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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LATER MARRIED LIFE. 27<br />
another child was hourly expected. Every penny<br />
was collected together, but they could only muster six<br />
shillings between them. The coals were sent for, but<br />
the pockets were empty. On Thursday morning there<br />
was a joyful surprise. Kind Archbishop Sharpe, who<br />
knew how poverty pinched the family at Epworth, and<br />
all about the debts, and how hard the rector worked in<br />
hammering rhyme and prose out of his brains for<br />
London publishers, spoke to several of the nobility<br />
about him, and even appealed to the House of Lords in<br />
his behalf. The Countess of Northampton, moved by<br />
the tale of privation, gave twenty pounds for the<br />
Archbishop's proteges, ten of which, at Mr. <strong>Wesley</strong>'s<br />
desire, were left in his Lordship's hands for old Mrs.<br />
<strong>Wesley</strong>, and the other ten were sent by hand to the<br />
Rector, arriving on the morning that found him penniless.<br />
The money was not an hour too soon, for that<br />
very evening twins, a boy and girl,<br />
were born. In,<br />
announcing the event to the Archbishop, Mr. <strong>Wesley</strong><br />
wrote :<br />
" Last night my wife brought me a few children.<br />
There are but two yet, a boy and a girl,<br />
and I think<br />
they are all at present ;<br />
we have had four in two years<br />
and a day, three of which are living."<br />
Neither the twins nor the boy who preceded them<br />
survived many months, and in 1702 Anne was born ;<br />
and the mother having now, for a wonder, only one<br />
baby in hand, while little Mehetabel, or Hetty as<br />
she was called, having attained the dignified age of five<br />
years, Mrs. <strong>Wesley</strong> began to keep regular<br />
school with<br />
her family for six hours a day, and kept<br />
it up, for<br />
twenty years, with only the few unavoidable interruptions<br />
caused by successive confinements, and a fire<br />
at the Rectory.
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