Susanna Wesley

TRIALS AND TROUBLES. 45-
whom it was addressed, but contrived to keep
it in
his own hands. Twelve years afterwards, without
the author's consent, he published it, under the title
of " A Letter from a Country Divine to his Friend in
London concerning the Education of Dissenters in
their Private Academies in several parts of this
Nation :
Humbly offered to the consideration of the
Grand Committee of Parliament for Religion now
sitting." The temper of the House at that moment
was one of extreme hostility to Dissenters and eagerness
for their suppression.
The strife waxed quite furious as pamphlet succeeded
pamphlet, and angry passions
arose on all sides. Mr.
Wesley's special antagonist was a Rev. Samuel Palmer,
who, of course, had his adherents, and to such an
extent did this wordy warfare go that Daniel De Foe,
who took his full share in it, was committed to Newgate
in July 1703. Mr. Wesley might, perhaps, have
had the same fate had he lived in London ;
for so
universal was the contention that, according to Dean
Swift, the very cats and dogs discussed it, whilst fine
ladies became such violent partizans of the Low and
High Church
" parties as to have no time to say their
prayers/' The Rector of Epworth, with his sharp
tongue and hot temper, was far more likely to make
enemies than friends at such a time, and no doubt a
great deal of prejudice and ill-feeling was aroused
against him in Lincolnshire, and his wife, as well as
himself, had to bear the brunt of it.
she would have been the last woman
It was a great trial to her to part with her firstborn
son, Samuel, who in 1704 was placed at Westminster,
though
to have stood in the way of her child's advancement.
The boy went to London with his father, probably