CHAPTER IV.
LATER MARRIED LIFE.
It was early in 1697 that the Wesleys removed to Epworth, on the opposite side of the county of Lincoln, which, though only a small market town with about 2,000 inhabitants, was the principal place in the Isle of Axholme, a district ten miles long by four broad, enclosed by the rivers Trent, Don, and Idle. The church is an ancient structure, dedicated to St. Andrew, and the rectory was at that time a palace in comparison with the "mud hut" at South Ormsby. It was not a brick or stone-built house, but a three- storied and five-gabled timber and plaster building, thatched with straw, and containing "a kitchinge, a hall, a parlour, a buttery, and three large upper rooms and some others for common use; and, also, a little garden; "together with a large barn, a dove-cote, and a hemp kiln. The children had ample space now to roam about in as well as for ease and comfort indoors; but there were fees to be paid on entrance into the living, furniture to be bought for the larger house, and, as the new rector determined to farm his own glebe, implements and cattle for that worse than amateur farming, for which a bookish man brought up in town
