“Humbly asking pardon for this tedious trouble, I am, your Grace’s most obliged and most humble servant,

“S. Wesley.”

This is a painfully interesting letter. A few explanations may be acceptable. He had been put to considerable expense “for the Broad Seal,” the meaning of which is, that, as the Epworth living belonged to the Crown, his title to the gift of it required the affixing of the “Broad Seal,” for which, of course, he had to pay the official fees. Then, he had to pay £28 for “first-fruits;” £3 for “tenths,” and other £3 to “John of Jerusalem.” The “first-fruits” were a sort of fine levied on a clergyman’s first year’s income, when he had the good fortune to be promoted, the money being paid to the Government. The “tenths” were a tax paid to the Crown every year. The £3 paid to John of Jerusalem was an impost of the same description. Down to a certain period, a number of churches in England were obliged to pay toll to the Priory of St John of Jerusalem; but, at the suppression of the monasteries, all the emoluments of this priory were given to the king, and, as the rectory of Epworth had been accustomed to pay to the value of £3 per annum to that house, this was the sum which the kings of England continued to receive from Epworth rectory.

He had been obliged to take a parish apprentice. At that period, and for a long time after, it was customary for parochial officers to relieve themselves, of the burden of maintaining the children of their paupers, by compelling the parishioners, in rotation, to take such children[children] as apprentices, and to teach them their respective trades. One of these youngsters had been forced upon the poor rector, and, as he had no trade to teach him, he playfully proposes to instruct him in the unprofitable business of making poetry, to which he himself had been so long addicted.

His aged mother was still living, but was crushed with poverty, and had been in danger of imprisonment for debt. For about thirty years she had been a lonely widow, and seems to have been dependent upon her son Samuel’s £10 per annum for her daily bread. The question naturally occurs, Was the poor rector the only one willing to assist his mother? Was nothing done for her by her son Matthew? Matthew rose to considerable eminence in the medical profession, and had an extensive and profitable practice in London. Thirty years after the period of which we are now writing, when he visited the Epworth family, he is represented as a man of wealth, and yet where is the evidence that he helped to support his mother? Matthew Wesley is described by his niece Mehetabel as one of the gentlest of human beings, and as rescuing thousands from the grave by his healing skill. He was of sufficient eminence to have his death celebrated in the poetical department of the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1737; but, excepting a little kindness shown to one or two of his brother’s children, we are left without evidence that he possessed any of that nobility of heart, which prompted the embarrassed rector to squeeze out of his scanty income the pittance which he yearly gave to his much-loved mother.

Samuel Wesley’s attachment to the Established Church was conscientious and strong; otherwise there was enough in his mother’s history to have made him its enemy for ever. By the relentless and intolerant bigotry of that Church, her husband had been deprived of the means of sustaining his family, and had been persecuted and driven from place to place, and not allowed the opportunity of providing for either his wife or his children. By the same Church’s intolerance, he had been brought to an untimely grave; and his widow, for long, long years, had been struggling with abject poverty. Her son Samuel knew all this; and yet, notwithstanding his having been trained for the Dissenting ministry, he entered the very Church which had inflicted so much misery upon his father, and which, to the day of her death, made Dr Thomas Fuller’s niece, Samuel Wesley’s mother, a needy object of charity and alms. Nothing but conscientious conviction of duty, could have induced such a man to attach himself to such a Church.

Samuel Wesley was most distressingly embarrassed; but his embarrassments were not the results of wasteful or extravagant living. For about eleven years he had been a married minister of the Church of England. His professional income, for that entire period—after deducting the payments mentioned in the foregoing letter, for furniture, the Broad Seal, his first-fruits, his tenths and other taxes, the poor, his mother’s debt, and also including the £50 borrowed for farming purposes—did not amount to more than £600, which gives an average of £54, 10s. a-year, or twenty shillings and ninepence per week. Out of that amount of money, he had to maintain house, to find food and clothes for himself and for his wife; he had to meet the expenses connected with the birth of ten children, and the burial of five; and he had now a family to support, consisting of himself, his wife, five children, a maid-servant, and a parish apprentice-nine persons altogether. Samuel Wesley, after eleven years of hard struggling, was £300 in debt. No wonder! Let the reader look at the preceding figures and facts, and his surprise will be, not that the debt was so great, but that it was not greater. Many Methodists have a vague idea that the rector of Epworth was careless and improvident in the management of his pecuniary matters, and that this was the cause of his embarrassments; but to entertain such a thought is a cruel injustice done to the character of that distinguished man, and also an undeserved stigma cast upon the reputation of his invaluable wife. Let any one think of a clergyman of the Church of England having to maintain a large, and often an afflicted family, for eleven years, at the rate of two shillings and elevenpence-halfpenny per day, and we challenge him to deny that Samuel Wesley, now £300 in debt, was deserving not of censure, but of sympathy.

Archbishop Sharpe, to whom Wesley’s letter was addressed, was an exceedingly kind and faithful friend. He submitted the painful circumstances of the poor rector to a number of his noble friends, some of whom generously responded, the Countess of Northampton sending him £20. The archbishop also wished to make an application to the House of Lords for what was technically called a “Brief;” in other words, a “letter patent, granting a licence for collecting money to rebuild churches, to restore loss by fire,” &c. These “briefs,” or letters patent were read in churches, and the sums collected were endorsed on them, with the signatures of the minister and churchwarden; after which the briefs and the money collected were delivered to the person or persons obtaining the briefs, who in their turn had to give an account, within two months, of the moneys received, before a master in Chancery appointed by the Lord Chancellor.

The proposal, then, of the Archbishop of York was, to obtain from Parliament one of these letters patent, authorising and commanding collections to be made in certain churches, for the purpose of relieving the distresses of the rector of Epworth. The feeling which prompted this was unquestionably kind, but perhaps it was scarce considerate. To a high-minded and sensitive man like Samuel Wesley, it could not be otherwise than disagreeable to have his domestic troubles and financial embarrassments paraded, first before Parliament, and afterwards in parish churches, for the purpose of obtaining collections to pay some £300 of debt, and perhaps to furnish a trifling surplus to repair Epworth parsonage, and to improve Epworth parish church. At the present day, such a mode of raising money for such purposes would be universally denounced; and in the case of Samuel Wesley, one hundred and sixty-five years ago, such a plan ought never to have been propounded. It was doubtless a duty to assist the impoverished parson, but the assistance ought to have been, not public, but private. Dr Clarke asserts that the archbishop actually applied to the Upper House of Parliament for such a brief. Be that as it may, we find Samuel Wesley disapproving of the proposal in the following letter, which was written four months and a half after his former one:—

“Epworth, May 14, 1701.