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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162 SUSANNA WESLEY.<br />
the other, Mr. Matthew <strong>Wesley</strong>, having had but one<br />
child of his own (a son, who turned out badly), did<br />
not know how expensive<br />
it was to have for so many<br />
years an ailing wife and an annually increasing family,<br />
and was equally ignorant of the cost of clothing so<br />
large a number of grown-up girls.<br />
His nieces were<br />
no longer children, and were no doubt able to give<br />
him a tolerably correct idea of the true state of<br />
affairs ;<br />
and he seems to have been too kind to have<br />
given pain unless there was good cause for it. He<br />
evidently thought that a man had no business to<br />
surround himself with more olive-branches than he<br />
could afford to bring up decently and provide for ;<br />
but there the Rector differed from him in toto, and<br />
evidently considered that he had considerably benefited<br />
his country by adding so largely to the population.<br />
There is another of Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong>'s letters bearing<br />
the same date; but whether that is exact is not<br />
ascertainable. It is just possible that news of the<br />
accident she relates may have been forwarded to<br />
London immediately after its occurrence, and may<br />
have caused Mr. Matthew <strong>Wesley</strong>'s unexpected<br />
" DEAR " JACKY, July 12th, " 1731.<br />
On Friday, June 4th, I, your sister Martha,<br />
and our maid were going in our waggon to see the<br />
ground we hire of Mrs. Knight at Low Millwood.<br />
Father sat in a chair at one end of the waggon, I<br />
in another at the other end, Mattie between us. and<br />
the maid behind me. Just before we reached the<br />
close, going down a small hill, the horses took into<br />
a gallop, and out flew your father and his chair. The<br />
maid, seeing the horses run, hung all her weight on my
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