Charles Wesley—His Final Years and Legacy The four years between 1784 and Charles Wesley's death can appear anticlimactic. With his brother firmly fixed on a policy of ordinations, Charles was excluded from any significant participation in the decision-making process. He had not occupied a central place in John's counsels for many years and after the events of 1784 this isolation was made complete. Charles remained a figure of local importance in London and Bristol, but his influence on a national level had receded. The first generation of Methodists was passing away, men and women who had known Charles during the heroic years of his itinerancy; his hymns were sung in every chapel but younger worshippers would have known little of their author. It is noticeable when reading the correspondence of lay Methodists during the period 1770–90 that while John is mentioned on a regular basis, there is little reference to his brother outside of his circle of friends and sympathizers. This slide into relative obscurity was exacerbated by the fact that Charles published very little with the exception of his hymns, many of which were in any case issued under the brothers' joint names. By contrast, John Wesley travelled ceaselessly and by the time of his death in March 1791, was a legend to Methodist and non-Methodist alike.1 John also produced a neverending stream of publications on subjects as diverse as medicine and French grammar; these helped to keep his name in the public eye and have provided a readily available source of research material ever since.
1 One non-Methodist obituary described Wesley as 'one of the most extraordinary characters this or any age ever produced'. Anonymous, 'Obituary of John Wesley',
Gentleman's Magazine, 69 (1791), 284.
214 Charles—Final Years and Legacy Charles's disappearance from public view and the lack of information concerning his ministry was a godsend to his opponents. As we have seen, within a few years of his death, deliberate efforts were made to rewrite aspects of Methodist history and his contribution was specifically identified as an area of concern. This chapter will examine the state of Charles's reputation and relations with others as his life came to a close and will also look beyond 1788 to the survival of the Anglican-Methodist ethos that he personified.
RELATIONS BETWEEN THE BROTHERS It is a commonly held opinion that the Wesley brothers ultimately agreed to disagree concerning the Methodist relationship with the Church of England. Charles stated as much himself in his letters: in April 1787, he told his brother: 'Let us agree to differ, I leave
America and Scotland to your latest thoughts and recognitions.'2
Such evidence has been used to paint a picture of men who were able to resolve their differences just in time for the final curtain. Gill summed up the general scholarly opinion as follows: 'Although John's action almost broke his brother's heart, the latter never carried out his threat to dissolve the partnership, and remained at his side until the end ...There was no further bitterness.'3 There is some truth in this interpretation, as the Wesleys, for all that they bitterly—and often publicly—disagreed, never made a complete break on a personal level, although they came perilously close on more than one occasion.
Charles probably spoke for both men when he wrote to John on 8 September 1785: 'I thank you for your intention to remain my friend; herein my heart is as your heart; whom God hath joined let not man put asunder. We have taken each other for better or worse, till death do us—part? No; but unite eternally. Therefore in the love which never faileth, I am your affectionate friend and brother.'4 In the weeks before Charles's death in March 1788, John's concern was unmistakable. He wrote to his brother in February urging him to go
2 Quoted by Tyerman, John Wesley, iii. 523. 3 Gill, Charles Wesley, 200.
4 Quoted by Tyerman, John Wesley, iii. 447.
Charles—Final Years and Legacy 215 out every day and not to worry about financial expense, as he would want for nothing while John was alive.5 He wrote also to Charles's children with suggestions as to how their father's decline could be reversed.6
However, there is evidence to indicate that there was coldness in the fraternal relationship until the very end and even afterwards. Even as he was writing to John in September 1785 that those 'whom God hath joined let not man put asunder',7 Charles must have been preparing for the press his anonymous attack on Thomas Coke and his brother, as this was published towards the end of the same year.8 This could hardly be described as an olive branch. Charles never tempered his attitude to separation or its advocates: at the conclusion of the Bristol
Conference in 1786 he preached from one of his favourite texts 'I will bring the third part through the fire', and in July 1787 he gave a highly inflammatory address to the London society concerning the ordinations: 'I told you forty years ago that from among yourselves grievous wolves would arise who would rend and tear the flock. You now see my words are fulfilled. These self-created Bishops and selfmade priests are the very men; but I charge you all in the presence of God never receive the Sacrament of any of them ...'9 One might argue that John Pawson, who is our source for the speech, was exaggerating, but there would have been little reason to do so in the context of a private letter, and certainly the sentiments and aggressive style are what people had come to expect from Charles Wesley when his passions were aflame. Pawson made the valid point that Charles was urging the people not to receive the Sacraments from John Wesley himself
'for who but he is the self-created Bishop?'10 In fairness, Charles was probably referring to Thomas Coke but the description could equally be applied to his brother.
Much has been made of the episode where John collapsed in tears in Bolton chapel when one of Charles's hymns was announced just after his death.11 This has been seen as proof that their relationship
5 Gill, Charles Wesley, 222. 6 Ibid. 223.
7 Quoted by Tyerman, John Wesley, iii. 447.
8 [Charles Wesley], Strictures on the substance of a sermon.
9 John Pawson to [Charles Atmore], MS letter, 8 August 1787 (MCA: PLP 82.8.1).
11 Gill, Charles Wesley, 225; Brailsford, A Tale of Two Brothers, 281.
216 Charles—Final Years and Legacy had survived the tensions of the preceding forty years. An equally valid interpretation is that John wept because they had not been close and that was a source of deep hurt now that reconciliation on this side of the grave was impossible. If one accepts that the personal bond between the Wesleys was severely weakened at the end of their lives, this would explain Charles's surprisingly short obituary in the printed minutes of the 1788 Conference. With regard to his brother's ministry, all that John had to say was 'his least praise, was his talent for poetry'.12 This was scant acknowledgement for a man whom he had once regarded as his most valuable colleague and closest friend.
Even after his death, Charles retained the ability to irritate his older brother. His refusal to be buried at City Road Chapel because the ground was unconsecrated annoyed John so much that on 14 May
1788, just weeks after the funeral, he wrote a letter that was subsequently published in the Arminian Magazine.13 This condemned the consecration of churches and churchyards as a 'mere relic of Romish superstition' and he concluded with the following dismissive observation: 'I wonder that any sensible Protestant should think it right to countenance it: much more that any reasonable man should plead for the necessity of it! Surely it is high time now that we should be guided, not by custom, but by Scripture and Reason.'14 As was customary when the Wesleys attacked one another in print, no names were mentioned, but as Charles's refusal to be interred at City Road was common knowledge among the preachers,15 John's pointed rebuttal would not have gone unnoticed.
Part of the problem was that the Wesleys were too much alike.
Both were exceptionally strong characters raised in a family that attached great importance to fighting for one's principles. Once
Charles became aware of the fact that he had been too much under John's influence, the stage was set for an intermittent clash of wills that lasted for decades. Neither was willing to abandon his viewpoint and they became equally disillusioned with each other. The extent of this is easier to document with Charles as he wore his heart very much
12 Conference Minutes, i. 201.
13 John Wesley, 'Thoughts on the Consecration of Churches and Burial Grounds', Arminian Magazine, 11 (1788), 541–3.
15 John Pawson to [Charles Atmore], MS letter, 28 April 1788 (MCA: PLP 82.4.4).
Charles—Final Years and Legacy 217 on his sleeve, but John was equally stubborn, and even at the end of Charles's life seems to have expected his younger brother to fall into line with his instructions. It would, of course, be too much to say that their differences were solely the product of sibling conflict, but it had a part to play.
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE REACTIONS TO CHARLES WESLEY'S DEATH The Methodist response to Charles Wesley's demise was mixed, running the gamut of reaction from grief through indifference to satisfaction at his removal. Within the London and Bristol societies, there was considerable dismay. On 6 April 1788 the prominent itinerant Samuel Bradburn preached Charles's funeral sermon at the premier chapels of West Street and City Road;16 the services were well attended and there were displays of emotion.17 News of Charles's death reached Bristol on 31 March, and the itinerant John Valton, who owed a part in his own conversion to Charles's ministry, reported the reaction in his diary:
Just before preaching, word was brought me that that man of God Mr Charles Wesley was dead. I mentioned this awful circumstance to the society.
Tears and cries took place through the [New] Room, and had I not given out a hymn, I do not know what would have been the consequence. One woman continued in fits for some time.18
Charles's personal ministry had clearly made a considerable impression on the lives of people in his vicinity. According to Pawson, funeral sermons were also preached in Hull, Newcastle, and Sheffield, and chapels in London, Bristol, and Sheffield were put in mourning.19
However, one must question whether people outside London and Bristol could have felt much grief for a man who was a stranger to 16 Samuel Bradburn, MS Memoranda book 1, 6 April 1788 (MCA: Diaries collection).
17 Telford, Charles Wesley, 291–2.
18 John Valton, MS diary, 31 March 1788 (MCA: Diaries collection).
19 John Pawson to [Charles Atmore], MS letter, 28 April 1788 (MCA: PLP 82.4.4).
218 Charles—Final Years and Legacy them. Charles had abandoned the itinerancy more than thirty years before his death and would have been nothing more than a name to the majority of British Methodists. An examination of diaries from the period indicates that lay people and preachers outside Bristol and London tended not to remark on Charles's passing:20 one exception is John Pawson whose comments will be discussed later. It is true that Methodist diaries were often vehicles for spiritual self-examination rather than comment on current affairs, but one might have expected some reference to the death of one of the early leaders of the Connexion and the brother of John Wesley. An absence of a personal name in primary sources is difficult to interpret, but the most likely explanation in this case is that outside his localized ministry, the death of Charles Wesley represented a ripple rather than a splash in Methodist affairs.
A further indication of the depressed state of Charles's public profile can be seen in the non-Methodist reporting of his passing. John
Wesley's obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1791 extended to three pages;21 Charles warranted three lines in the 1788 issue22 despite being referred to as the co-founder of the Methodist movement. The obituary of a Northumberland fisherman appears on the same page— his death merited nine lines although his only claim to fame was a minor role in the 1715 Jacobite rebellion and, what was probably of more interest to the readership, that he had married at the age of eighty-two and fathered three children. It is obvious that Charles's death was of little public interest and then only as the 'brother of the celebrated Mr John W'.23
Some of the preachers were pleased to see the back of Charles Wesley. John Pawson made his dislike of the dying man abundantly clear in a letter written to Charles Atmore: '[Thomas Coke] says that Charles Wesley breaks fast. I cannot say that I am sorry for it, as I really think he [will] not do much good in this world whatever may
20 The following manuscripts diaries were consulted; John Goodfellow of Ditcheat, R. Bennet Dugdale of Dublin and the itinerant preacher Zachariah Yewdall (MCA:
21 Anonymous, 'Obituary of John Wesley', Gentleman's Magazine, 69 (1791), 282–4.
22 Anonymous, 'Obituary of Charles Wesley', Gentleman's Magazine, 63 (1788), 368.
Charles—Final Years and Legacy 219 become of him in the next.'24 Pawson returned to the subject with grim relish in his manuscript narrative for the year 1788:
This year also Mr Charles Wesley died. It was said that he died in peace.
However that might be God knows, but he died as he had lived for many years full of High Church bigotry, and left no good testimony behind him that I could hear of. I have known so much of his conduct for some years past, that I cannot conceive how he could be saved without deep repentance ...O that all bitter zeal and High Church bigotry may die with him, and be buried in his grave for ever, amen.25
John Pawson was at the extreme end of the separatist party and it is unlikely that his colleagues among the body of itinerants would have approved of his venom. However, it is important to note that he went on to serve two terms as President of Conference, and played a leading role in Methodist affairs in the crucial decades immediately before and after John Wesley's death. His friend and sympathizer Atmore also served as President, and wrote the popular Methodist Memorial,26 which remains an important source for the lives of the early preachers. Such men helped to influence the evolution of the nineteenthcentury image of early Methodism, and given their views of Charles
Wesley, it is surprising that they left him with any reputation at all.
THE CONTINUING CHURCH-METHODIST STRUGGLE The fact that Charles Wesley was a largely forgotten figure by the time of his death does not mean that his views died with him. Jackson described Charles's allies as 'croakers and busy-bodies',27 implying that they were few in number and represented more of an irritant
24 John Pawson to [Charles Atmore], MS letter, 17 March 1788 (MCA: PLP 82.4.3).
25 Entwisle, MS account of the life of John Pawson, 36.
26 Charles Atmore, The Methodist Memorial; being an impartial sketch of the lives and characters of the preachers, who have departed this life since the commencement of the work of God, among the people called Methodists, late in Connection with the Rev. John Wesley, deceased. Drawn from the most authentic sources and disposed in alphabetical order. Introduced with a brief account of the state of religion from the earliest age and a concise History of Methodism. To which is added, a chronological list of the preachers who are now engaged in the same Work (Bristol: Richard Edwards, 1801).
27 Jackson, Charles Wesley, ii. 137.
220 Charles—Final Years and Legacy than an influence, but the reality was very different. The pro-Church party comprised not only the wealthiest and most influential laymen in the Connexion but many ordinary Methodists who felt an equal if not greater loyalty to the Church of England than to the societies.
Class constraints and educational limitations ensured that such people were not as vocal as Durbin or Horton, but their collective influence was significant and long-lasting. It is to this survival of Charles
Wesley's Anglican-Methodist vision that our attention is now turned.
The 1790s were a decade of great turbulence within Methodist affairs. John Wesley's death in April 1791 exposed disagreements between his successors on a range of matters from the question of episcopacy to that of lay representation in Conference. One of the central issues remained the link with the Church of England. By his ordinations and Deed of Declaration, John made legal separation possible, but he stubbornly maintained to the very end of his life that Methodism remained an integral part of the Church. This particular bone of contention was left to his successors to deal with.
The Anglican–Methodist question was addressed for the first time by a post-Wesley Conference in 1792 when it was decreed that 'The Lord's Supper shall not be administered by any person among our societies ...for the ensuing year, on any consideration whatsoever, except in London.'28 The delegates also ruled that worship at the time of Anglican church-hours should not be introduced in any new place without the consent of Conference. The strong feelings that this issue provoked are not reflected in the bare record of decisions in the printed Conference minutes, but John Pawson commented upon the mood of the meeting in a letter written to the pro-Anglican preacher
Joseph Benson: 'I am at present exceeding sorrowful ...The reason is, what I heard and saw [at] the last Conference ...such disorder, such confusion, such burning anger, such storms of passion ...The people tell me that they have heard that we had a very peaceable Conference.
I really do not know what to say to them.'29
Opinion was so divided on the Sacramental issue that recourse was made to drawing lots to determine policy for the following year and 28 Conference Minutes, i. 260. London was an exception because of the presence of Anglican clergymen who were working within the Methodist society and were allowed to administer Communion by virtue of their orders.
29 John Pawson to Joseph Benson, MS letter, 1 September 1792 (MCA: PLP 82.8.6).
Charles—Final Years and Legacy 221 Pawson acknowledged that many itinerants were either undecided on the question of separation or were opposed. In a letter written before Conference gathered, he revealed that even Thomas Coke had swung towards a pro-Anglican viewpoint30 and went on to say that the separatists would certainly be out-voted at the forthcoming assembly.
These violent and seemingly contradictory swings in opinion require explanation. Just seven years before, Pawson had been convinced that the majority of preachers and laymen were in favour of turning their backs on the Anglican Church,31 yet by 1792 this had apparently changed. Part of the explanation lies in the fact that there was a perceptible shift to a conservative position in response to John Wesley's death. Now that the preachers were in the drivingseat, they were unsure of the future and until such time as their confidence increased, they displayed a natural reluctance to deviate from the Wesleyan legacy, which point was specifically stated by the Conference of 1791.32 Also, the secular political situation had changed dramatically in the preceding three years. The terrors that accompanied the French Revolution resulted in suspicion of nonEstablishment elements within British society. At a time when fear of civil war and sectarian conflict surfaced again in the public mind and was reflected in government policy, it benefited the Methodists to be associated with the Church of England. Formal separation from the ecclesiastical arm of the State no longer seemed a good idea to men such as Thomas Coke who declared in a letter to Joseph
I see a separation from the Established Church, whether gradual or immediate, pregnant with all the evils you mention. It would probably drive away from us and from God thousands of our People. We should lose our grand field of action. When once the members of the Established Church had embraced a confirmed idea that we were a proper Dissenting body, they would pass by the doors of our meeting houses ...More than this we should soon
30 'Not that he cares a straw for the Church, but he thinks that if we separate from it, then our usefulness would be at an end, as the Church people would not come to hear us.' John Pawson to Charles Atmore, MS letter, 15 June 1792 (MCA: PLP 82.8.5).
31 Entwisle, MS account of the life of John Pawson, 32.
32 'We engage to follow strictly the plan which Mr Wesley left us at his death.'
Conference Minutes, i. 246.
222 Charles—Final Years and Legacy imbibe the Political Spirit of the Dissenters; nor should I be much surprised, if in a few years some of our people, warmest in politics, and coolest in religion, would toast ...a bloody summer and a headless King.33
Coke even ventured to criticize John Wesley's policy of ordinations, describing it as a 'great imprudence and will be very prejudicial, unless—(what shall I say?)—God intended by suffering us to run into error, to bring about a sifting time'.34
With the supporters of separation on the defensive, Church Methodists were quick to make a stand for what was now seen as traditional Wesleyanism and a gesture of support for King and Country. In Newcastle in early 1792, there were angry protests when the preacher Joseph Cownley administered the Sacraments.35 In response, the powerful Newcastle loyalists decided that the trust deed to the Orphan House chapel should be examined to ensure that the society would continue to be run in accordance with Wesley's
'old plan'. They resolved that vacant trustee positions would only be filled 'with such persons as strictly adhered to Mr Wesley's principles, and by a new deed ...to preserve the House to the purposes for which it was originally intended'.36 The Newcastle separatists were not completely cowed by this dramatic change in the political and religious climate. In May 1792, Charles Atmore and Joseph Cownley ordained three preachers in the town, although Atmore himself entertained doubts as to the 'strict propriety' of such a step. Writing after the Manchester preachers followed the Newcastle example,
Atmore admitted that 'these proceedings injured the cause they were intended to promote. They produced general alarm both among the preachers and the people.'37 Such was the furore that the 1792 Conference decreed that no further ordinations were to take place without Conference consent on pain of expulsion.38
The primary sources reveal that British Methodism during the early 1790s was riddled with fear and uncertainty. The Sacramental issue and other matters directly related to the Church of England
33 Thomas Coke to Joseph Benson, MS letter, 15 July 1791 (MCA: PLP 28/7/22).
35 William Stamp, The Orphan House of Wesley with Notices of Early Methodism in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and its Vicinity (London: John Mason, 1863), 164–78.
36 Quoted by Stamp, ibid. 167.
37 Ibid. 169. 38 Conference Minutes, i. 259–60.
Charles—Final Years and Legacy 223 would in themselves have been sufficient cause for worry, and to these were added concerns connected with the worsening international situation. These strands were drawn together by Sarah Crosby in a letter of January 1794 to Mary Fletcher:
This should indeed 'be a season of much faith and prayer' for it is an awful period of time ...I trust, He will defend our nation: and bless our King and Queen ...With regard to Church matters: we do as you have observed, for which many have blamed us; and said we were too quiet. As we, and many are decidedly for the Old Plan, which has not hitherto been interrupted at Leeds.
But Mr Hanby has been giving the Sacraments at several Societies around it; at which many are grieved. Could it be as you observe, none need object, but we know it has caused divisions in every place, where they have tried it ...
W. Westerman made some stir about it at the first, and a few persons have left the Society.39
It is interesting to note that Fletcher and Crosby were Anglican loyalists and yet were radical in important aspects of their ecclesiology, most notably in the fact that they were among the earliest Methodist female preachers. This is one more illustration of the ambiguity and contradiction that was an intrinsic part of Wesley's movement and, more subtly, of the denomination in which Methodism was born.
Conference during the 1790s was a battleground. It is unnecessary to provide a detailed account of the controversies, but a glance at what happened behind the scenes at one Conference, that of 1794, is illuminating. A memoranda book of Charles Atmore records that a delegation of trustees from London and Bristol presented an address from a general meeting of Church Methodists complaining that itinerants had tried to introduce innovations and that local de facto separation was the result in some circuits. The trustees made certain demands designed to pull the movement back into line with the position bequeathed by John Wesley. These included the immediate discontinuation of ordinations and use of such titles as Reverend, exclusive administration of the Sacraments by Anglican clergymen, and the decision that 'the temporal and spiritual affairs shall be
39 Sarah Crosby to Mary Fletcher, MS letter, 24–9 January 1794 (MCA: MAM Fl 2.5A/10).
224 Charles—Final Years and Legacy divided. The latter to be conducted by the preachers and the former by the trustees and people.'40
The result was a long and heated discussion among the preachers, who were of course the only voting members of the assembly, and the drawing up of a list of those specific places where the Lord's
Supper could be administered, namely where 'the society has been unanimous for it, and would not have been contented without it'.
A letter was drafted and sent to the societies essentially agreeing to many of the trustees' demands.41 There is no reference in the printed minutes to the background behind the decisions or the acrimony that attended them.
The disputes of the 1790s resulted in a series of compromises culminating in the 'Plan of Pacification' hammered out at the 1795
Conference. This decreed that Communion, baptism, and burial of the dead would be administered in chapels only with the consent of the majority of trustees, stewards, and leaders. Communion would be administered according to Anglican rites and never on Sundays where it was available in the parish church.42 The Plan of Pacification ended the major disputes over the separation question as it appears to have been regarded by the contending parties as a fair compromise.
In any case, worry over this decades-old problem was swiftly replaced by more pressing concerns over the question of democracy within the Connexion.
RESULTS OF THE PLAN OF PACIFICATION The Plan of Pacification has been regarded as marking the final defeat of Church Methodism.43 There are grounds for this view as society after society petitioned Conference for the rights on offer,44 accompanied by a stream of anti-separatists leaving the movement, including
40 Charles Atmore, MS Memoranda book, 1776–1811 (MCA: Diaries collection).
41 Conference Minutes, i. 299–300. 42 Ibid. 322–3.
43 Harrison, The Separation of Methodism from the Church of England, 56–7; Oliver Beckerlegge, 'The Church Methodists', Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 34
(September 1963), 64; Thomas Percival Bunting, The Life of Jabez Bunting (London:
Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1859), i. 86–7.
44 Harrison, The Separation of Methodism, 57.
Charles—Final Years and Legacy 225 such important laymen as William Hey of Leeds and Henry Durbin of Bristol. How many people left over this issue cannot be accurately determined but it seems to have been a problem throughout the country. Durbin's obituary in the Methodist Magazine remarks that he was joined by 'many other respectable persons, who had long been highly valued by us'.45 In the Methodist heartland of west Yorkshire local Methodists left the society in protest over the Sacramental issue,46 while in Newcastle three class leaders and twenty members withdrew after the disturbances of 1792;47 and later in the decade there was a secession of Church Methodists in the Lancashire town of Oldham.48 Taken nationally, it appears that the number of people who returned to the Church of England was quite significant.
The effects of this split were hidden by the phenomenal growth of Methodism during the first half of the nineteenth century. At the time of Wesley's death there were 72,476 members in the British Isles
(including Ireland).49 By 1800 this figure had reached 109,91150 and by 1825 it was a quarter of a million.51 Despite recurring financial problems and damaging secessions, Wesleyan Methodism by 1850 could legitimately claim to be the most important Protestant denomination in the British Isles after the Church of England. There were
323,000 Wesleyans in Britain in 1851, and when other Methodist denominations are included, membership of the Methodist family stood at well over half a million.52
CHARLES WESLEY AS THE SYMBOL OF A LOST CAUSE Wesleyan prosperity as an independent body led to considerable triumphalism in works of Victorian denominational history. In 1878
Abel Stevens referred to the movement's 'prevalent and permanent 45 John Pawson, 'A Short Account of Mr Henry Durbin', Methodist Magazine, 22
46 Sarah Crosby to Mary Fletcher, MS letter, 24–9 January 1794 (MCA: MAM Fl.
47 Stamp, The Orphan House of Wesley, 166.
48 Smith, Religion in Industrial Society, 169–70.
49 Conference Minutes, i. 244. 50 Ibid. ii. 53–4. 51 Ibid. vi. 42.
52 Figures extracted from Conference Minutes and from Robert Currie, Methodism Divided: A Study in the Sociology of Ecumenicalism (London: Faber & Faber, 1968), 87.
226 Charles—Final Years and Legacy success',53 while Telford declared: 'if judgement is to be passed on the basis of results, John Wesley's policy is triumphantly vindicated'.54
The impression given in such works is that by severing the Anglican link, the Methodist movement finally slipped its leash and fulfilled its true potential. This is reflected in the assessment of Charles Wesley's post-1756 contribution. Stevens adopted a pitying tone when he discussed Charles's reaction to the events of 1784: 'The poet was no legislator; he became pathetic in his remonstrances to his brother ...He did soon after go to his grave in peace, except the alarms of his imaginary fears.'55 George Smith in 1857 was equally dismissive:
It is no serious dispraise of him [Charles Wesley] to say, that in one respect he was inferior to his brother John. Charles seemed either to cleave to the Established Church with more earnest tenacity, or not so fully to appreciate the vital importance of the work of God in the Methodist Societies as his brother. He certainly did on some important occasions allow his devotedness to the Church to warp his judgement ...But, considering the magnitude of the work originated ...it is evidently taking too limited a view of it, to suppose that there was no overruling Providence ...Who now can say, that the retarding influence of Charles Wesley for a time was not thus rendered subservient to the constitution of the proper character of Methodism, as was the more enlarged and enlightened judgement of his elder brother?56
Smith's indictment may have been couched in the usual pious language of the period, but it was in its own way as damning as Pawson's violent denunciations of Charles Wesley's character and prospects for salvation.
The nineteenth-century view of Charles Wesley should be looked at in the context of what B. W. Young has termed the Victorian preoccupation with 'present-centred history'.57 Stevens, Smith, and Telford were writing an interpretation of Methodism that was founded on the perceived reality of the Wesleyan Church of their own day rather than attempting a balanced assessment of events
53 Stevens, History of Methodism, ii. 165. 54 Telford, Charles Wesley, 283.
55 Stevens, History of Methodism, ii. 165.
56 George Smith, History of Wesleyan Methodism, 3 vols. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1857–8), i. 582.
57 B. W. Young, 'Knock-Kneed Giants: Victorian Representations of EighteenthCentury Thought', in Jane Garnett and Colin Matthew (eds.), Revival and Religion since 1700: Essays for John Walsh (London: Hambledon, 1993), 92.
Charles—Final Years and Legacy 227 of a century previously. Young's summation of the effects of this brand of scholarship could have been written with the reporting of Charles Wesley in mind: 'history was inevitably distorted: heroes and villains were identified and religious and philosophical movements measured against the requirements of the times ...the late twentiethcentury scholar has to engage with the ...[Victorians'] prejudices and blindspots'.58
THE SURVIVAL OF THE CHURCH METHODIST TRADITION In dismissing Charles, historians also downplayed the role and influence of Church Methodism in general, and this applies not merely to the late eighteenth century but to its continuation. Not all Anglican
Methodists left in the 1790s. John Horton, for example, remained true to Charles Wesley's vision until he died in 1802, while the Bristol merchant James Ireland maintained a neutral stance in the controversies and continued quietly to support both Anglican and Methodist causes.59
Many other Wesleyans continued to value the link with the Church for years after the Plan of Pacification. Typical of this group was the prominent laywoman Mrs Dobinson who pioneered the movement in Derby. When she died in 1803 after a long and useful ministry,
Dobinson had a funeral sermon preached at the chapel but was interred at the parish church in keeping with her wish to 'be buried as an old Methodist'.60 The businessman Harvey Walklate Mortimer was a leading light of the London society for many years and was regarded by John Wesley as a model lay official. As the treasurer of City Road
Chapel, Mortimer fought a successful battle to preserve the link with the Church of England within that congregation until his death in 1826.61 Nor was this duality confined to the older generation; Mary
Tooth of Madeley served as a class leader for many years but was 58 Ibid. 59 Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, ed. Lewis, i. 594.
60 Anthony Seckerson, 'An Account of Mrs Dobinson', Methodist Magazine, 26 (1803), 557–66; Anonymous, 'Early Methodism in Derby', Christian Miscellany
61 Stevenson, City Road Chapel, 153 and 554–5.
228 Charles—Final Years and Legacy buried at the parish church in 1843,62 while the prominent London bookseller William Baynes was regular in his attendance at both City
Road Chapel and his parish church, where he served as churchwarden and assisted at Communion.63
At this indistinct boundary between the Church and the Methodist movement, people such as Mortimer and Mary Tooth acted as a link between the two traditions to the enrichment of both. In Bristol in 1796, local Methodists were regular in their attendance on the ministry of the Evangelical Anglicans William Tandey and Thomas
Tregenna Biddulph and collaborated with Biddulph in the introduction of a series of evening lectures at St Werburgh's Church, much to the annoyance of the local preachers.64
The most perfect realization of the Church Methodist ideal occurred in the Shropshire town of Madeley, where the ministry of the chapel and the parish church were both subject to the oversight of the remarkable Mary Fletcher. Prior to her marriage to the Anglican
Evangelical John Fletcher, Mary had been the first female preacher to be sanctioned by John Wesley. After her husband's death in 1785 she continued a personal ministry in her husband's former parish that ignored the gulf between Methodism and the Church. She built a chapel, one of the trustees of which was the Anglican incumbent, and also exercised the privilege of appointing the curate of the parish.
After Mary's death in 1815, her companion Mary Tooth continued her legacy until the 1840s but with diminishing success.65
Several prominent nineteenth-century Anglican Evangelicals had Church-Methodist connections. Thomas Truebody Thomason, the pioneering missionary to India, was the stepson of Josiah Dornford, active in both Methodist and Anglican causes and a close friend of Mary Fletcher.66 John Ryle, the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool, was the son and grandson of men who financed the building of Wesleyan chapels in Macclesfield and served as trustees, while at the same time
62 Anonymous, 'Recent Deaths [Mary Tooth]', Methodist Magazine, 66 (1843), 1036–7.
63 Stevenson, City Road Chapel, 422–3.
64 Elizabeth Ritchie to Mary Fletcher, MS letter, 28 June 1796 (MCA: MAM Fl.
65 Fletcher-Tooth Archive (MCA: MAM Fl.).
66 Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, ed. Lewis, ii. 1096; Fletcher-Tooth Archive (MCA: MAM Fl.) Charles—Final Years and Legacy 229 remaining members of the Established Church.67 At a less prominent level also there are examples of Victorian Anglican ministers who were proud to have Methodist antecedents. Two of the sons of Joseph Benson, President of Conference in 1798 and 1810, entered the Anglican priesthood with their father's blessing,68 as did the son of Harvey Walklate Mortimer.69 Perhaps more predictably, Charles
Wesley's grandson was also a minister of the Church of England and finished his days as Subdean of the Chapel Royal and Chaplain-inOrdinary to Queen Victoria—his grandfather, after whom he was named, would certainly have approved.
On a society level also, Church Methodism was a vital force for decades after the Wesleys died.70 It remained the custom in several places such as Manchester, Macclesfield, and Bradford for Methodist congregations collectively to attend Sacramental worship at the parish church.71 In 1821 the Vicar of Bridgerule in Devon wrote of the local
Methodists that 'They all attend [the parish] Church as the House of God, and more regularly than those who have no such meeting.'72
As late as 1870 a few chapels were still refusing to allow preachers to administer the Sacraments or permit worship during the hours of Anglican services.73
The strongest expression of pro-Anglican sentiment occurred in Ireland where in the three years from 1815 over 10,000 Wesleyans, constituting more than one-third of the national membership, left the parent Connexion rather than receive the Sacraments from Methodist
67 Benjamin Smith, Methodism in Macclesfield (London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1875), 74–6, 230–1, and 255; Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, ed. Lewis, ii. 967.
68 Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, ed. Lewis, i. 84–5.
69 Elizabeth Mortimer to Mary Fletcher, MS letter, 14 February 1806 (MCA: MAM Fl. 6.7.23).
70 In 1788 at Cornelius Bayley's proprietary church of St James in Manchester, which was the largest Anglican congregation in the city, one-quarter of the seat holders were Methodists, contributing a total of 350 worshippers. E. A. Rose, 'Cornelius
Bayley and the Manchester Methodists', Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 34 (September 1964), 155–6.
72 Quoted by Arthur Warne, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century Devon (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1969), 109.
73 Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1, 2nd edn., An Ecclesiastical History of England, 5 (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1970), 370–1.
230 Charles—Final Years and Legacy preachers.74 The rebels established the Primitive Wesleyan Methodist Connexion in 1818, which reached a membership peak of just under 16,000 in 1844, and remained a society within the Anglican Church until 1878 when it rejoined the parent Methodist body after Irish disestablishment. Special circumstances were of course applicable to Ireland, but it was still an unexpectedly vigorous reaction from a supposedly defeated Church-Methodist party a quarter of a century after John Wesley's death.
There is no doubt that with the passage of years, Methodism established itself more and more as a distinct denomination with aspirations that sometimes produced friction with the Anglicans, but there is equally little doubt that the attachment to the Church of England remained a feature of many societies and individuals for decades after the Wesleys died. This influence extended to aspects of the liturgy and practice of the new Church. The Wesleyans used an abbreviated form of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer until 188275 and ordination as a specific rite was not used between 1793 and 1836— itinerants were instead 'received' into Connexion.76 This is not to say that Methodism was a pale imitation of the Church of England; whether Charles Wesley would have agreed or not, his personal ministry had helped to establish forms of worship and devotional practice that became cornerstones of a new denomination. Chapels and circuits were administered on very different lines from the parish system, while the Conference and its officials had no Anglican counterpart.
The Wesleyan Church, which was the original Methodist body, was the denomination that preserved the closest link with the Anglican past. Break-aways from the Wesleyans such as the Methodist
New Connexion tended to be further removed from the Church of England. However, the Wesleyans were by a considerable margin the largest and most influential branch of British Methodism and the one with the greatest overseas outreach.
The Anglican contribution to the hybrid character of the Wesleyan body received scant acknowledgement from Methodist 74 F. Jeffery, 'Church Methodists in Ireland', Proceedings of the Wesley Historical
Society, 34 (December 1963), 73–5.
75 A Dictionary of Methodism, ed. Vickers, 341. 76 Ibid. 260.
Charles—Final Years and Legacy 231 commentators.77 In part, this was a product of the concentration on the Church as a national body. The activities of policy-makers such as Jabez Bunting received significantly more attention than did analysis of individual societies or the survival of aspects of the movement's
Anglican heritage, and this research gap was carried over into the twentieth century, so that there is still very little known about the views of ordinary Methodists at this crucial time. There was a wish in the denominational histories to promote the separate identity and astonishing vibrancy of this new Church and applaud the fact that John Wesley had laid the foundations with such consummate skill. To bring out the fact that many nineteenth-century Methodists actually chose to retain a link with what Tyerman referred to as 'a corrupted church'78 was certainly not on the denominational agenda. There was in certain important quarters of the Methodist ministry a curiosity concerning what might have been achieved if separation had occurred in the middle of the eighteenth century. This is made clear in a passage from Stevens's discussion of the controversy of the 1750s:
Had Methodism taken a more independent stand at this early period, when it had so many intolerable provocations ...and the popular mind so little ground of sympathy with the clergy, it is the opinion of not a few wise men that it might before this time have largely superseded the Anglican hierarchy, and done much more than it has for the dissolution of the unscriptural connection of the Church and State.79
In these comments we are provided with a quite compelling reason why some important Methodists in the Victorian period resented
Charles Wesley for his retarding influence on their denomination's glorious progress.
The distaste that some prominent Methodists felt for the Church of England was exacerbated by the emergence of the Tractarian movement in the 1830s. Anglican dalliance with Roman Catholicism was anathema to men such as Thomas Jackson who published a spirited defence of Methodism against the attacks of the Tractarian Edward
77 For an exception to this tendency, see J. Robinson Gregory and Arthur Gregory, 'Wesleyan Methodism—The Middle Period', in George Eayrs, W. J. Townsend, and H. B. Workman (eds.), A New History of Methodism, 2 vols. (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1909), i. 387–8.
78 Tyerman, John Wesley, ii. 382.
79 Stevens, History of Methodism, i. 313–14.
232 Charles—Final Years and Legacy Pusey in 1842.80 This forms another part of the background to the period when Jackson and other Wesleyans were writing works about the origins of Methodism that did not portray the Church of England or its Methodist champions in a positive light.
One of the important aspects of this question is the way that it illustrates the gulf that exists between the view from the Connexional centre, which is the one that receives the most attention, and what was actually happening in the circuits. It appears that the issues attendant on separation simply passed by many members of the societies. They occupied the minds of important ministers such as Benson, Bradburn, and Moore, but many people simply carried on worship in the way that best suited them. Mary Fletcher stated an important truth when she reassured Sarah Crosby in 1794 that 'none need object' to preachers administering the Sacraments.81 For all the anti-Anglican sentiment apparent in the higher reaches of the Connexion, the Methodists never sought to prevent their members from attending the worship of the Church of England, nor did that Church formally expel them.82 If a Methodist wanted to enjoy the Sacraments in both a Methodist and an Anglican setting, he or she was perfectly entitled to do so.
The intricacies of the Church-Methodist link were of little practical importance to people such as Mrs Dobinson of Derby or the Wesleyans of Bridgerule. They continued to attend both church and chapel and suffered no crisis of conscience. Many of them had been raised as Anglicans and seem to have viewed their continued association with the Established Church almost as a birthright. Rather than signalling the defeat of the Church-Methodist party, the Plan of Pacification allowed Methodism to remain an inclusive organization,
80 Thomas Jackson, A letter to the Rev. Edward B. Pusey, D.D: being a vindication of the tenets and character of the Wesleyan Methodists, against his misrepresentations and censures (London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1842).
81 Sarah Crosby to Mary Fletcher, MS letter, 24–9 January 1794 (MCA: MAM Fl.
82 'The Methodists have never yet, as a body, renounced all connexion with the Establishment; they have never disowned her fundamental doctrines nor prohibited attendance on her services, nor made it binding upon their people to forsake her communion ...Nor have they ever been excommunicated.' [George Osborn], Modern
Methodism, Wesleyan Methodism, Wesleyan Tract for the Times, 5 (London: Wesleyan Conference Office, 1842), 10.
Charles—Final Years and Legacy 233 an important feature of the movement since the earliest days. Once it was realized that people did not have to make a choice, it ceased to be a controversial issue. Anglican Methodism did not disappear after 1795, but remained an integral part of the denominational make-up.
Charles Wesley was not the sad and isolated figure that has been portrayed by historians. Their dismissal of Charles and his allies as an embarrassing irrelevance was a necessary stage in their elevation of John Wesley to the highest place in the Methodist pantheon, despite the fact that he also refused to countenance formal separation.
Charles's views would have struck a chord with many Methodists fifty years or more after he died and this Anglican-Methodist legacy made a permanent contribution to the unique identity and character of the Wesleyan Church.