Normanby was a remarkable man, and was descended from a long series of illustrious ancestors. He was the son of the Earl of Mulgrave, and was born in 1649. He was early distinguished for his bravery and accomplishments. The inefficiency of his tutor induced him, at twelve years of age, to educate himself; and his literary acquisitions are the more wonderful, inasmuch as those years in which they are commonly made, were spent by him in the tumult of a military life, or the gaiety of a court. At seventeen, when war was declared against the Dutch, he engaged as a volunteer on board the ship in which Prince Rupert sailed, and was rewarded for his zeal by the command of one of the independent troops of horse then raised to protect the coast. When another Dutch war broke out in 1672, he went again a volunteer in the ship which the celebrated Lord Ossory commanded; and his behaviour was such that he was advanced to the command of the Catherine, the best second-rate ship in the navy. In 1674, he was installed Knight of the Garter, and made one of the lords of the bedchamber to Charles the Second, with whom he was a great favourite. He afterwards went into the French service to learn the art of war under Turenne. When the unlucky Monmouth fell into disgrace, he was recompensed with the lieutenancy of Yorkshire and the government of Hull. Having had the boldness to aspire at courting Lady Anne, afterwards Queen of England, King Charles,[[103]] in 1680, sent him out to Tangiers, intentionally, it is said, in a leaky ship, hoping that he would either perish at sea, or in battle with the Moors on land. The Moors, without a contest, retired before him, and he returned to England in safety; was well received by the king, and continued a wit and a courtier as before. On the accession of James the Second, he was admitted into the Privy Council and made lord-chamberlain. He accepted a place in the high commission; and, having few religious scruples, he attended the king at mass, and kneeled with the rest, but refused to be converted. He lamented, but acquiesced in the revolution, and voted for the conjunctive sovereignty of William and Mary. For some years, he looked on King William with malevolence, and lived without employment; but, notwithstanding this aversion, he was made Marquis of Normanby in 1694, and, about the year 1700, was received into the Cabinet Council with an annual yearly pension of £3000. On the accession of Anne in 1702, he was made Lord Privy Seal, and then was created Duke of Normanby, and afterwards Duke of Buckingham. He died in 1720, at Buckingham House in St James’s Park, an edifice which he had erected himself, leaving a son by his third wife, a natural daughter of King James by the Countess of Dorchester. He was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, where a monument is erected to his memory, bearing an inscription of his own composition, beginning; “In doubt, but not in wickedness, I lived. In doubt, but not in fear, I die.” He wrote the “Vision,” and other poems; two tragedies, called “Julius Cæsar” and “Brutus,” and several prose works, consisting chiefly of historical memoirs, speeches in parliament, characters, dialogues, and essays. As a poet, he scarcely exceeds mediocrity; though Pope and others were sufficiently influenced by his rank and patronage, to place him high among the votaries of the muse. Johnson’s criticism is severe. “He is,” says he, “a writer that sometimes glimmers, but rarely shines, feebly laborious, and at best but pretty. His songs are upon common topics; he hopes, and grieves, and repents, and despairs, and rejoices, like any other maker of little stanzas; to be great, he hardly tries; to be gay, is hardly in his power. His verses are often insipid, but his memoirs are lively and agreeable; he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and fancy of a poet.”
The same authority describes his character somewhat harshly. He writes:—“His character is not to be proposed as worthy of imitation. His religion he may be supposed to have learned from Hobbes, and his morality was such as naturally proceeds from loose opinions. His sentiments, with respect to women, he picked up in the court of Charles; and his principles, concerning property, were such as a gaming table supplies. He is said, however, to have had much tenderness, and to have been very ready to apologise for his violences of passion.”
Such, then, was the man who obtained for Samuel Wesley the living of South Ormsby, and in whose house Samuel Wesley acted as domestic chaplain. The year in which he asked that Wesley might be made an Irish bishop, was the year in which he himself was created Marquis of Normanby. Had his request been preferred to King James, or to Queen Anne, it would probably have been successful, but with King William and Queen Mary he was no favourite.
The Marquis of Normanby was a distinguished man, but his principles and morality were loose, and Samuel Wesley’s position, as domestic chaplain, was not always the most comfortable. There can be little doubt that the following question and answer in the Athenian Oracle, (vol. i. p. 542,) were written by Wesley, and refer to his own office in the family of the marquis:—
“Question.—I am a chaplain in a certain family, which is not so regular and religious as I could wish it. I am forced to see misses, drinking, gaming, &c., and dare not open my mouth against them, supposing from the little notice that is taken of me in matters of religion, and the great distance my patron keeps, that if I should pretend to blame anything of that nature, it would occasion nothing but the turning me out of the family. In the meantime unless I do speak, and modestly remonstrate, I think I do not what becomes a minister of religion, and am afraid may another day be justly condemned as partaker in other men’s sins. Therefore, gentlemen, my humble request is to know of you what I ought to do, neither to betray the cause of religion nor give offence. I would gladly be satisfied how far a chaplain is obliged to take care of the morals of the family he lives in. Your answer may be of use to a great many beside myself, for my case is far from being singular. I cannot believe that to say grace and read prayers now and then, when my patron is at leisure, is all the duty of a chaplain, yet I find that we all think we have done enough when we have done that.”
“Answer.—The pulpit is a privileged place, where, as custom has given you authority to speak, so you may with prudence so moderate your discourse as either to accomplish a reformation, or at least acquit yourself and discharge your own duty. Righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come, if reasoned upon, as they were almost seventeen ages since, may find a second Felix. The pulpit is the most proper, and sometimes the only, place to convince strangers of their faults, but private retirements are convenient for friends and familiars. These are rules of latitude, but all the world is reducible to one of them, and the practice is indisputable.”
No doubt “the misses, drinking, and gaming,” of the Marquis of Normanby’s house, occasioned the chaplain much uneasiness and distress of mind. The marquis was kind, but he was a rake; and Wesley was brought into company, not only with him but with his mistresses. To a man like himself, of the highest honour and strictest principles, this was extremely trying. At length matters came to a crisis. The following is given on the authority of Mr Wesley’s son John:—
“The Marquis of Normanby had a house in the parish of South Ormsby, where a woman who lived with him usually resided. This lady would be intimate with my mother, whether she would or not. To such an intercourse my father would not submit. Coming in one day, and finding this intrusive visitant sitting with my mother, he went up to her, took her by the hand, and very fairly handed her out. The nobleman resented the affront so outrageously, as to make it necessary for my father to resign the living.”
Such, then, was the occasion of Samuel Wesley leaving South Ormsby. This happened about the year 1696. While, however, Wesley resigned the South Ormsby living, he retained his chaplaincy in the house of the Marquis of Normanby. Four years after this, in 1700, when he published his “Short Discourse on Baptism,” he announced himself on the title page as “Chaplain to the Most Honourable John Lord Marquis of Normanby;” and a year later, in 1701, he dedicated his “History of the Old and New Testament” to the Marchioness of Normanby, in a prosaic but flattering dedication; while about the same time, to relieve Wesley from some of his financial embarrassments, the marquis, with his own hand, gave him twenty guineas, and the marchioness five! All this shows that, though his rupture with the marquis’s mistress rendered it expedient that he should remove from the parish in which she lived; he still, for years afterwards, retained his office in the marquis’s family, and participated in the practical friendship of both him and the marchioness his wife.
During the years that Mr Wesley spent at South Ormsby five or six children seem to have been born to him. Samuel, the eldest of the family, was born in London; the names of the five or six, born at South Ormsby, were Susannah, Emilia, Annesley, Jedidiah, Susannah, and Mary.