No wonder that, after one of his first services at Lady Huntingdon’s, Whitefield said,“I went home, never more surprised at any incident in my life.”[220] Such congregations were unique. Nothing like them had heretofore beenwitnessed. There were gatherings of England’s proud nobility, assembled to listen to a young preacher, whose boyhood had been spent in a public-house; whose youth, at the university, had been employed partly in study, and partly in attending to the wants of fellow-students, who declined to treat him as an equal; and whose manhood life, for the last thirteen years, had been a commingling of marvellous popularity and violent contempt,—a scene of infirmities and errors, and yet of unreserved and unceasing devotion to the cause of Christ and the welfare of his fellow-men. Such was the youthful preacher,—a man of slender learning, of mean origin, without Church preferment, hated by the clergy, and maligned by the public press. Who were his aristocratic hearers? The following list is supplied by the well-informed author of “The Life and Times of the Countess of Huntingdon”:—
Lady Fanny Shirley, who had long been one of the reigning beauties of the court of George the First; the Duchess of Argyll; Lady Betty Campbell; Lady Ferrers; Lady Sophia Thomas; the Duchess of Montagu, daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough; Lady Cardigan; Lady Lincoln; Mrs. Boscawen; Mrs. Pitt; Miss Rich; Lady Fitzwalter; Lady Caroline Petersham; the Duchess of Queensbury, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, and celebrated for extraordinary beauty, wit, and sprightliness, by Pope, Swift, and Prior; the Duchess of Manchester; Lady Thanet, daughter of the Marquis of Halifax, and wife of Sackville, Earl of Thanet; Lady St. John, niece of Lady Huntingdon; Lady Luxborough, the friend and correspondent of Shenstone, the poet; Lady Monson, whose husband, in 1760, was created Baron Sondes; Lady Rockingham, the wife of the great statesman, a woman of immense wit and pleasant temper, often at court, and possessed of considerable influence in the higher circles of society; Lady Betty Germain, daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, and through her husband, Sir John Germain, the possessor of enormous wealth; Lady Eleanor Bertie, a member of the noble family of Abingdon; the Dowager-Duchess of Ancaster; the Dowager-Lady Hyndford; the Duchess of Somerset; the Countess Delitz, one of the daughters of the Duchess of Kendal, and thesister of Lady Chesterfield; Lady Hinchinbroke, granddaughter of the Duke of Montagu; and Lady Schaubs.
Besides these “honourable women not a few,” there were also the Earl of Burlington, so famed for his admiration of the works of Inigo Jones, and for his architectural expenditure; George Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe, a friend and favourite of the Prince of Wales, and whose costly mansion was often crowded with literary men; George Augustus Selwyn, an eccentric wit, to whom nearly all the current bon-mots of the day were attributed; the Earl of Holderness; Lord (afterwards Marquess) Townshend, named George, after his godfather, George the First, a distinguished general in the army, member of Parliament for Norfolk, and ultimately a field-marshal. Charles Townshend, now a young man of twenty-three, whom Burke described as “the delight and ornament of the House of Commons, and the charm of every private society he honoured with his presence;” Lord St. John, half-brother to Lord Bolingbroke; the Earl of Aberdeen; the Earl of Lauderdale; the Earl of Hyndford, Envoy Extraordinary to the King of Prussia; the Marquis of Tweeddale, Secretary of State for Scotland; George, afterwards, Lord Lyttelton, at one time member for Okehampton, and secretary of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and who had recently published his well-known book, “Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul;” William Pitt, the distinguished first Earl of Chatham; Lord North, in his twenty-first year, afterwards First Lord of the Treasury, and ultimately Earl of Guildford; Evelyn, Duke of Kingston; Viscount Trentham (a title borne by the Duke of Sutherland); the Earl of March (one of the titles of the Duke of Richmond); the Earl of Haddington; Edward Hussey, who married a daughter of the Duke of Montagu, and was created Earl of Beaulieu; Hume Campbell, afterwards created Baron Hume; the Earl of Sandwich, subsequently ambassador to the court of Spain, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Secretary of State for the Home Department; and Lord Bolingbroke, the friend of the Pretender, a man of great ability,—a statesman, a philosopher, and an infidel.
Gillies adds to this long list the name of David Hume,who had recently returned from Italy in great chagrin, because the people of England “entirely overlooked and neglected” his “Inquiry concerning Human Understanding.” It is said that Hume considered Whitefield the most ingenious preacher he ever listened to, and that twenty miles were not too far to go to hear him. “Once,” said the great infidel, “Whitefield addressed his audience thus: ‘The attendant angel is about to leave us, and ascend to heaven. Shall he ascend and not bear with him the news of one sinner reclaimed from the error of his way?’ And, then, stamping with his foot, and lifting up his hands and eyes to heaven, he cried aloud, ‘Stop, Gabriel, stop, ere you enter the sacred portals, and yet carry with you the tidings of one sinner being saved.’ This address surpassed anything I ever saw or heard in any other preacher.”
The Earl of Chesterfield and the Earl of Bath have been previously noticed as being among Whitefield’s hearers. One more name must be mentioned. Lady Townshend was one of Whitefield’s earliest admirers. Her wit and eccentricities were notorious. Of course she was a member of the Church of England; but Horace Walpole tells a story of George Selwyn detecting her crossing herself and praying before the altar of a popish chapel. Alternately, she liked and disliked Whitefield. “She certainly means,” said Walpole, “to go armed with every viaticum—the Church of England in one hand, Methodism in the other,and the Host in her mouth.”[221] Whitefield had the moral courage to tackle even this eccentric lady; and, towards the close of 1748, wrote to her as follows:—
“Yesterday, good Lady Huntingdon informed me that your ladyship was ill. Had I judged it proper, I would have waited upon your ladyship this morning; but I was cautious of intrusion. My heart’s desire and prayer to God is, that this sickness be not unto death, but to His glory, and the present and eternal good of your precious and immortal soul. O that from a spiritual abiding sense of the vanity of all created good, you may cry out,—
‘Begone, vain world, my heart resign,
For I must be no longer thine:
A nobler, a diviner guest
Now claims possession of my breast.’