Susanna Wesley
This is the story of Susanna Wesley, 1669-1742 Mother of Charles and John Wesley, who were founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna and her husband, Samuel, had nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Her son Charles became a well-known hymn writer and her son John became the found of Methodism. Susanna was brought up in a Puritan home as the youngest of twenty-five children. As a teenager, she became a member of the Church of England. She became the wife of a chronically debt-ridden parish rector in an English village. She said, "I have had a large experience of what the world calls adverse fortune." Nonetheless, Susanna managed to pass down to her children Christian principles that stayed with them.
This is the story of Susanna Wesley, 1669-1742 Mother of Charles and John Wesley, who were founders of the Methodist Church. Susanna and her husband, Samuel, had nineteen children, ten of whom survived to adulthood. Her son Charles became a well-known hymn writer and her son John became the found of Methodism.
Susanna was brought up in a Puritan home as the youngest of twenty-five children. As a teenager, she became a member of the Church of England. She became the wife of a chronically debt-ridden parish rector in an English village. She said, "I have had a large experience of what the world calls adverse fortune." Nonetheless, Susanna managed to pass down to her children Christian principles that stayed with them.
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2 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
with a spice of scholarly erudition like his father<br />
before him. Men like John are not born in every<br />
generation, and, when they do arise, are usually the<br />
outcome of a race which has shown talent in isolated<br />
instances, but has never before concentrated all its<br />
strength in one scion.<br />
In the records of such a race there are sure to be<br />
certain foreshadowings of the coming prophet, priest<br />
or seer, and consequently the lives of his progenitors<br />
are full of the deepest interest. Boys usually reproduce<br />
vividly the characteristics of their mothers, so<br />
in the person of <strong>Susanna</strong> <strong>Wesley</strong> we should seek the<br />
hidden springs of the boundless energy and grasp of<br />
mind that made her son stand out so prominently as<br />
a man of mark among his fellows. Had it not been<br />
for him it is probable that her memory would have<br />
perished, for, as far as outsiders saw, she was only the<br />
struggling wife of a poor country parson, with the<br />
proverbial quiverful of children, a narrow income, and<br />
an indomitable fund of what is termed proper pride.<br />
She was the twenty-fifth and youngest child of her<br />
father, Dr. Samuel Annesley, by his second wife, and<br />
was born in Spital Yard on the 20th of January 1669.<br />
On both sides of the house she was of gentle birth.<br />
Her mother's father, John White, born at Higlan<br />
in Pembrokeshire, like so many other Welshmen,<br />
graduated at Jesus College, Oxford ;<br />
he afterwards<br />
studied at the Middle Temple and became a bencher.<br />
He was probably a sound lawyer and a prosperous man,<br />
for we find that he had a goodly number of Puritan<br />
clients, and in 1640 was elected M.P. for Southwark.<br />
In the House he was known as an active and stirring<br />
member of the party opposed to the King, Charles I.,<br />
and in the proceedings that led to the death of that
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