CHAPTER I.
BIRTH AND ANCESTRY.
The armies of the Church Militant throughout the world were never commanded by a better general than John Wesley. The military instinct was strong in every fibre of his keen mind and wiry body, and his genius for organizing has probably had far more to do with keeping the hosts of Methodism in vigorous marching order for the last hundred and fifty years, than any of the tenets he inculcated. He had, moreover, the gift of an eloquence that was magnetic, that drew men after him as the multitudes followed Peter the Hermit, and that compelled self-surrender as did the teaching of Ignatius Loyola. He was a born leader of men, who went straight to his point, and carried it by force of personal superiority. He made a very effectual lieutenant of his brother Charles, who, had it not been for John, would probably have lived a peaceful, pious life, and been a diligently decorous parish priest with a spice of scholarly erudition like his father before him. Men like John are not born in every generation, and, when they do arise, are usually the outcome of a race which has shown talent in isolated instances, but has never before concentrated all its strength in one scion.
In the records of such a race there are sure to be certain foreshadowings of the coming prophet, priest or seer, and consequently the lives of his progenitors are full of the deepest interest. Boys usually reproduce vividly the characteristics of their mothers, so in the person of Susanna Wesley we should seek the hidden springs of the boundless energy and grasp of mind that made her son stand out so prominently as a man of mark among his fellows. Had it not been for him it is probable that her memory would have perished, for, as far as outsiders saw, she was only the struggling wife of a poor country parson, with the proverbial quiverful of children, a narrow income, and an indomitable fund of what is termed proper pride. She was the twenty-fifth and youngest child of her father, Dr. Samuel Annesley, by his second wife, and was born in Spital Yard on the 20th of January 1669. On both sides of the house she was of gentle birth. Her mother's father, John White, born at Higlan in Pembrokeshire, like so many other Welshmen, graduated at Jesus College, Oxford; he afterwards studied at the Middle Temple and became a bencher. He was probably a sound lawyer and a prosperous man, for we find that he had a goodly number of Puritan clients, and in 1640 was elected M.P. for Southwark. In the House he was known as an active and stirring member of the party opposed to the King, Charles I., and in the proceedings that led to the death of that ill-fated monarch he seems to have taken some considerable share. He was by no means silent or passive when Episcopacy was under discussion, and would fain have seen the offices of deacons, priests, and bishops abolished. He was chairman of the Committee for Religion, and in that capacity had to consider the cases of one hundred clergymen who lived scandalous lives. These cases he published in a quarto volume of fifty-seven pages, a copy of which, under the title of The First Century of Scandalous and Malignant Priests, may be seen in the British Museum. Mr. White was, moreover, a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines; and what with the excitement and unrest of the times, his natural zeal, and the heat of party spirit, he wore himself out at the comparatively early age of fifty-four, and was buried with a considerable amount of ceremony in the Temple Church on the 29th of January 1644. Over his grave was placed a marble tablet with this inscription:—
Here lyeth a John, a burning, shining light,
Whose name, life, actions all were White.
It was no doubt to his maternal great-grandfather that Charles Wesley alluded many years after, when his daughter Sally refused to believe that kings reigned by Divine right; and in his anger at her contumacy exclaimed, "I protest, the rebel blood of some of her ancestors runs in her veins!"
Dr. Annesley was himself of aristocratic lineage, and looked it every inch. His father and the Earl of Anglesey of that date were first cousins, their fathers being brothers. Samuel Annesley was an only child, and received the Christian name that has been transmitted to so many of his descendants, at the request of a saintly grandmother who was called to her rest before his birth. He was born in 1620 at Haseley in Warwickshire, and inherited a considerable amount of property. He had the misfortune to lose his father when only four years old, and was brought up by his mother, who seems to have been an eminently pious woman. Religion, it must be remembered, was the burning question of the day, and Puritanism was at its height; though there were many godly and exemplary people in the opposite, or what we should now call the High Church party. Young Annesley entered at Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of fifteen, acquitted himself well there, and in due course took his M.A. degree. When he was twenty-four years of age and had deliberately chosen the Church as his profession, the affairs of the nation had reached a crisis. Charles I. had declared war against the Parliament, and his queen had sailed from Dover with the crown jewels, hoping to sell them, and thereby procure munitions of war for the husband to whom she was so deeply attached. The Royalist party withdrew from their seats in the House of Commons, whereupon the remaining members drew closer together, enrolled the militia, and appointed the Earl of Warwick Admiral of the Fleet. He it was who, having a kindness for his young county neighbour, and receiving a certificate of his ordination signed by seven clergymen, procured for him his diploma as LL.D. and appointed him chaplain to a man-of-war called the Globe. This post, however, did not suit Samuel Annesley, and we speedily find that he quitted it and accepted the living of Cliffe in Kent, worth about four hundred pounds a year. This cure had been left vacant by the sequestration of the previous vicar for immorality, so that his appointment probably marks his acquaintance with John White, whose daughter he married in after years. But before settling at Cliffe he had espoused a young wife, who bore him a son, named Samuel after his father. She died, and was buried in the chancel of the church where her husband officiated, and her little boy survived her only four years, and was buried there in 1653. Dr. Annesley was much opposed when he first went to Cliffe, for the people were tarred with the same brush as their previous vicar, and received the new one with spits, pitchforks, and stones. Nothing daunted by this, he assured them that he was the last man to be frightened away from his post, and he should stay at Cliffe till they were prepared by his means for the ministry of someone better. He was as good as his word, and had the pleasure of seeing great improvement among them before he was called elsewhere.
In 1648 a solemn national fast day was proclaimed, and Dr. Annesley sent for to preach a sermon before the House of Commons. His sermon won him much favour and was printed by command: it contained a passage very acceptable to the Parliament in its then temper, but which gave great offence to the Royalists, who justly regarded it as a reflection on the King, who was at that moment imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle. According to the young divine's own account, which is still to be found in the State Paper Office, when the King was executed the following year he publicly asserted his conviction that it was a "horrid murder," spoke against Cromwell as "the arrantest hypocrite that ever the Church of Christ was pestered with," and said other disrespectful things of the ruling powers, which, being repeated, led to his leaving Cliffe, or possibly being turned out of it, to the great regret and sorrow of his parishioners, who had learned to love and trust him.
The inhabitants of the parish of St. John the Evangelist, Friday Street, Cheapside, unanimously chose him as their minister in 1652; and though he speaks of it as the smallest in London, it is evident that he remained there six or seven years. He must have married Miss White on his first settlement in the metropolis. That he would gladly have gone elsewhere is rendered probable by his declaration that Cromwell twice refused to present him to a living worth four hundred pounds a year, though he was the nominee of the patron. In July 1657 the Protector, however, gave Annesley the Lord's Day evening lecture at St. Paul's, which brought him one hundred and twenty pounds a year; and twelve months after, through the favour of Richard Cromwell, he was made vicar of St. Giles', Cripplegate, against the wish of some of the inhabitants, who at the Restoration petitioned Charles II. for his removal. That monarch, however, confirmed him in his living—possibly because he did not wish to make too rapid or sweeping changes.
Dr. Annesley had been a prominent man among the Puritan divines, whether he approved of the execution of the "martyred King" or no, for he had been one of the commissioners appointed by the Act of Parliament for the approbation and admission of ministers of the Gospel after the Presbyterian manner. No doubt he would have liked to have retained his living and won the favour of the King, for his ancestral instincts were likely to make him Royalist rather than Roundhead. But when it came to a question of conscience he was firm to his principles, and in 1662, when the Act of Uniformity was passed, he refused to subscribe to it, and, like Howe and Baxter, and two thousand of the best and most prominent clergy of the time, was ejected on St. Bartholomew's Day. The Earl of Anglesey strove hard to persuade his kinsman to conform, and promised him preferment; but it was impossible to move him, and he frequently preached in private, though ten years elapsed before the Declaration of Indulgence made it safe for him to get the Meeting House in Little St. Helen's licensed, where he officiated to a large and affectionate congregation till his death. He was a remarkably handsome man, tall and dignified, and of a very robust constitution, and several of his children resembled him in personal beauty. Comparison of his portraits with those of living types, show that his aquiline nose, short upper lip, wavy brown hair, and peculiarly strong and durable sight, have been largely transmitted to his descendants. Few of them, however, have been tall, although the majority have been strong and hardy.
He was devotedly fond of his wife, and their family increased annually and even oftener. There were two boys, Samuel who died in India, and Benjamin who was executor to his father's will, but most of the children were girls. Judith was a very handsome and strong-minded woman, whose portrait was painted by Sir Peter Lely; Anne was a wit as well as a beauty, and married a rich man; Elizabeth, who married Dunton, the eccentric bookseller, was very pretty, sweet-natured, and perhaps as near perfection as any mortal can be. There was also a Sarah and three others, of whom all we know is that they grew up to womanhood and married. Susanna was slim and very pretty, and retained her good looks and symmetry of figure to old age, although she was the mother of nineteen children.
There is a well-known anecdote of the Rev. Thomas Manton, who, after christening Susanna, was asked by a friend how many olive branches Dr. Annesley had; he replied that it was either a couple of dozen or a quarter of a hundred. It is probable, however, that out of this large number several died in infancy. Still, the quiver was very full indeed, though, the parents not being by any means poor, all who survived were well cared for and solidly educated.