Chapter 6: Life in Wesley’s England
Chapter Six
Life in Wesley’s England
Look at these newspaper headlines:
Jobless Rate Goes Up for Sixth Straight Year
Demonstrations and Riots over Job Loss
Military Veterans Come Home to No Benefits
Changing Economy Threatens to Wipe Out Middle Class
Tax Structure Unfair—but to Whom?
Rebels and Terrorists Attack Troops on Holy Day
Hundreds of Thousands More Slide into Poverty
Health Care System Failing; Thousands Without Adequate Care
Those all sound depressingly familiar, don’t they? They come from the headlines we read in the paper every day. Actually, they could come equally well from the United States today and from England in the eighteenth century. Which makes us think again about how anything that John Wesley said in eighteenth century England could possibly be relevant for twenty-first century America. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” We continue to face the same social, economic, and political problems that Wesley faced over 200 years ago. In this chapter, we’ll look at some of the issues Wesley faced in his England. Then, in the rest of the book, we’ll look at some issues from our day, explore parallels with Wesley’s day, see how he responded to the issues, and, finally, identify some ways in which Wesley could be a model for our Christian lives today.
First, the eighteenth century was a century of wars. Sound familiar? During the eighteenth century, Great Britain was involved in
The War of Spanish Succession
The War of the Triple Alliance
The War of the Austrian Succession
King George’s War (in North America)
The Scots Rebellion in support of “Bonnie Prince Charlie”
Colonial wars in India that led to British domination there
The “French and Indian War” in North America
The American Revolution, which also led to war with France and Spain
The Anglo-Dutch war
The French Revolution and war with France
The Irish Rebellion under Wolfe Tone.
And there were wars on the European Continent between other powers, each of which threatened to pull in the British. Great Britain became a military state, with an emphasis on manufacturing guns, powder, ships, uniforms, and so on. The demands of both the army and navy for men meant that young men (and many not so young) spent years in military service. When a war ended, they were discharged, with no benefits or help to ease their way back into society. Even worse was the fate of those who were discharged because they were so severely wounded they could no longer serve. They were left to beg or depend on the charity of others. Finally, the demands for manpower were so great that England alone could not fill the ranks of the army and navy. Thousands of German mercenaries were hired to fight in the armies of England. These included those famous “Hessians” who were so thoroughly hated by the American colonists before and during the American Revolution.
At the same time, the Industrial Revolution was beginning to have an effect on the English society and economy. Early in the eighteenth century, we have the invention of the flying shuttle loom, which led to mass production of textiles. Rubber was introduced into England in 1736. In 1742, cotton factories were established in Birmingham and Northampton. These factories would have a powerful effect on English economic and social life, as well as promote the cultivation of cotton in the new world, and increase the dependence on slavery in the American south. In 1758 the ribbing machine, for the manufacture of hose (stockings for both men and women, including the military) was invented. In 1765, both the spinning jenny and an improved steam engine appeared. These were two more steps toward the factory system in England. In 1773, the year of the “Boston Tea Party,” the first cast-iron bridge in England was built. John Wesley was fascinated by this bridge and went out of his way on one of his circuits to see the bridge and describe it in his Journal. By 1785, England saw the development of the power loom for cloth making. Steam became the major source of power in English factories. This would also increase the demand for coal, and make coal miners a force in the economy. At the end of the century, Eli Whitney (in the United States) developed the cotton gin, another invention that made cotton growing more profitable. Whitney also developed a system of manufacture using interchangeable parts, which would revolutionize the manufacturing process in both England and America. As is so often the case, the first use of interchangeable parts was in the manufacture of firearms.
The military and, particularly, the economic changes in England had a profound impact on the lives of individuals, particularly the poor. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the number of the poor varied from year to year, and from one part of England to another, depending on the harvest. In good years, there were fewer poor, for more people had enough to eat. There was a strong middle class, made up primarily of skilled workers and craftsmen. They were based in homes, and worked at a trade or craft (pottery making, weaving, carpentry, and so on). This part of the middle class would disappear with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as factories made their skills and products obsolete. Shopkeepers, tradesmen, and innkeepers were also a part of the middle class. They were not affected by the Industrial Revolution as much as workers in the crafts, but their income varied depending on social and economic factors far beyond their control.
Already in the early 1700s, the poor were the largest part of the population. The gap between the rich and the poor was steadily growing. All through the century, the numbers of the poor increased. Most of them did not have any schooling or vocational training. Most of them no longer lived in their home communities, but gathered in industrial areas, or in slums at the fringes of the cities. They had no medical care, and the mortality rate among these poor classes was incredibly high. In spite of all this, the population continued to grow, due to an extremely high birthrate. The population growth put an added strain on the economy and made food even scarcer. One of Wesley’s continuing concerns was the scarcity of food for the poor, as we will see in chapter 8.
In rural areas, large landowners began to move their tenants off the farms they had worked for years. Because of the high demand for wool by the clothing industry, landowners stopped depending on crops raised by tenant farmers and “enclosed” their lands, to make vast pastures for flocks of sheep. (This consolidation of farms is not unlike what happened in the rural United States during the last half of the twentieth century.) The property owners, often absentee, were the only people who gained from this movement. The dispossessed farm workers drifted away, trying to find some kind of work for which they were qualified. After 1760, the pace of this process stepped up, creating a large pool of unemployed persons. This, in turn, depressed wages in the industrial sector. The invention of the steam engine, spinning jenny, and all the other labor-saving devices increased unemployment. Jobs simply disappeared. Independent craftsmen lost their economic security and fell into dependence on wages. This meant continual insecurity, and, often, total loss of income.
With a large pool of unemployed, the exploitation of workers became common. Women and children worked ten to twelve hour days, seven days a week. Working conditions in most industries were inhumane—what we would now call sweatshops probably would only be a pale imitation of the inhumanity in which workers, particularly miners, slaved. Low wages, lack of food and medical care, brutality by employers, led to anger and desperation on the part of the workers. Local demonstrations sometimes led to violence. The authorities did nothing to improve conditions that led to protests. Instead, they saw any disturbance as an attack on the privileges of the wealthy. The army was often used to intervene, to put down demonstrations (usually violently) and then impose severe punishment on the workers.
These political, economic, and social conditions formed the backdrop against which Wesley launched the Revival and the great concern for the poor that accompanied it.
Questions for Reflection
For Further Reading
J. Wesley Bready, England Before and After Wesley: The Evangelical Revival and Social Reform (London: Hodder and Sthoughton, n.d.).
Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989).