[1] Coxe's "Memoirs of Walpole" and Lecky's "England."
Such was the condition of England when a great religious revival began, 1738. Its leader was John Wesley. A number of years earlier, while a tutor at Oxford, he and his brother Charles, with a few others, were accustomed to meet at certain hours for devotional exercises. The regularity of their meetings, and of their habits generally, got for them the name of "Methodists," which, like "Quaker" and many another nickname of the kind, was destined to become a title of respect and honor.
At first Wesley had no intention of separating from the Church of England, but labored only to quicken it to new life; eventually, however, he found it best to begin a more extended and independent movement. The revival swept over England with its regenerating influence, and was carried by Whitefield, Wesley's lifelong friend, across the sea to America. It was especially powerful among those who had hitherto scoffed at both Church and Bible. Rough and hardened men were touched and melted to tears of repentance by the fervor of this Oxford graduate, whom neither threats nor ridicule could turn aside from his one great purpose of saving souls.
Unlike the Church, Wesley did not ask the multitude to come to him; he went to them. In this respect his work recalls that of the "Begging Friars" of the thirteenth century (S208), and of Wycliffe's "Poor Priests" in the fourteenth (S254). For more than thirty years he rode on horseback from one end of England to the other, making known the glad tidings of Christian hope. He preached in the fields, under trees which are still known by the expressive name of "Gospel Oaks"; he spoke in the abandoned mining pits of Cornwall, at the corners of the streets in cities, on the docks, in the slums; in fact, wherever he could find listening ears and responsive hearts.
The power of Wesley's appeal was like that of the great Puritan movement of the seventeenth century (SS378, 417). Nothing more effective had been heard since the days when Augustine and his band of monks set forth on their mission among the barbarous Saxons (S42). The results answered fully to the zeal that awakened them. Better than the growing prosperity of extending commerce, better than all the conquests made by the British flag in the east or west, was the new religious spirit which stirred the people of both England and America. It provoked the National Church to emulation in good works; it planted schools, checked intemperance, and brought into vigorous activity whatever was best and bravest in a race that when true to itself is excelled by none.
547. Summary.
The history of the reign may be summed up in the great Religious Movement begun by John Wesley, which has just been described, and in the Asiatic, Continental, and American wars with France, which ended in the extension of the power of Great Britain in both hemispheres,— in India in the Old World and in North America in the New.
George III—1760-1820
548. Accession and Character; the King's Struggle with the Whigs.
By the death of George II his grandson,[1] George III, now came to the throne. The new King was a man of excellent character, who prided himself on having been born an Englishman. He had the best interests of his country at heart, but he lacked many of the qualities necessary to be a great ruler. He was thoroughly conscientious, but he was narrow and stubborn to the last degree and he was at times insane.