Master Henley thus informed the publick in October 1732: "Before any person casts an imputation on me, in reference to the Oratory, wherein I know no fault but one, that it is a pattern of the truest principles of Religion, with the most various and assiduous endeavour to merit, in the capacity of a scholar and a clergyman, that is, or ever was in this island, or in the world; before I am reflected upon for this, I would desire every man who educates a son to orders, and him who is so educated, to consider this case, and to make it his own.
"I waited some years ago on a certain Prelate with a solicitation of a pulpit in town, signifying my resolution to cultivate and exert the talent of preaching which God had given me, in the most complete and public manner. His answer was, that I might be of use; but, before he could do for me, he must have a pledge of my attachment to the government. I was an entire stranger to politicks; but gave him that pledge.
"A pledge demanded, given, and accepted for a consideration, is a contract for that consideration; the hinge of my interest and fortune very much turned upon it. It was the year 1721-2, a tender crisis; and, doubtless, he made a job of it to the Government. When I applied for the consideration, he shifted off. Had he any possible exception to my intellectual or moral qualifications (though nothing can be more immoral, or sooner make the world Atheists than a perfidious prelate), he should, before he drew me in, have told me, that if he met with any such exception, he would not do what I solicited; and that he would take time to examine. This would have been fair. He assigned no exception at all during a whole year, till I had sacrificed my interest to him on his own demand; and it is easy to frame exceptions, if a person be inclined to break his word. My judgment is, he and his clergy even envied me in the pulpit, and were jealous of my advancement, timorous that at Court there might be a patron, or a patroness of learning, and apprehensive that I might outstrip them there. Was I on my death-bed, I would take the Sacrament, that I know the former part, and believe the latter part (without the least vanity for so poor a triumph as excelling them would be) of this advertisement to be a matter of fact.
J. Henley."
A Miss Jennings, or rather perhaps Mrs. Jennings, died in November 1736, who is said to
have laid strong claims to eccentricity. This lady breathed her last at the Oxford-arms Inn, Warwick-lane; and was buried at Christ-church, Newgate-street; but the singularity of her conduct consisted in a predilection for Inns; she made them in short her constant residence, whether in the country or in London, where she had her steward, two female servants, a coachman and footman; and, though she sometimes remained several months stationary, her bills were regularly paid every night. At the same time her host was kept in utter ignorance of her name. Mrs. Jennings left a fortune of 80,000l. to five children, her first cousins; and appointed ——Jennings, Esq. of Northaw, her executor.
A Chair-woman, named Frances White, was interred at St. Margaret's, Westminster, in 1736; but the singularity of the circumstance is, that she should have been deposited before the Altar of the Church, which she thus accomplished: In the course of her pursuits she was observed to be remarkably assiduous and industrious, and often asked charitable assistance: this she frequently received, and so carefully preserved that her sister gained a bequest of 1150l. on the easy condition of procuring a grave for her body within the church, and affording it a handsome funeral. The above sum had been concealed in various hiding-places contrived in her chamber.
A writer in the Weekly Miscellany for August 7, 1736, pertinently observed, that "the attention
of the good people of England is very frequently ingrossed by the bold pretensions of persons starting up from time to time in several sciences, but more particularly in those of Divinity and Physick; and with the more reason of hoping to succeed in their views, as the soul, in which the one is concerned, and the body, in which the other, are the two grand subjects which engage the human mind; and each of these pretenders respectively becomes in vogue for a certain period, and then generally dies away in a silence proportioned to the noise they once made. The Stroking Doctor in the reign of Charles II.; the French Prophets in the reign of Queen Anne; the Quicksilver lunacy lately; the itinerant preaching Quakeress since; and Mr. Ward's pill and drop, not yet quite gone off from its vogue—are signal instances of the truth of our observation. So it may be observed, that the Quicksilver fashion seems to have been beat out of doors by the pill and drop; and now the vogue of the pill and drop, which seem to owe their success to their violent operation in desperate cases, appears in a fair way of subsiding to a new object of the public attention, which really seems (beyond all that we have named) to deserve it, as it is attended with plain and unartificial fact, as it is neither violent or dangerous in the operation, and carries in every act the clearest demonstration along with it.—What we mean is the famous female Bone-setter of Epsom, who must be
allowed as much to excel the others, as certainty does imagination, as simplicity does artifice, and as seeing and feeling do the other senses.