Dr A. Clarke has, with great earnestness, endeavoured to make it clear that Bartholomew Wesley was not the man who tried to entrap King Charles; and, if Clarendon’s description was literally correct, that the preacher was a weaver, there would be presumptive evidence in favour of Clarke’s opinion. It is quite possible that Wesley might have been in the parliamentary army; but, remembering that he received his education in the Oxford University, it is hardly probable that he was a weaver previous to his removal there. The only reasonable way to reconcile Wood’s statement that Wesley was the minister who informed, with Clarendon’s assertion that the preacher was a weaver, is to suppose that, on account of the smallness of his income, Bartholomew Wesley, like many others, found it expedient to have a spinning-wheel, and to weave his home-spun yarns into home-made cloths. Admit such a supposition, and all difficulties vanish. Wesley might have been in the army; in such a sense, he might be a weaver; and he might be preaching, and might have King Charles in his Charmouth congregation on the day already mentioned.
Dr A. Clarke seems to be exceedingly unwilling to admit that Bartholomew Wesley was guilty of an act so mean as that of giving information concerning King Charles. As to the meanness or merit of such an act, opinions will differ. We submit, however, that, in such a case, Bartholomew Wesley only did his duty. Probably he had been in the parliamentary army, and had fought for the emancipation of his country from the perfidious thraldom of the Stuart dynasty. He was now, by the authority of the parliamentary government, the appointed clergyman of the two parishes where he lived. Only twelve days before the attempt of Charles to escape to France from Charmouth, the Parliament had issued a proclamation, threatening those who concealed the king, or any of his party; and on the very day when it was arranged for the plan of escape to France to be carried out, that proclamation had been published two miles hence, in the adjacent town of Lyme. Let the reader bear all this in mind, and he will probably conclude that Dr A. Clarke’s earnest attempt to clear Bartholomew Wesley from the charge of giving information concerning the royal fugitive, was a labour of love not needed; and that the whole affair, instead of injuring the rector’s fair fame, is greatly to his credit. He performed a duty, a painful duty; and for that he deserves, not excuses, but thanks.
Bartholomew Wesley, after being ejected from his church at Charmouth, still continued to reside in the same village, and obtained a livelihood by the practice of physic. He made no secret of the fact that it was his intention and wish to capture the king; and he jokingly told a gentleman that he was “confident that, if ever the king came back, he would be certain to love long prayers; for if he (Wesley) had not been at that time longer than ordinary at his devotion, he would have surely snapt him.”[[9]] His were days of strife, of change, of oppression, and of sorrow. He lived to a good old age, for he survived his son John, whose death, in 1678, greatly affected him. He preached when he could, and administered physic as far as he was able. A local historian writes concerning the persecuted dissenting Christians in the west: “They were rewarded with cruel mockings, bonds, and imprisonments; they wandered in deserts and in mountains; and in dens and caverns they hid themselves. In the solitudes of Pinney they offered up their prayers, in a dell between two high rocks, which have ever since been called the Whitechapel Rocks; and in an old house at Lyme there was recently discovered an ingeniously concealed oak staircase, capable of admitting only one person at a time, which led to a small apartment that had been used as a chapel.” In such places, Bartholomew Wesley joined his fellow-Christians in the worship which they stealthily presented to Almighty God. He and they have long since passed to the place where “the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.”
Samuel Wesley’s father was John, the son of the ejected rector of Catherston and Charmouth, and was born about the year 1636. Even when a boy at school, he had deep religious convictions and feelings, and began to keep a diary of God’s gracious dealings with him, which, with slight interruptions, was continued to the end of life. That diary is now unfortunately lost, or at all events, if it still exists, no one seems to know where it is.
At the usual age he was entered a student of New Inn Hall, Oxford, and, in due course of time, became M.A. At the period when John Wesley matriculated, Dr John Owen, who was Cromwell’s chaplain, filled the office of vice-chancellor, and treated the young student with marked attention. Wesley was serious and diligent, and applied himself particularly to the study of the Oriental languages, in which he made great proficiency.
Owen was elected vice-chancellor in 1652, when John Wesley was about sixteen years of age, and continued in that high office until 1657, which was a few months before Wesley’s entrance upon the ministry; so that it is not improbable that Wesley was at Oxford during the whole of the administration of this distinguished man. Owen found this ancient seat of learning in an exceedingly disordered state. After withstanding a long siege, it had recently been obliged to surrender to the parliament forces, and was now left so desolate, that men said, in their excitement, it looked like Jerusalem in ruins. Broken trees and trampled gardens were seen on every hand. Sculptured stones and pictured windows lay shattered in the grass. Nettles and brambles were growing round the walls of colleges. The rich wood-work in the quadrangle of Christ Church had been used for fuel. The halls had been turned into granaries, and the colleges into barracks. So long had Mars usurped the place of Minerva, and students been accustomed to exchange cap for helmet, that the scholastic air had almost vanished. “There was little or no education of youth. Poverty, desolation, and plunder,—the sad effects of war,—were to be seen in every corner.” To correct these evils, to curb the licentiousness of the students, to maintain the rights of the university, and to support its character for piety and learning, Owen set himself most vigorously, and he happily succeeded. Anthony Wood describes him as putting down “formalities and all ceremony, and as undervaluing his office by going in quirpo, like a young scholar, with powdered hair, snake-bone band strings, a large set of ribbons pointed at his knees, and Spanish leather boots, with large lawn tops, and his hat mostly cocked.” Be this as it might, among the students Owen acted as a father. While he discountenanced and punished the vicious, he encouraged and rewarded the modest and the indigent; and, under his administration, the whole body was reduced to good order, and contained a great number of excellent scholars, and persons of distinguished piety.
At this period, Dr Thomas Goodwin, distinguished for his piety, learning, and industry, was president of Magdalen College; George Porter, a man of great gravity, integrity, self-denial, and charity, was Proctor of the University; Stephen Charnock was Senior Proctor of New College; Ralph Button, whom Baxter describes as “a most humble, worthy, godly man,” was Canon of Christ Church; Thomas Cole, the tutor of John Locke, was Principal of St Mary’s Hall; John Howe was Fellow of Magdalen College; Dr Edmund Staunton, who was a living concordance to the Bible, was President of Corpus Christi College; Dr Wilkins, who married Cromwell’s sister, and was afterwards Bishop of Chester, was Warden of Wadham College; Dr Pococke, the greatest Oriental scholar of his time, was Professor of Arabic. Such were some of the celebrated men who flourished at Oxford at the time when John Wesley was a student there. And among others who, during the same period, received a part or the whole of their academical education in the same university, may be mentioned:—William Penn, the celebrated Quaker; Philip Henry, the eminent Nonconformist; Dr South, so famed for his pungent sermons; Sir Christopher Wren, the illustrious architect; Dr Whitby, the learned commentator; Launcelot Addison, father to Joseph Addison, the essayist; Bishops Spratt and Compton, who afterwards ordained John Wesley’s son Samuel; Bishops Crewe, Cartwright, Hopkins, Ken, Fowler, Wiseman, Hooper, Marsh, Huntingdon, Cumberland, Turner, and Lloyd; Joseph Alleine, subsequently John Wesley’s companion in tribulation; and Charles Morton, in whose academy Samuel Wesley was afterwards a student. Such were the distinguished contemporaries of Samuel Wesley’s father in Oxford University.
John Wesley first began to preach, among seamen, at Radipole, a village about two miles distant from Weymouth. In the meantime the vicar of Winterborn-Whitchurch died, and the people of that parish wished Wesley to preach to them as a minister on probation. He went; his ministry and life gave satisfaction to those who invited him; he passed his examination before Cromwell’s “Triers;” and, by the trustees, was appointed to the living. This was in May 1658, when he was about twenty-two years of age.
Winterborn-Whitchurch is a village about five miles from Blandford, in Dorsetshire, and in 1851 had a population of 595. The income of the living, when it was presented to John Wesley, was about £30 a year. He was promised an augmentation of £100 a year; but, on account of the many changes in public affairs which soon afterwards took place, the promise failed in its fulfilment.
Oliver Cromwell died four months after John Wesley was inducted into this church benefice, and, as a consequence, the nation became more distracted than ever. There was, in fact, no efficient civil government, and the ruling power fell wholly into the hands of the army. In 1659, what was called “The Committee of Safety” was appointed, consisting of twenty-three persons, who were ordered “to endeavour some settlement of affairs, by preparing such a form of government as might best comport with a free state and commonwealth.” The Committee agreed upon seven articles:—1. That there should be no kingship. 2. That there should be no single person as chief magistrate. 3. That the army should be continued. 4. That there should be no imposition upon conscience. 5. No House of Peers. 6. That the legislative and executive powers should be in distinct hands. 7. That parliament should be elected by the people. Inextricable confusion followed. Plotter plotted against plotter, and the cleverest man was he who could best act the hypocrite. General Monk and his army wished for the restoration of Charles; but parliament and the Committee of Safety seemed to be opposed to this; and there was serious danger of a recurrence of civil wars. John Wesley was a young man, twenty-three years of age, and for a time appears to have sympathised with the party represented by the Committee of Safety, and to have taken up the sword on their behalf; but when Charles was restored to the throne of his fathers, in 1666, the young soldier quietly submitted, and took the oath of allegiance and loyalty.