And in full glory shine:
O Lamb of God! was ever pain,
Was ever love like Thine!
“Thy loss our ruins did repair,
Death, by Thy death, is slain;
Thou wilt at length exalt us where
Thou dost in glory reign.”
Samuel Wesley himself wrote an account of this dire disaster to his old patron, the Duke of Buckingham; and that account contains some particulars not included in the preceding statement, taken from the description furnished by his wife. He says, that on the day when the fire occurred they had been brewing, but had finished the operation at least six hours before the flames broke out. He was in his study till half-past ten o’clock, but neither saw nor smelled anything of fire. The reason why he slept in a room separate from his wife was because she was near her confinement. Her daughters, Emilia and Susannah, were sleeping with her. When he was aroused by the cry of fire, he ran to her room with his nightgown and one stocking on, and his breeches in his hand. They had about £20, in gold and silver, in the room occupied by Mrs Wesley, which she wanted to take with her; but there was no time for this, and she had to escape for her life as she left her bed. The whole family had to flee in nothing but their night-dresses. While the nurse was escaping with the infant child, Charles, in her arms, she was saluted with a curse by one of the neighbours, and told that they had fired the house themselves, the second time, on purpose. While Wesley was running about the street, inquiring for his wife and children, he met the chief man and chief constable of the town going from the house, not towards it. Wesley took him by the hand and said, “God’s will be done!” His surly answer was, “Will you never have done with your tricks? You fired your house once before. Did you not get money enough by it then that you have done it again?” Wesley replied, “God forgive you! I find you are chief, Maw, still.” When he found his wife she was almost speechless. She had waded, at the peril of her life, through two or three yards of flame, having nothing on but her shoes and a wrapping gown, and a loose coat, which she held about her breast. He adds, “When poor Jackey was saved, I could not believe it till I had kissed him two or three times. My wife said, ‘Are your books safe?’ I told her it was not much, now she and all the rest were preserved alive. A little lumber was saved below stairs; but not one rag or leaf above. We found some of the silver in a lump, which I shall send up to Mr Hoare to sell for me. Mr Smith, of Gainsborough, and others, have sent for some of my children. I want nothing, having above half my barley safe in my barns unthrashed. I had finished my alterations in the ‘Life of Christ’ a little while since, and transcribed three copies of it; but all is lost. God be praised! I know not how to write to my poor boy Samuel; and yet I must, or else he will think we are all lost. I hope my wife will recover and not miscarry, but God will give me my nineteenth child. She has burnt her legs; but they mend. When I came to her her lips were black. I did not know her. Some of the children are a little burnt, but not hurt or disfigured. I only got a small blister on my hand. The neighbours send us clothes, for it is cold without them.”[[198]]
How are we to account for these repeated fires at the Epworth parsonage? Were they the effect of design or of accident? Mr Maw, the chief man of the town, who more than thirty years afterwards seems to have been a friend to John Wesley, and to one of his itinerants, (see Wesley’s Works, vol. i. pp. 438 and 485; also, vol. ii. p. 45,) most cruelly charged Mr Wesley with setting fire to the house himself. A more atrocious accusation could not have been cast upon him. What reason on earth was there to induce such a man to commit such an act? It is true, he might expect money to be given to rebuild his house; but was that sufficient to induce a man of Wesley’s high character to destroy not only all his furniture, but his books, sermons, and manuscripts; to run the risk of killing himself, his wife, and his eight children; and, at the least, to leave the whole of them, in the depth of winter, without a shred of clothing, and without a hut to shelter them; the whole family, to use the rector’s own language, being reduced, in regard to house, furniture, and clothes, to the same state as that in which “Adam and Eve were when they first set up housekeeping?” To suppose the very possibility of such a thing is a most monstrous outrage against reason and common sense; and when such an accusation was made by “the chief man of the town,” and by the foul-mouthed blasphemer that cursed the nursemaid and little Charles, one cannot help suspecting that this was done, not because they thought the rector guilty, but in order to hide the guilt of the execrable villains whom they knew or suspected to be the actual perpetrators of the deed.
If Wesley, then, was not himself the incendiary, was the fire an accident? This also is unlikely. The fire did not occur in summer, when a spark might ignite the thatch, but in winter, when the thatch was saturated with rain, and snow. It occurred not in the day time, but at the hour of midnight, when all the fires of the house were extinguished. It broke out not in the lower part of the house, but in the roof of the corn-chamber,[[199]] filled with wheat and other grain,[[200]] and therefore must have been lighted from without. Wesley supposes the possibility of the chimney having taken fire; but, as a set-off against such a supposition, he adds that the chimney had recently been swept, and that when he went to bed, about half an hour before the flames were seen, he neither saw nor smelled anything of fire. Put all these facts together, and the conclusion is almost inevitable that the house was not fired either by Wesley himself, or by accident. If, then, the house was not fired by the rector himself, nor yet by accident, how did the disaster happen? John Wesley, and probably his father, held the opinion that the house was designedly set on fire by some of Mr Wesley’s enemies. What evidence is there in favour of this opinion?