A remarkable anecdote is related in connexion with Mr Wesley’s first attendance at convocation. Dr A. Clarke, who gives it, says he had it from the lips of Mr Wesley’s son John. The statement is as follows:—
“Were I,” said John Wesley, “to write my own life, I should begin it before I was born, merely for the purpose of mentioning a disagreement between my father and mother. ‘Sukey,’ said my father to my mother one day after family prayer, ‘why did you not say amen this morning to the prayer for the king?’ ‘Because,’ said she, ‘I do not believe the Prince of Orange to be king.’ ‘If that be the case,’ said he, ‘you and I must part; for if we have two kings, we must have two beds.’ My mother was inflexible. My father went immediately to his study; and, after spending some time with himself, set out for London, where, being convocation man for the diocese of Lincoln, he remained without visiting his own house for the remainder of the year. On March 8th, in the following year, 1702, King William died; and as both my father and mother were agreed as to the legitimacy of Queen Anne’s title, the cause of their misunderstanding ceased. My father returned to Epworth, and conjugal harmony was restored.”[[151]]
Mr Wesley’s own written account of this affair is the following:—“The year before King William died, my father observed my mother did not say amen to the prayer for the king. She said she could not, for she did not believe the Prince of Orange was king. He vowed he would never cohabit with her till she did. He then took his horse and rode away; nor did she hear anything of him for a twelvemonth. He then came back and lived with her as before. But I fear his vow was not forgotten before God.”[[152]]
There may be the merest modicum of truth in this strange story; but the greater part of it is unfounded.
We grant that Mrs Wesley held the doctrine of the “divine right of kings;” and holding that, of course, she regarded the Revolution of 1688 as a royal wrong, and considered William of Orange a usurper. Of this there can be no doubt. Writing in the year 1709, she says:—“Whether they did well, in driving a prince from his hereditary throne, I leave to their own consciences to determine; though I cannot tell how to think that a king of England can ever be accountable to his subjects for any maladministrations or abuse of power; but as he derives his power from God, so to Him only he must answer for his using it. But still I make a great difference between those who entered into the confederacy against their prince, and those who, knowing nothing of the contrivance, and so consequently not consenting to it, only submitted to the present government. But whether the praying for a usurper, and vindicating his usurpations after he has the throne, be not participating in his sins, is easily determined.”[[153]]
With such language before us, there can be no question that the opinions of Mrs Wesley concerning King William and his predecessor King James were widely different from those which her husband held; and it may be easily imagined that such a difference of opinion might lead to occasional unpleasantness. No one doubts the truthfulness of the story up to a certain point; namely, that Mrs Wesley, on a certain morning in 1701, at family prayer, omitted to say amen to the prayer for King William; that her husband took her to task for this omission; that sharp words ensued; and that he immediately set out for London. The one damaging point which we deny is, that Samuel Wesley allowed a miserable squabble respecting the rights of King William to make him neglect his wife, and to leave his house, his family, and his flock for the space of twelve months; a thing which, if true, would have been a scandalous, cruel, and wicked act, Fortunately there is ample evidence to refute such a disgraceful fiction.
We maintain, in the first place, that the story is highly improbable. Samuel and Susannah Wesley became husband and wife about the time of William and Mary’s accession. Something like a dozen years had elapsed since then. Every Sunday, and in fact, every day, Samuel Wesley had been accustomed to pray for King William. His wife knew this, and yet all the time they had lived in love and harmony. Up to this period, there is not the slightest evidence that any unpleasantness had sprung out of such a matter. Susannah Wesley loved her husband, and her husband loved her. “Reverence and love your mother,” wrote her husband to their son Samuel. “Though I should be jealous of any other rival in your breast, yet I will not be of her. The more duty you pay her, and the more frequently and kindly you write to her, the more you will please your affectionate father.” With such affection subsisting between them, is it likely that a man of the high character of Samuel Wesley would permit a paltry quarrel about King William to lead to such a lengthened connubial separation, involving not only a cruel neglect of his wife and family, but a criminal absence from his flock, and a public disgrace cast upon his hitherto spotless reputation? Those who can and do believe a legend so unlikely, have more faith than is desirable.
But, in the second place, we further maintain, that the disgraceful part of this story is not only improbable, but impossible. It is well known that convocation was summoned twice during the year 1701. In the first instance, it met on the 10th of February, and was prorogued on the 24th of June following. It was convened again on the 31st of December; and, between nine and ten weeks after, at the death of King William on the 8th of March 1702, it was again prorogued. How then stands the matter in reference to Samuel Wesley’s long-continued and criminal absence from his home and from his church? If he attended the convocation which opened on February 10, it is not true that “he remained without visiting his own house for the remainder of the year;” for, on the 14th and 18th of May of that same year, we find him at Epworth, attending to his wife with affectionate tenderness, when she was confined of twins; and writing to Archbishop Sharpe the two letters inserted in our last chapter. If, again, he attended the convocation which opened on Dec. 31st, all the time that he was absent from his family and from his parish was not more than about ten weeks; for, at the expiration of that time, according to the story itself, “King William died,” and, convocation being in consequence prorogued, “Wesley returned to Epworth, and conjugal harmony was restored.”
Let the reader choose which convocation in 1701 he likes, or, as we are inclined to do, let him entertain the opinion that Samuel Wesley attended both, yet, still the evidence above recited, most triumphantly refutes all that is disgraceful in this cock-and-bull story; for we have proof that, in neither case, was the rector of Epworth away from his family and charge for a longer period than ten or a dozen weeks.
We submit that in such an absence there was nothing to justify such a story. At least, an entire week would be spent in mere journeying. Then, there were the sittings of convocation, which we know were unusually important and exciting. Then there was the fact that Samuel Wesley was a literary man, and had already, in London, published a large number of literary works—a fact giving rise to business transactions, which the rector would doubtless attend to, now that he was personally present. And then, finally, there was the fact that his brother Matthew was resident in London, and probably also his mother, besides a large number of his early and literary friends, with all of whom, it is natural to suppose, he would wish to spend as much time as his other duties would permit. Put all these things together, and what is there to be gaped at in the rector of Epworth, as “convocation man,” being absent from his family and his church, once, or even twice, at the beginning of the years 1701 and 1702, for about ten or a dozen weeks? It is far from our intention to accuse either John Wesley or Adam Clarke of wilful misrepresentation; in this respect they are both far above suspicion, but the tale, as first told to John Wesley, was doubtless told in an exaggerated form; and it is no disrespect to the wonderful memory of Adam Clarke to say, that during the thirty or more years which elapsed between the time when John Wesley told the story and the time when Adam Clarke published it, the remembrance of the latter was not so vivid as to be infallible.