[256]. Clarke’s Wesley Family.
[257]. Methodist Magazine, 1845, p. 151.
[258]. Stonehouse’s History of the Isle of Axholme.
[259]. Clarke’s Wesley Family.
[260]. The rector of Epworth was under considerable obligations to Lord Oxford, as appears from the dedication of his son Samuel’s poems to that nobleman. He writes:—“Neither obscurity of condition, nor distance of place, could prevent your lordship from distinguishing and encouraging a worthy clergyman, my father, in his indefatigable researches after truth, and his unfashionable studies in divinity; which, perhaps, might have been left unfinished without that encouragement.”—Poems on Several Occasions, by S. Wesley, London, 1736.
[261]. Priestley’s Original Letters, p. 56.
[262]. Clarke’s Wesley Family.
[263]. Gentleman’s Magazine, 1785, p. 246.
[264]. Nicholl’s Literary Anecdotes.
[265]. In reality, it was much more than this.