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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YOUTH AND MARRIAGE. 11<br />
worker, and as the course of his education did not for<br />
many years take the direction he desired, he contrived<br />
to earn for himself the University training essential toa<br />
scholar. The foundation of a liberal education was<br />
laid at the Free School, Dorchester, where he remained<br />
till<br />
nearly sixteen, when his father died, leaving a<br />
widow and family in very poor circumstances. The<br />
Dissenting friends of both parents then came forward<br />
and obtained for the promising eldest son an exhibition<br />
of thirty pounds a year, raised among themselves,<br />
and sent him to London, to Mr. Veal's at Stepney,<br />
where he remained for a couple of years.<br />
There are two things almost inseparable from a<br />
tincture of Irish blood at all events in the upper and<br />
cultivated classes a wonderful facility for scribbling<br />
and a hot-headed love of engaging in small controversies.<br />
Both of them speedily came to light in Samuel<br />
<strong>Wesley</strong>, for he at once became a dabbler in rhyme and<br />
faction, and so far pleased his patrons that they printed<br />
a good many of his jeux (f esprit.<br />
Some words of<br />
sound advice were given him by Dr. Owen, who was,<br />
perhaps, afraid that the intoxication of seeing himself<br />
in print might lead to neglect of severer studies. He<br />
counselled the youth to apply<br />
himself to critical learning,<br />
and gilded the pill by a bonus of ten pounds a year<br />
as a reward for good conduct and progress. In consequence<br />
of continual magisterial prosecutions, Mr. Veal<br />
was obliged to give up his establishment, and his clever<br />
young pupil was transferred to that of Mr. Charlea<br />
Morton, M.A., of Newington Green, which then stood<br />
foremost among Dissenting places of education. Samuel<br />
<strong>Wesley</strong>'s mother and a maiden aunt appear to have<br />
migrated to London, and with them he made his home.<br />
Literary work and remuneration opened before him,
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