddle, “the father of the English Unitarians,” died. Biddle had been the master of the Free School of St Mary de Crypt, in Gloucester, and had adopted the Unitarian doctrines respecting the Trinity. Among other works embodying his creed, he published a tract, entitled, “Twelve Arguments, drawn out of the Scriptures, wherein the commonly-received opinion touching the Deity of the Holy Spirit is clearly and fully refuted.” The House of Parliament ordered this tract to be burnt by the common hangman, and, for its publication, the writer was doomed to five years’ imprisonment. Biddle was repeatedly imprisoned after this, and died September 22, 1662.
He was a man of great ability, and was an unwearied student. It is said that he retained the whole of the New Testament in his memory verbatim, not only in English, but in Greek, as far as the fourth chapter of the Revelation. His persecutions made converts to his principles, particularly in London; and from these he formed a distinct and separate society, not only for the purpose of divine worship, but for the free investigation of theological questions. The members of this society were called, from Biddle, Bidellians; and, from their agreement in opinion with the followers of Socinus, they were denominated Socinians. The name, however, which most properly characterised their leading sentiment was that of Unitarians; and in this way the Unitarian sect in England had its origin.[17]
It is a disgraceful fact that the life and works of this archheretic were in the hands of the pupils of Morton’s academy, and that Wesley was actually employed to translate some of those pernicious writings, and was promised a considerable gratuity for doing it. He says, “When I saw what it was, I proceeded no farther.” He might, however, have proceeded farther, and, like many other juvenile aspirants, whilst dabbling in Socinian works, might have become a Socinian himself; and, instead of becoming an honoured rector of the Established Church, and the father of the greatest reformer of the age, and of the best uninspired hymnist since the days of King David, he might have dwindled down into a cold-hearted sceptic, with a creed composed of negatives, and a life bereft of blessings to those among whom he moved.
There is no intention, in all this, to censure Mr Morton. Twenty years after these proceedings, Wesley, in his pamphlet against Dissenting Academies, does honour both to Mr Morton and himself, by writing thus: “I must, and ever will, do my tutor the justice to assert that, whenever the young men had any discourse of the government, and talked disaffectedly, or disloyally, he never failed to rebuke and admonish them to the contrary, telling us expressly, more than once, that it was none of our business to censure such as God had set over us; that small miscarriages ought not to be magnified, nor severely reflected on, there never having been a government so exact or perfect but what had some of those neavi in it. He also cautioned us against writing lampoons and scandalous libels concerning our superiors, and that, not only because it was dangerous so to do, but likewise immoral.”
Considering the disgraceful prosecutions to which Mr Morton had been subjected, such a testimony shows him to have been a man of high principle and honour; but Mr Morton, perhaps, was unable to prevent less honourable ministers having access to the students of his academy; or of his students having access to them. Besides, while the bulk of his students were without doubt respectable and virtuous young men, it is not unfair to imagine that, as in other seminaries, so in this, there might be bad characters, who would try to infect the rest. And, in addition to all this, while we hesitate in accusing young Wesley of strictly immoral conduct, we are quite prepared to think, that the exuberance of spirit, liveliness of wit, and adventurous heroism, which seem to be characteristics of the Wesley family, would often hurry him into improprieties, which he doubtless lamented in after life.
Wesley writes, “that some of the gravest, eldest, and most learned of Dissenting ministers encouraged and pushed him on in his silly lampoons both on Church and State,” that they “gave him subjects, and furnished him with matter; that they transcribed, reviewed, and corrected his writings before they were put to press; and that they taught him to equivocate, by telling him, that, when he was charged with being the author of such publications, he might deny that they were his,” because of the “very weighty and honest reason that there might be some literal mistakes in the printing.” He also adds, that it was from among the most famous of the Dissenting ministers that he “learned this way of writing;” “that it was in their hands he first saw the lampoons which were then most famous against the Government; and that he had often heard them repeated by their own lips, oaths and all.”
These are weighty charges against the Dissenting ministers of that period; and we have no means of refuting them. Still, while the allegations of Samuel Wesley, in the main, are doubtless true, it is only common charity to infer that these hot-headed, lampooning ministers were exceptions to the general rule; and it is only fair, even to them, to remind the reader that the Government and the age against whom the lampoons were written, were almost as corrupt and vile as profligate and abandoned wickedness could make them.
After all, it was a perilous thing for a young, sprightly fellow, like Samuel Wesley, whose father and grandfather had, by the existing Government, been ejected from their livings, reduced to beggary, and hunted to a premature grave, and whose mother, in consequence of such tyranny, was even now pining in some obscure dwelling, crushed with the sorrows of a too early widowhood, and compelled to submit to the humiliation of being, to some extent, dependent upon the charity of her friends; we say, it was a perilous thing for such a young man to be brought into close connexion with such political parsons. No wonder that he acknowledges that, when he came to Mr Morton’s school, “he was forward enough to write lampoons and pasquils;” “was abundantly zealous in the cause;” “was fired with hopes of suffering;” “and often wished to be brought before kings and rulers, because he thought what he did was done for the sake of Christ.”
Such were the ministerial tempters of this high-spirited and exceedingly clever youth. In Morton’s academy, there were about fifty pupils, many of whom were doubtless as headstrong as himself, and at least two of whom were a great deal worse than this, being not only headstrong, but lewd and vicious. Would it have been surprising, if, under such circumstances, Samuel Wesley had fallen into worse errors than what he did? and is it not owing to the prayers of his dead father, the training of his widowed mother, and the restraining grace of God’s good Spirit, that, in after life, he was able to tell his enemies, face to face, without fear of contradiction, that, though he was not an “exemplary liver” while at Mr Morton’s academy, he was not a “scandalous one?” He admits that he was too keen and revengeful, and that if he thought a person had injured him, he could not forgive such a person, without receiving something which he thought to be satisfaction. That seems to have been one of his greatest crimes; but now all such revengeful feeling was done away; and it was the greatest pleasure of his life to forgive and to oblige an enemy.
Before quitting the “school days” of Samuel Wesley, perhaps it may be interesting to add, that, besides himself, several of his school-fellows rose to great eminence.
For instance, there was Timothy Cruso, “the golden preacher,” as he was called, and who was so great a textuary, says Dunton, that he could pray two hours together in Scripture language. Also Obadiah Marriott, who was Dunton’s uncle, and for many years officiated as minister at Chiswick, and at Croydon.
John Shower was another of Morton’s pupils. He was born at Exeter, and was educated, first in his native city, then at a Dissenting academy at Taunton, and then at Newington Green; was encouraged, by Dr Manton, to begin preaching before he was twenty, and, at twenty-two, was ordained assistant to Vincent Alsop, at Tothill Fields; established a successful lecture against Popery, in Exchange Alley; and, some years afterwards, went abroad, and became lecturer to the English Church at Utrecht and Rotterdam. In 1690 he became assistant to the great John Howe, in Silver Street, London, and finally settled down at the new meeting-house, in Old Jewry, where he continued to preach, with great popularity, until his death in 1715. He was the author of—1. “Serious Reflections on Time and Eternity.” 2. “Practical Reflections on the great Earthquakes in Jamaica and Italy,” &c. 3. “Family Religion.” 4. “The Life of Henry Gearing.” 5. “Funeral and Sacramental Discourses.” 6. “Winter Meditations,” &c. &c. &c. He was a great favourite of John Dunton’s, who describes him as “a popular preacher, with a small shrill voice, and noted for his funeral sermons.” In his “Dissenting Doctors,” Dunton writes in extravagant and doggerel rhyme:—