LAST DAYS AT SOUTH ORMSBY—1694–1696.
We must return for a little while to South Ormsby, small, but neat and
picturesque, and the first home of Samuel and Susannah Wesley. Here they
lived about five years. Here the rector’s wife brought him one child
additional every year, and did her best to make £50 per annum go as far
as possible. Here he plied his pen with unceasing diligence, and wrote
many of his articles for the _Athenian Gazette_, and also his
contributions to the “Young Student’s Library,” and “The Complete
Library, or News for the Ingenious;” here he finished his “Life of
Christ,” and here he composed two other poems, which must now be
noticed.
Queen Mary died at the end of the year 1694; and her confidential friend
and adviser, Dr Tillotson, died two months afterwards. In 1695, Samuel
Wesley published, in a sort of folio pamphlet of twenty-nine pages, his
“Elegies on the Queen and Archbishop.” The title of the first is as
follows:—“On the Death of her late sacred Majesty, Mary, Queen of
England, a Pindarique Poem.” The title of the second is—“A Poem on the
Death of his Grace, John, late Archbishop of Canterbury.” The Elegy on
the Queen consists of twenty-five verses of from twenty to thirty lines
each; and that on the archbishop of sixty-two verses of four lines to a
verse.
Both the poems are written in the highest style of eulogy. The following
are the first lines of the Elegy on the Queen. The death of Mary is
represented as a judgment inflicted on account of the sins of the
nation, and is also considered as the harbinger of other judgments to
follow. The reference to the Shechinah is in bad taste, and almost
profane:—
“Ah, sinful nation! Ah, ungrateful Isle!
See what thy crimes at last have done!
At last thy Shechinah is gone;
Thy beauteous sun no more must on thee smile,
Thy dove is shelter’d in the ark;
The heavens are silent all and dark,
Dark as thy fate,—or where,
Through horrid rifts, some streaks of light appear,
They bode a dreadful flood
Of fire and blood.”
The following is from the twenty-fifth stanza, and is meant to be
descriptive of Mary’s admission into heaven. The extract is inserted
with reluctance; but, in delineating character, faults as well as
virtues must be noted:—
“How was heaven moved at her arrival there!
With how much more than usual art and care,
The angels, who so oft to earth had gone,
And borne her incense to the Eternal’s throne,
For her new coronation now prepare!
How welcome! how caressed!
Among the blest!
And first mankind’s great mother rose—
‘Give way, ye _crowding souls_!’ said she,
‘That I the second of my race may see!’”
Notwithstanding our high veneration for Samuel Wesley, we feel bound to
say that such lines are fulsome foolishness. Upon the whole, Mary was a
good woman, but Wesley’s eulogy of her is sadly excessive:—
“Would virtue take a shape, she’d choose to appear,
And think, and speak, and dress, and live like her.
Zeal without heat, devotion without pride,
Work without noise, did all her hours divide;
Wit without trifling, prudence without guile,
Pure faith, which no false reasoning e’er could spoil,
With her, secured and blest our happy Isle.”
The poem on Tillotson is written in the same eulogistic strain. The
primate is represented as one who excelled in pulpit, church, and state.
As a preacher, he taught without noise, and differed from others without
strife. As a prelate, he was watchful, humble, wise. As a statesman,
unambitious and upright:—
“’Twas music, poetry, and rapture all,
The sweets of his orac’lous words to share;
As soft they fell, as balmy dewdrops fall,
As smooth as undisturbed ethereal air.
One word you cannot take away;
Complete as Virgil’s, his majestic sense;
To twenty ages of the world, shall stay,
The standard he of English eloquence.”
Dr Adam Clarke properly observes, that “great and good as both the queen
and archbishop were, both their characters are sadly overdrawn, and
their praises are extended even beyond poetic licence. These, and some
other of Mr Wesley’s early productions excited the ridicule of the wits,
and made him the subject of such an occasional squib as the following,
written by John Dunton:—
“Poor harmless Wesley, let him write again;
Be pitied in his old heroic strain;
Let him in reams proclaim himself a dunce,
And break a dozen stationers at once.”
Mr Wesley, as we have seen, was an enthusiastic, an almost idolatrous,
admirer of Queen Mary and of Archbishop Tillotson; and some writers have
been pleased to intimate that this arose from special favours which her
Majesty and the archbishop had shown him. This is an unwarranted and
unworthy insinuation. It cannot be denied that Wesley received kindness
from the queen; but there is no evidence to show that he was indebted to
Tillotson for any favour whatever. Wesley himself declares, in a letter
to be given hereafter, that because he dedicated his “Life of Christ” to
Queen Mary, the queen gave him the Epworth living. He never asked for
it. “It was proffered and given without his ever having solicited any
person, and without his ever expecting, or even once thinking of such a
favour.” He adds, “The favours which our blessed queen was pleased to
bestow on me, after she had read my book, were as far beyond my
expectation as my desert.”[98]
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Footnote 98:
Wesley’s _Answer to Palmer_.
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There is no doubt that all this is substantially correct; though it
involves a discrepancy in dates, which it is hard to reconcile. Wesley
says that it was through the queen that he obtained Epworth living; and
yet he was not inducted into that living until two years after the queen
was dead. The probability is that the queen made some arrangement that
Wesley should be the next presentee to Epworth benefice; and, after her
decease, the arrangement was carried out. Be that as it may, it is an
unquestioned fact, that Wesley was indebted to the kindness of Queen
Mary; but it is an unwarrantable imputation to say that it was because
of this that he used such excessive flattery in Queen Mary’s Elegy. We
find the same extravagant praises used concerning her in the very book
which led to the Epworth living being given; thereby showing that Wesley
was a most warm admirer of the queen before he received any of her royal
kindnesses. After having lauded the virgin mother of our Saviour, he
adds:—
“And after thee, oh full of charms and grace!
Let our great Mary fill the second place!
For other queens long mayst thou look in vain,
Others like her, to fill thy glorious train.
Humble like thee, like thee of royal line,
Her soul to Heaven submiss, and bow’d like thine!
Heaven, which immaculate her form design’d,
As a fit mansion for so fair a mind.
Which gave her eyes, that love and awe inspire,
And cheer the world like the sun’s vital fire.
Oh may they on my humble labours shine,
With their kind influence gild each happy line!
Endue with purer forms the coarser ore,
And stamp it bullion, though ’twas dross before.”[99]
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Footnote 99:
Wesley’s _Life of Christ_.
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In this way we dispose of the imputation, that Wesley’s extravagant
eulogies of Queen Mary would not have been written if Queen Mary had not
shown him favour. The thing is false, for he wrote such eulogies before
any favour had been granted. His eulogies may be foolish, but they are
not fawning. He loved his queen, and therefore praised her.
As it respects the archbishop, there is not a scrap of evidence to show
that Wesley was ever indebted to him for kindness of any kind; on the
contrary, it was through Tillotson that Wesley was not made an Irish
bishop. Hence the following extract from a letter written by his Grace
only four months before Mary’s death. The letter was addressed to the
Bishop of Salisbury, and is dated “Lambeth House, August 31, 1694.” The
primate says:—
“My Lord Marquis of Normanby having made Mr Waseley[100] his chaplain,
sent Colonel Fitzgerald to propose him for a bishopric in Ireland,
wherewith I acquainted her Majesty; who, according to her true judgment,
did by no means think fit. Their Majesties have made Dr Foley Bishop of
Down, and Dean Pulleyn Bishop of Cloyne.”[101]
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Footnote 100:
Thus the name is spelt in the letter; but there can be no doubt that
_Wesley_ is meant.
Footnote 101:
Birche’s _Life of Tillotson_.
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And so, in all likelihood, Dr Foley or Dean Pulleyn obtained the
bishopric which the Marquis of Normanby wished to obtain for Samuel
Wesley. We know nothing of the history and merits of these gentlemen.
Perhaps they were well qualified for the Episcopal station to which they
were exalted, or perhaps they were not; for bishoprics have not always
been given to men the best qualified and the most deserving. It is not
improbable that, in learning and talent, Samuel Wesley was vastly
superior to Dr Foley and Dean Pulleyne; but we cannot, on this ground,
commend the wisdom of the application made by the Marquis of Normanby,
or argue that at present Samuel Wesley was fit to be made a bishop.
Wesley was only thirty-two years of age; it was not more than six years
since he had been ordained; and his ministry, during that period, had
been, to a great extent, confined to a small parish of not more than two
hundred and fifty inhabitants. He had neither age nor experience
sufficient for the Episcopal office. Normanby’s application was hasty
and imprudent; and the disapproval of the archbishop and the queen was
seemly and right. At the same time, the letter of the archbishop above
quoted, is written in terms so frigid as to lead to the conclusion that,
however much Samuel Wesley admired the archbishop, the feeling was not
reciprocal, and was of no advantage to the poor rector who cherished it.
We have already seen that the Marquis of Normanby was one of Wesley’s
warm-hearted friends. It was through this nobleman that he obtained the
living of South Ormsby.[102] His lordship had a house in the parish, and
Wesley acted as his chaplain. The Marquis was well acquainted with the
poor, hard-working, literary parson, and was well able to estimate his
character and his merits.
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Footnote 102:
Clarke’s _Wesley Family_.
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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.”
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Footnote 103:
Dryden’s _Miscellaneous Works_, vol. i. Notes, p. 60, 1760.
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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.
The first, Susannah, died in April 1693, when a little more than two
years old. Emilia was baptized by her father in South Ormsby church,
January 13, 1692. Arriving at womanhood she married a Quaker, an
apothecary at Epworth, of the name of Harper, who left her a young
widow. Her husband was a violent Whig, and she was an unbending Tory.
About five years before her father’s death, she became a teacher at the
boarding-school of a Mrs Taylor, in Lincoln, where she received bad
treatment and worse wages. In 1735 she set up a school of her own at
Gainsborough. For many years before her death, she was maintained
entirely by her brothers, and lived at the preachers’ house adjoining
the chapel in West Street, Seven Dials, London. She died at nearly
eighty years of age, about the year 1770. She is reported to have been
beautiful in face and figure, and majestic in her address and carriage,
and to have had “strong sense, much wit, a prodigious memory, and a
talent for poetry.” She was a good classical scholar, and wrote a
beautiful hand. John Wesley said she was the best reader of Milton that
he ever heard.
Annesley and Jedidiah were twins. They were baptized December 3, 1694,
and both of them died in infancy.
Susannah, the second, was born in 1695, and, at the age of about
twenty-six, was married to Richard Ellison, Esq., a man of good family,
who farmed his own estate, and had a respectable establishment. She was
good-natured, very facetious, and a little romantic, but behaved herself
with the strictest moral correctness. She had a mind naturally strong
and vivacious, and well refined by a good education. Her husband was
little inferior to the apostate angels in wickedness. His mind was
common, coarse, and uncultivated. He was the plague of his wife, and a
constant affliction to her family. After bearing him several children,
she left him, and hid herself in London, where she had considerable
helps from her brother John. Henceforth she firmly refused to see her
faithless and brutal husband, or to have any intercourse with him. Her
son John lived and died an excise-officer in Bristol. Her daughter Ann
married Mr Pierre le Lièvre, a French Protestant refugee, whose son
Peter was educated at Kingswood school, took orders in the Church of
England, and died at Lutterworth, in Leicestershire. Her daughter
Deborah married Mr Pierre Collet, another French refugee; and her son,
Richard Annesley, died at the age of twenty-seven, leaving two orphan
daughters, of whom Mrs Voysey, the excellent wife of a pious dissenting
minister, was one. Mrs Ellison’s husband was reduced to a state of
poverty, and, through her brother John, obtained alms from Ebenezer
Blackwell.[104] It is pleasing to relate that, at length, he became a
reformed man; and that, on the 11th of April 1760, Charles Wesley
writes: “I buried my brother Ellison, and prayed by him in his last
moments. He said he was not afraid to die, and believed God, for
Christ’s sake, had forgiven him.”[104]
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Footnote 104:
Wesley’s _Works_, vol. xii. p. 165.
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Mary Wesley was born in 1696, and, therefore, just about the time that
her father left South Ormsby. She was married to John Whitelamb, whom we
shall have to notice in a future chapter. Through afflictions, and,
probably, through some mismanagement in her nurse, she became
considerably deformed, and her growth in consequence was much stinted:
but all written and oral testimonies concur in the statement that her
face was exquisitely beautiful, and was a fair and legible index to a
mind and disposition almost angelic. Her humble, obliging, even, and
amiable temper, made her the favourite and delight of the whole Wesley
family. She died in early womanhood in becoming the mother of her first
child. John Wesley preached her funeral sermon at Wroote; and her sister
Mehetabel wrote an elegy, which was published in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ for 1736, an extract from which, on account of its delineation
of character and exquisite poetry, is here subjoined:—
“From earliest dawn of life, through thee alone,
The saint sublime, the finish’d Christian shone;
Yet would not grace one grain of pride allow,
Or cry, “Stand off, I’m holier than thou!”
With business or devotion never cloy’d,
No moment of thy time pass’d unemploy’d;
Well-natured mirth, mature discretion join’d,
Most sure attendants on the virtuous mind!
A worth so singular, since time began,
But one surpass’d, and he was more than man.
Nor was thy form unfair, (though Heaven confined
To scanty limits thy exalted mind.)
Witness the brow, so faultless, open, clear,
That none could ask if honesty was there;
Witness the taintless lustre of thy skin,
Bright emblem of the brighter soul within!
That soul which easy, unaffected, mild,
Through jetty eyes, with cheerful sweetness smiled.
But oh! could fancy reach or language speak
The living beauties of thy lip and cheek,
Where nature’s pencil, leaving art no room,
Touched to a miracle the vernal bloom;
Lost though thou art, in _Stella’s_ faithful line,
Thy face, immortal as thy fame, should shine.
To soundest prudence, (life’s unerring guide,)
To love sincere, religion void of pride,
To friendship perfect in a female mind,
Which I nor wish nor hope on earth to find;
To mirth, (the balm of care,) from lightness free,
To steadfast truth, unwearied industry,
To every charm and grace comprised in you,
Most worthy friend, a long and last adieu!”
Little South Ormsby, to all interested in the history of the Wesley
family, will always be an attractive place. Here Samuel Wesley spent
about six of the best years of his life, and wrote some of his ablest
works. Here he had at least five children born, and here he buried
three. Hither he took his young wife, and his first-born son, Samuel.
Here he had to join his wife in mourning the death of her father, Dr
Annesley; and from here to Epworth he and his wife took four young
children, the eldest only six years old,—Samuel, Emilia, Susannah, and
Mary.
Before finally quitting South Ormsby, it ought to be added, that Samuel
Wesley, who took his degree of A.B. at Oxford in 1688, took his A.M. at
Cambridge in 1694. The following notice is from the University Register,
Cambridge:—
“Incorporated 1694.
Sam. Westley, A.B., Coll. Exon. Ox.
Samuel Westley, A.M., Coll. C. C. Camb., 1694.”[105]
Footnote 105:
Clarke’s _Wesley Family_.
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