No wonder, therefore, considering the bigotry of his age, that Wesley was exposed to persecution by the mobs: but his leniency towards Romanism was not the only cause of this. To-day, however, I wish to utilize the story of the attacks made on the Methodists to shew the state of the country. Mob law was powerful wherever population was dense. Towns were gradually growing up and the English system of legal machinery was devised rather for a rural population. There was no police properly so called. Shakespeare’s Dogberry and Verges would not have been caricatures in the 18th century. Wesley himself speaks of the watchmen as “those poor fools.” The violence of the mob was a feature of the 18th century in England. Perhaps you may recollect Hogarth’s picture of the chairing of a member of Parliament after an election,—the man laying about him with a flail, the prize-fights, etc. Riots play an important part in the history of the time and the no-popery riot in 1780 when Lord George Gordon stirred up the fanaticism of the London mob is only one of many similar occurrences. Never did the brothers Wesley, John and Charles, shew the courage of good breeding more conspicuously than when they faced an infuriated rabble and saved themselves and their followers by the dignity of their demeanour and the fearless mildness of their conduct amid scenes of tumult. Witness the affair at Wednesbury and Walsall. The mob dragged John Wesley from one magistrate to another. Some tried to protect him but were overpowered. To quote the Journal: “To attempt speaking was vain; for the noise on every side was like the roaring of the sea. So they dragged me along till they came to the town where seeing the door of a large house open, I attempted to go in; but a man catching me by the hair pulled me back into the middle of the mob.... I continued speaking all the time to those within hearing, feeling neither pain nor weariness.... I stood at the door (of a shop) and asked ‘Are you willing to hear me speak?’ Many cried out ‘No, no, knock his brains out, kill him at once, etc.’.... In the mean time my strength and voice returned and I broke out aloud in prayer. And now the man who just before headed the mob, turned, and said, Sir I will spend my life for you: follow me and not one soul here shall touch a hair of your head.” Throughout the riot Wesley notices: “From first to last I heard none give me a reviling word, or call me by any opprobrious name; but the cry of one and all was “The Preacher! the Parson! the Minister!” A man rushed at him to strike him but paused and merely stroked his head, saying, “Why, what soft hair he has!” In Cornwall attempts were made to stop Methodism by calling in the aid of the Press-Gang. Thomas Maxfield was caught and offered to the captain of a ship in Mount’s Bay, who refused to take him. An attempt was actually made to press John Wesley. A clergyman, Dr. Borlase, acted in his magisterial capacity to further this infamous project. But a Mr. Eustick who was charged with executing the warrant had the sense to see the indecency of arresting such a man to serve in the navy as a common seaman. He conducted Mr. Wesley to Dr. Borlase’s door and told him he had done his duty and that his prisoner was free to depart. Wesley’s description of the event is characteristic. Mr. Eustick was visited by him in order to be taken to Dr. Borlase’s to be pressed into the army.
“I went thither, and asked, ‘Is Mr. Eustick here?’ After some pause one said ‘Yes’; and he showed me into the parlour. When he came down he said ‘O Sir will you be so good as to go with me to the doctor’s?’ I answered ‘Sir I came for that purpose.’ ‘Are you ready Sir,’ I answered, ‘Yes.’ ‘Sir I am not quite ready, in a little time, in a quarter of an hour I will call upon you.’ In about three-quarters of an hour he came and finding that there was no remedy, he called for his horse and put forward to Dr. Borlase’s house; but he was in no haste so we were an hour and a quarter riding three or four measured miles. As soon as he came into the yard he asked a servant, ‘Is the Doctor at home’ upon whose answering ‘No Sir he is gone to Church;’ he presently said ‘Well Sir I have executed my commission. I have done Sir; I have no more to say.’”
Not that Wesley was not in serious danger at times, especially in Cornwall. Once at Falmouth the house was filled with privateersmen. Only a wainscot partition separated him from the mob. “Indeed to all appearances our lives were not worth an hour’s purchase.” When the door was broken down he came forth bareheaded (“For I purposely left off my hat that they all might see my face”). His calmness saved him; for though countless hands were lifted up to strike or throw at him yet they were “one and all stopped in the midway so that I had not even a speck of dirt on my clothes!” Ferocious as were the British mobs of this period they were capable of generous sentiments and chivalrous admiration for courage. The people were often set on Wesley by the gentry and, to their shame be it said, by some of the clergy. The excuse, both in Cornwall in 1745 and in Newcastle, was that the Methodist societies were with the Pretenders. “All the gentlemen in these parts say,” Wesley was told, “that you have been a long time in France and Spain, and are now set hither by the Pretender; and that these societies are to join him.”
It is scarcely necessary to do more than allude to the extreme brutality of the amusements of people in England in the eighteenth century. Dog fighting, bear baiting, bull baiting, cock fighting, were universal and, as we may see from Hogarth’s pictures, cruelty to animals was universal. On one occasion a baited bull was turned loose to interrupt a congregation assembled to hear Wesley preach. One of the ringleaders of the mob at Walsall who ended by taking the part of the Methodists was a noted prize-fighter in a bear garden.
John and Charles Wesley began their religious labours at Oxford in the city prison, Bocardo, ministering to the prisoners, and the Journal throws a lurid light on the condition of felons, criminals, and debtors in England. The system was atrocious, there was no real control; and the jailers farmed the place and made what they could out of it. The result was that if a man paid he could do what he liked in jail; and, if he could not, he was treated just as his keepers pleased. Side by side, therefore, with the utmost squalor and misery was almost indescribable profligacy. “I visited the Marshalsea prison,” writes Wesley, “on February 3, 1753, a nursery of all manner of wickedness. O shame to man that there should be such a place, such a picture of hell upon earth! And shame to those who bear the name of Christ that there should need any prison at all in Christendom.” Let me quote an extract from a letter to the London Chronicle, Friday, Jan. 2, 1761, “Sir, of all the seats of woe on this side hell, few, I suppose, exceed or equal Newgate. If any region of horror could exceed it, a few years ago Newgate in Bristol did; so great was the filth, the stench, the misery and wickedness which shocked all who had a spark of humanity left.”
The prison at Bristol had been reformed by a good keeper, who, says Wesley, “deserves to be remembered full as well as the man of Ross.” It was clean, there was no drunkenness nor brawling, no immorality, no idleness, and a decent service in the chapel. These reforms themselves shew what most prisons of the time must have been like.
Another evil was smuggling: wherever a boat could land there was a conspiracy to defraud the revenue. The business, for it was nothing else, was run on the most extensive scale and the whole countryside was engaged in it. The smugglers were armed and disciplined and prepared to offer furious resistance to the officers of the Revenue. Wesley set his face sternly against the practice.
“The stewards met at St. Ives, from the western part of Cornwall. The next day I began examining the society; but I was soon obliged to stop short. I found an accursed thing among them; well nigh one and all bought and sold ‘uncustomed’ goods. I therefore delayed speaking to any more till I had met them all together. This I did in the evening and told them plain, either they must put this abomination away or they would see my face no more.”
This was in November, 1753. In June, 1757, Wesley was in the north at Sunderland.
“I met the Society and told them plain, none could stay with us, unless he would part with all sin; particularly robbing the King, selling or buying run goods; which I would no more suffer than robbing on the highway.”