“Previous to Mr. Fletcher’s presentation to the living, its
inhabitants, with some honourable exceptions, were notorious for
their ignorance and impiety. They openly profaned the sabbath,
treated the most holy things with contempt, disregarded the
restraints of decency, and ridiculed the very name of religion. It
is to the reproach of England that such a description is but too
frequently applicable to places where mines and manufactories have
collected together a crowded population.”
A desire to be extensively useful soon induced Mr. Fletcher to undertake
extra-parochial duties, but in every way, indignities were offered by
those on whom by contrast his piety, temperance, humility, and example
more strongly reflected. The clergy went into titters and cried
“Enthusiast!” The half-gentry chalked up “Schismatic!” and the
magistrates sought to set the world on a grin by ticketing him a
“Jesuit!” Need we be surprised to hear that Mr. Fletcher was seized, as
he tells us, with the spirit of Jonah—and tempted to quit his charge! It
was a passing temptation, yet such was his tenderness of conscience that
the shadow of a doubt—intruded rather than entertained—disquieted him.
About this time he had some doubts respecting a passage in the service
for the baptism of infants, and also in that for the burial of the dead.
He received much comfort however from his correspondence and interviews
with John and Charles Wesley, whose preachers he welcomed into his
parish.
In a letter dated May, 1767, we find him inviting Whitfield to his parish
for the same purpose. In this letter, May 18th, 1767, he speaks of Capt.
Scott having preached from his horse-block, which seems to mark the first
introduction of Wesleyan Methodism into Madeley. The Roman Catholics
too, gave him trouble, by opening a mission in Madeley, and drawing over
to them two of his converts. This appears to have been in March 1769,
for in a letter to his friend Mr. Ireland dated the 26th, he says:—
“The (Popish) Priest at Madeley is going to open his Mass-house, and
I have declared war on that account last Sunday, and propose to strip
the Whore of Babylon, and expose her nakedness to-morrow. All the
Papists are in a great ferment, and they have held meetings to
consult on the occasion.”
An odour now hangs and will hang about the name of Fletcher, and turning
to his example for encouragement, amid the more sterile tracts of labour,
the weary and desponding will get refreshed. As mountains pierce the
clouds and bring down rains upon the parched and shrivelled plains, so
men now and then tower high above their fellows, and privileged with a
greater significance, sunned and bathed in a purer light, they become a
medium of it to others. It was so with Fletcher. In his presence men of
coarser mould and ruder habits, as well as those distinguished for their
attainments, felt the force and purity of his life. It has taken the
Church of which he was so distinguished a member nearly a whole century
to come up to plans by which he extended the sphere of his usefulness: we
mean those outdoor meetings, cottage-lectures, Scripture readings,
catechisings, and similar means whereby in every corner of the parish he
contrived to stir men up and to create among them a concern for their
higher interests. These are his words:—
“Soon after coming to Madeley, I have frequently had a desire to
exhort in Madeley Wood and Coalbrookdale, two villages of my parish,
but I have not dared to run before I saw an open door. It now, I
think, begins to open, as two small societies of twenty persons have
formed themselves in those places.”
But for a large soul like Mr. Fletcher’s the parish even is too limited,
and we find accordingly that he gathered a small society sixteen miles
off, riding that distance in order to preach at five o’clock in the
morning two or three times a-week. Of course a man could not do this
without treading on someone’s toes. It was the way to get opposition,
and he got it. The churchwardens, clergy, archdeacon, bishop, and
magistrates were dead against him. Magistrates threatened him and the
whole of his flock with imprisonment; and the bishop preached against him
before his brethren at the general visitation. He writes to Charles
Wesley—“A young clergyman who lives at Madeley Wood, where he has great
influence, has openly declared war against me by pasting on the
church-door a paper, in which he charges me with rebellion, schism, and
being a disturber of the public peace. He puts himself at the head of
the gentlemen of the parish (as they term themselves), and supported by
the recorder of Wenlock he is determined to put in force the Conventicle
Act against me. A few weeks ago the widow who lives in the Rock Church
and a young man who read and prayed in my absence were taken up.” He
tells us he appeared at Wenlock and bearded the justices, who denounced
him as a Jesuit!
Times have changed, and what was deemed in Mr Fletcher an indiscretion
and even a crime, is now universally applauded. If persecution to Mr.
Fletcher arose from those who by influence and position should have
seconded his plans, we need scarcely feel surprised to find that, setting
himself against the commoner and coarser vices of the times, he was
opposed by those who thrived thereby. In a letter to Mr. Charles Wesley
he says—“You cannot well imagine how much the animosity of my
parishioners is heightened, and with what boldness it discovers itself
against me, because I preach against drunkenness, shows, and
bull-baiting. The publicans and the maltmen will not forgive me: they
think that to preach against drunkenness and to cut their purse is the
same thing.”
It is difficult to imagine a man of education, taste, and refined feeling
in the midst of elements more discordant, or so totally out of character
with what he had been used to. Unvisited by those influences that from a
thousand sources now combine to smooth the path of the country clergy,
mining districts, like others where the physical energies of the body are
developed to the utmost stretch by the nature of the employment,
presented the greatest obstacles to progress; the most dogged
indifference to efforts made for their advancement; and, where attempts
were made to put a check upon the brutal amusements of the population,
they offered the most determined resistance. At out-door or in-door
services, in such semi-civilized portions of the parish, the sound of
prayer, both on Sundays and week-evenings, would ascend mingled with the
yells and cries and curses of drunken colliers, the barking of dogs, the
roar of a bull, or some indulgence of the kind with which publicans
seasoned their attractions. The Green, at Madeley Wood, was a favourite
spot for such games, and narrowly upon one occasion did this zealous and
pious man escape being pulled from his horse and made the victim of a
party of infuriated colliers, who made the bargain to “bait the parson.”
Mr. Fletcher, with a view of further promoting his mission of usefulness
in 1767 visited Yorkshire, Bristol, Bath, and Wales, and subsequently his
native country, Rome, &c. He returned to England in 1770; and some time
after undertook the charge of a college founded by the Countess of
Huntingdon, at Trevecca, in South Wales, but resigned the appointment, in
consequence of his repugnance to Calvinistic views. This brought out Mr.
Fletcher as a controversialist, with Toplady and others. At the breaking
out of the American War Mr. Fletcher took up his pen in defence of the
Government, and the right divine of kings, contending that “if once
legislation was affirmed to belong to the people, as such, all government
would be overturned,” and that such a scheme ought to be totally
extirpated; doctrines which so pleased the King that the Lord Chancellor
was commissioned to offer him preferment, which he declined.
Poor human nature at best goes on crutches; and one infirmity he had to
struggle with when young, Mr. Benson tells us, “was temper. He was a man
of strong passions, and prone to anger in particular, insomuch that he
has frequently thrown himself on the floor, and laid there most of the
night, bathed in tears, imploring victory over his spirit.” He obtained
it, and by the means employed—by earnest wrestling, by prayer articulate
at times—voiceless, waiting prayer at others. Holiness to be realised in
man—holiness incarnate on earth, eternal in the heavens—and the
annihilation of all that would bar it out from the soul was his motto.
But the man that would tremble before the suspicion of a fault, on the
other hand, could beard a gamester armed, and pour an avalanche of
indignation upon his head—aye, while the infuriated duellist held a
pistol to his breast. There was a combination of earnestness, sincerity,
and, withal, humiliation, about the man that won its way and fused all
before it. There was a primitive simplicity and singleness of purpose,
an enthusiasm unmixed with bitterness, and that heavenly temper about Mr.
Fletcher which reminds one of the sublimated virtues and graces of the
early Christians. Like the old fathers, he accommodated himself to his
hearers, suiting his exhortations to their modes of thought, and seizing
opportunities for imparting instruction and advice, so as to secure for
both the most favourable reception. His parishioners soon began not only
to perceive but to appreciate these excellent features of his character.
Unmoved by storm and tumult, actuated by the purest motives, with a grace
and sweetness that shone through every look and gave value to every
action, his visits, wherever he went, brought with them influences like
the reviving breath of spring. If he overtook on the road a poor woman,
wearied with a load, he assisted her to carry it, meanwhile taking care
to exhort her to relieve herself of that more intolerable one of sin. If
he saw a man fetch down a bird with his gun, he complimented him upon his
aim and called his attention to the mark for the prize of his high
calling—thus tempering and interweaving with things and pursuits of this
life those relating to that which is to come. A very atmosphere of good
surrounded him, from whence distilled heavenly and refreshing dew. To
meet the objections of his parishioners to early Sunday morning meetings,
on the ground of their being unable to rise so early, he was accustomed
to go round the village himself, tinkling a bell; “thus, though free from
all men,” as the Apostle said to the Corinthians, he made himself the
servant of all, giving himself up to the work as practically and
devotedly as though each particular department had been his special duty.
If a poor man was ill and lacked attendance he sat by the sickbed and
tended him; if he needed clothes to keep him warm he stripped himself; if
he needed money he gave it; and even the furniture in his house was at
the service of the poorest. He was not only a servant, but a “servant of
servants,” therefore, unto his brethren; and upon the well-recognised
principle of true greatness laid down by his divine Master—“Whomsoever
would be chief amongst you, let him be your servant”—he obtained that
reverence and regard with which, even now, his name is spoken of both in
the cottages of the poor and houses of the rich.
There was in Mr. Fletcher a combination of distinguished virtues seldom
found in one man, and those so marked and developed that each by itself
would have been sufficient to confer distinction upon any individual
possessing it in an equal degree. Of his ministrations in the pulpit of
the old church none now left can speak. By the children, however, of
those who have listened to him we have often heard it said—“Never were
hearers more riveted and enrapt by lips of a fellow-mortal.” Every topic
received at his hand a fresh bloom—a brilliancy, a fascination, a
fragrance that entranced. Christ the Saviour, Christ in the garden, and
upon the cross; now at the right hand of the Father, and again coming in
great glory to judge the world; man regenerated; the benediction and the
curse; the two hemispheres of the one truth needful for man to know, were
themes upon which he began, continued, and ended.
The “Rock Church,” previously spoken of, at Madeley Wood, was a cottage
built on a spur of one of the sandstones of the lower coal measures, and
it still stands, overlooking the valley of the Severn. Mr. Fletcher
exerted himself, however, to erect a place of better accommodation in
1776, and succeeded in building what now forms part of the old Wesleyan
chapel, a short distance from the Rock Church; and we find him devoting
£25, being a balance of £105 received as the annual income from his
estate in Switzerland, to its completion: the remainder previously
appears to have been devoted to other charitable purposes. He was unable
then, however, to clear off the whole, for in the following year he wrote
to Thomas York and Daniel Edmunds, who assisted him in the secular
concerns of the vicarage, saying:—
“I have attempted to build a house in Madeley-Wood, about the centre
of the parish, where I should be glad if the children might be taught
to read and write in the day, and the grown-up people might hear the
word of God in the evening, when they can get an Evangelist to preach
it to them; and where the serious people might assemble for social
worship, when they have no teacher.
“This has involved me in some difficulties about discharging the
expense of that building, and paying for the ground it stands upon;
especially, as my ill health has put me on the additional expense of
an assistant. If I had strength, I would serve my church alone,
board as cheap as I could, and save what I could from the produce of
the living to clear the debt, and leave that little token of my love,
free from encumbrances, to my parishioners. But as Providence orders
things otherwise, I have another object which is, to secure a
faithful Minister to serve the church while I live. Providence has
sent me dear Mr. Greaves, who loves the people, and is loved by them.
I should be glad to make him comfortable; but as all the care of the
flock, by my illness, devolves upon him, I would not hesitate for a
moment to let him have all the profit of the living, if it were not
for the debt contracted about the room. My difficulty lies, then,
between what I owe to my fellow-labourer, and what I owe to my
parishioners, whom I should be sorry to have burdened with a debt
contracted for the room.
“I beg you will let me know how the balance of my account stands,
that, some way or other, I may order it to be paid immediately: for
if the balance is against me, I could not leave England comfortably
without having settled the payment. A letter will settle this
business, as well as if twenty friends were at the trouble of taking
a journey; and talking is far worse for me than reading or writing.
I do not say this to put a slight upon my dear friends. I should
rejoice to see them, if it would answer any end.
“Ten thousand pardons of my dear friends, for troubling them with
this scrawl about worldly matters. May God help us all, so to settle
all our eternal concerns, that when we shall be called to go to our
long home and heavenly country, we may be ready, and have our
acquittance along with us. I am quite tired with writing;
nevertheless, I cannot lay by my pen, without desiring my best
Christian love to all my dear companions in tribulation, and
neighbours in Shropshire.”
Mr. Fletcher was now, as will be seen, in ill-health, and being ordered
by his physician to a warmer climate, he wrote before leaving Bristol,
another and longer pastoral letter to his Madeley parishioners. In 1778
we find him writing other letters from Nyon, in Switzerland, detailing
information he had collected in passing through France, concerning the
deaths of Voltaire and Rousseau, and inclosing notes to be read to
societies at Madeley, Dawley, The Bank, &c.
The building at Madeley Wood cost more than he expected, and we find him
saying:—
“I am sorry the building has come to so much more than I intended;
but as the mischief is done, it is a matter to exercise patience,
resignation, and self-denial; and it will be a caution in future. I
am going to sell part of my little estate here, to discharge the
debt. I had laid by fifty pounds to print a small work, which I
wanted to distribute here; but as I must be just before I presume to
offer that mite to ‘the God of truth,’ I lay by the design, and shall
send that sum to Mr. York. Money is so scarce here, at this time,
that I shall sell at a very great loss; but necessity and justice are
two great laws, which must be obeyed. As I design, on my return to
England, to pinch until I have got rid of this debt, I may go and
live in one of the cottages belonging to the Vicar, if we could let
the vicarage for a few pounds; and in that case, I dare say, Mr.
Greaves would be so good as to take the other little house.”
Mr. Fletcher returned to England in the spring of 1781, better, but
without having regained his health; and in the course of the summer he
had an interview with Miss Bosanquet, at Cross Hall, Yorkshire, which led
to marriage in November, and both arrived at Madeley in January, 1782.
With good nursing his health returned, so that he was able to write to
Mr. Wesley in December of that year, to say—“I have strength enough to do
my parish work without the help of a curate.” This was one of those
years of bad harvests and scarcity of provisions, which usually led to
disturbances, and we find him in the same letter saying:—“The colliers
began to rise in this neighbourhood: happily, the cockatrice’s egg was
crushed before the serpent came out. However, I got many a hearty curse
from the colliers for the plain words I spoke on the occasion.”
Acting upon the proposals of Mrs. Darby, he established a Sunday-school
in Madeley Wood. These proposals were:—
“I.—It is proposed that Sunday-schools be set up in this parish for
such children as are employed all the week, and for those whose
education has been hitherto totally neglected.
“II.—That the children admitted into these be taught reading, writing,
and the principles of religion.
“III.—That there be a school for boys, and another for girls, in
Madeley, Madeley-Wood, and Coalbrook-Dale: six in all.
“IV.—That a subscription be opened, to pay each Teacher one shilling
per Sunday, and to buy tables, forms, books, pens, and ink.
“V.—That two Treasurers be appointed to ask and receive the
contributions of the subscribers.
“VI.—That whosoever subscribes one guinea a year shall be a Governor.
“VII.—That three or four Inspectors be appointed, who are to visit the
schools once a week, to see that the children attend regularly, and the
masters do their duty.
“VIII.—That a book be provided for setting down all receipts and
expenses; and another for the names of the Teachers and the scholars.
“IX.—That the schools be solemnly visited once or twice a year; and a
premium given to the children that have made the greatest improvement.”
Three hundred children were soon gathered together whom Mr. Fletcher took
every opportunity of instructing, by regular meetings, which he attended
with the utmost diligence. In order to encourage the children he gave
them little hymn-books, pointing them to some friend or neighbour, who
would teach them the hymns and instruct them to sing. They were greatly
taken with this new employment, insomuch that it is said many would
scarce allow themselves time to eat or sleep, for the desire they had of
learning their lessons. At every meeting, after inquiring who had made
the greatest proficiency, he distinguished them by some little reward.
He also urged upon his more wealthy parishioners the importance of
establishing such schools at Coalbrookdale and Madeley.