In 1707, the year in which Wesley wrote the preceding letters to his son Samuel, his daughter Martha was given him. Martha was reputed, by her sisters, to be the mother’s favourite; and certainly Martha loved and almost idolised her mother. From her infancy she was remarkable for deep thoughtfulness, for equanimity of temper, and for serious deportment. Her brothers and sisters would use all kinds of witty mischief to ruffle her; but in vain. The likeness between herself and her brother John was so exact, that Dr Clarke declares, if he had seen them dressed in the same attire, he could not have distinguished the one from the other. Their disposition also was the same; and even their hand-writing was so much alike that the one might be easily mistaken for the other. At the age of thirteen, she went to live with her uncle Matthew in London, and remained with him for the space of a dozen years.[[193]] Here she became acquainted with Westley Hall, who was one of the pupils of her brother John, at Lincoln College. Hall, at that time, was a man of agreeable person, pleasing manners, and good property. He fell in love with Martha, and made her an offer of marriage. Without consulting any of her family she accepted him. Within a week he went with her brothers John and Charles to Epworth, where he grew enamoured of her younger sister Kezziah, made an engagement to marry her, and was on the point of leading her to the altar, when a sudden qualm of conscience reminded him of his previous engagement, and he came back to Martha. They were married in 1735, (the year in which her father died;) and her uncle Matthew gave her a dowry of £500. Hall, for a time, behaved like a gentleman and a Christian, and honourably fulfilled his duties as a curate of the Church of England at Salisbury. He then became a Moravian and Quietist, an Antinomian, a Deist, if not an Atheist, and a Polygamist, which last he defended in his teaching, and illustrated by his practice. While a curate at Salisbury, he seduced one of his servants, and was afterwards guilty of many similar infidelities. Once when Charles Wesley was preaching at Bristol, and had his sister Patty for a hearer, Hall came into the room and took her off with him. On another occasion at Salisbury, he turned both her and her brother John out of doors. Samuel Wesley, jun., never liked him. In a letter to John he says—“I never liked the man from the first time I saw him. His smoothness never suited my roughness. He appeared always to dread me as a wit. This, with me, is a sure sign of guilt and hypocrisy. He was afraid I should see it, if I looked keenly into his eye.”[[194]] After being the father of ten children by his wife, nine of whom lie buried at Salisbury, Hall abandoned his family, went off to the West Indies with one of his mistresses, lived with her there till she died, and afterwards returned to England, where, professing penitential sorrow, he was cordially received by his injured and incomparable wife, who showed him every Christian attention till his death, which took place at Bristol, Jan. 6, 1776. John Wesley buried him, and says—“God had given him deep repentance.”

Such was poor Patty’s worthless and vagabond husband; and yet, in the midst of all her trials, she acted the part of a perfect Christian. Out of sheer pity, she actually gave money to one of her husband’s abandoned concubines; and, on another occasion, when he, with frontless inhumanity, brought home one of his illegitimate infants, and commanded his wife to take charge of it till he could make other provision for it, she ordered a cradle to be brought, placed the babe in it, and continued to perform for it all the requisite acts of humanity.

Mrs Hall often dined with Dr Johnson at Bolt Court; he ardently admired her, and always treated her with great reverence and respect. In many cases, her conversation supplied to Johnson the place of books; for her memory was a repository of the most striking events of past centuries; and she had the best parts of all the English poets by heart. Of wit she used to say, she was the only one of the family without it; and her brother Charles remarked that “Sister Patty was always too wise to be witty.” One of her peculiarities was, she could never be induced to behold a corpse, “Because,” said she, “it is beholding sin sitting upon his throne.” Mrs Hall died on the 12th of July 1791, her last words being, “I have the assurance which I have long prayed for. Shout!” She was the last survivor of the original Wesley family; her father, mother, brothers, and sisters having all died before her. In all respects, she was a remarkable woman; but, in Christian charity, was pre-eminent. Her brother Charles was accustomed to say, “It is in vain to give Pat anything to add to her comforts, for she always gives it away to some person poorer than herself.” In the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1791, p. 684, there is the following obituary notice:—“July 12, in the City Road, in her eighty-fourth year, Mrs Martha Hall, widow of the Rev. Mr H., and last surviving sister of the Rev. John and Charles Wesley. She was equally distinguished by piety, understanding, and sweetness of temper. Her sympathy for the wretched, and her bounty even to the worthless, will eternise her name in better worlds than this.”[[195]]

In the year 1708, Charles Wesley was born, and two years afterwards Kezziah, the youngest of the rector’s children that survived the days of infancy.

Throughout life Kezziah Wesley’s health was delicate, in consequence of which she was prevented from improving a mind that seems to have been capable of high cultivation. When she was about nineteen years of age, she became a teacher in a boarding-school in Lincoln, where she complains of the want of clothes and of money, but wishes to remain for the purpose of completing her education. She had an insatiable thirst for knowledge, both divine and human; but her bad health rendered her almost incapable of close mental application. We refrain from again adverting to the distressing acquaintance with Westley Hall; suffice it to say, that after this she for a time was boarded at the house of the venerable Vicar of Bexley, the Rev. Mr Piers. She afterwards was domiciled with an aunt at Islington, and her brother Samuel offered her a home at Tiverton. It was not long that she needed the kindness of her friends, for, at the age of thirty-one, she peacefully expired. Her brother Charles gives the following account of her death:—“Yesterday morning, March 9, 1741, sister Kezzy died in the Lord Jesus. He finished His work, and cut it short in mercy; full of thankfulness, resignation, and love, without pain or trouble, she commended her spirit into the hands of Jesus, and fell asleep.”[[196]]

Such were the members of the Wesley family. “Such a family,” writes Dr Clarke, “I have never read of, heard of, or known; nor since the days of Abraham and Sarah, and Joseph and Mary, has there ever been a family to which the human race has been more indebted.”

Charles Wesley tells us that he has heard his father say, “God had shown him he should have all his nineteen children about him in heaven;”[[197]] and there is little doubt that, for more than seventy years past, this hope of the rector has been realised.

CHAPTER XVI.
FIRE AND FURY-1709-1712.

On two previous occasions Samuel Wesley had been a heavy sufferer by fire. In 1702, two-thirds of his parsonage was burnt; and, in 1704, all his flax shared the same disastrous fate. Five years after this, another, and even more serious, fire occurred. On February 9, 1709, at midnight, when all the family were in bed, Hetty, who was now twelve years old, was awoke by sparks of fire falling from the roof upon her feet. On account of severe illness from which his wife was suffering, Samuel Wesley was sleeping in a separate room. Hetty ran to alarm him, and, at the same moment, he was startled by a cry of fire out of doors. He hurried to Mrs Wesley, and bid her and her eldest daughters rise as quickly as possible. He then burst open the nursery door, where in two beds were sleeping five of his children and their nurse. The nurse seized Charles, the youngest, and bid the others follow. Three of the elder children did as they were bidden; but John was left sleeping. All the family excepting him, a child seven years of age, were in the hall surrounded with flames and unable to escape, the key of the door being above stairs. Mr Wesley ran up and recovered the key a minute before the stair steps took fire. The door was now opened, but the wind drove the flames inwards with such violence that egress seemed impossible. Some of the children now escaped through the windows, and the rest through a little door into the garden. Mrs Wesley was not in a condition either to climb to the windows or get to the garden door; and, naked as she was, she was compelled to force her way to the main entrance through the fury of the flames, which she did, suffering no further harm than the scorching of her legs, hands, and face.

When Mr Wesley was counting heads to see if all his family were safe, he heard a cry issuing from the nursery, and found that John was wanting. He attempted to ascend the stairs, but they were all on fire, and were insufficient to bear his weight. Finding it impossible to render help, he knelt down in the blazing hall and commended the soul of his child to God. Meanwhile the child had mounted a chest which stood near the window, and one in the yard saw him, and proposed running to fetch a ladder for his escape. Another seeing there was not time for that, proposed that he would fix himself against the wall, and that a lighter man should be set upon his shoulders. This was done—the child was pulled through the window; and, at the same instant, the roof fell with a fearful crash, but fortunately fell inwards, and thus the two men and the rescued child were saved from perishing. When the child was taken to an adjoining house where his father was, the devout rector cried, “Come, neighbours, let us kneel down; let us give thanks to God; He has given me all my eight children; let the house go; I am rich enough.”