Off to London
Religious meetings outside the church were unheard of. But when the curate wrote to Mr. Wesley in London, Samuel did not forbid the meetings, though he wrote to Susanna that he really did not approve.
John, and his little brother Charles, always remembered the meetings in the big kitchen. It was because of these gatherings, as well as the thorough religious training that she gave her boys, that Susanna Wesley was later to be called "the mother of Methodism."
OFF TO LONDON
It was a great day for John when, at eleven years old, he said good-by to his mother, his little brother, and his sisters, and set off for London. John climbed up behind his father on the family horse, which trotted off to Lincoln. He sat holding onto his father, his eyes bright with excitement. His older brother
Samuel was now a teacher at Westminster School. But Mr.
Wesley had no money to send John to school there. For some worried months Mr. and Mrs. Wesley had feared that Jack could not continue his education. Then a wealthy friend, Lord Buckingham, arranged for young John to receive a free scholarship to Charterhouse School. In the town of Lincoln John and his father left the horse to be taken back to Epworth, and got into the London stagecoach.
This was the year 1714. It was a time of change for England.
Queen Anne had died in August, and her cousin George I, Elector
of Hanover, had came to the throne. Queen Anne had been a religious woman. She had agreed to have George as her successor only because he was a Protestant. George I was a German, who could speak no English. He spent much of his time in Germany, leaving the affairs of the government to ministers and the cabinet.
Scotland and Ireland had joined with England to become the United Kingdom. Peace had been gained after a war with France.
Everything was new to John as he traveled to London. As the stagecoach rattled along the rough road, he could not take his eyes from the hills and hedges, the fields and streams flashing by. When they came within sight of a village or town, the horn gave out a blast that echoed from the hills and brought dogs and children running into the streets. John caught his breath and clutched the seat as the driver pulled up with a flourish before each inn at which they stopped. And then his breath leaped out in a gasp as they started up again, horn blowing, dogs barking.
They went through the small towns which were growing up all about outside the old London walls. Then the coach rolled through the city gates and a roar of sound hit their ears.
Hawkers cried their wares: "Fish!" "Bread!" "Plum puddings!" "Firewood!"
John saw beggars grasping at the coats of travelers as they left the coach. Rich dandies were stepping into sedan chairs to avoid the mud of the narrow streets. The smells and sights and uproar were staggering to the boy from Epworth.
As they came to the Charterhouse School, John looked eagerly about him. Charterhouse was an old group of buildings, built around a courtyard. It had been constructed many years before by monks, and had later been bought as a castle by the Duke of Norfolk. In 1611, Charterhouse had become a school for the sons of teachers and ministers and other educated men who did not have enough money to pay their children's schooling. It was also a home for old army and navy men, called pensioners.
John looked up at the thick stone walls and gray towers and thought it more like a castle prison. As he and his father walked across the courtyard into the rooms of the headmaster, John's ears caught the sound of shouting and laughing on the green. But when he told his father good-by, he felt lost and lonely. One of the younger masters took him to the green where the boys were playing. There John stood stiffly, straining his ears to catch the sound of his father's departing footsteps.
Charterhouse was a strange world to John. It took some getting used to, especially when he saw how the other boys behaved. When the bell clanged its brassy call to rise, the others
turned over for just one more wink of sleep in their warm cots in the dormitory room upstairs. But John had been taught otherwise.
He got up at once, shivered himself into his clothes, and flung his school gown about him. Then he clattered down the stairs and ~ out through a stone passage to the field. Here he ran around the green three times, as his father had told him that he must do, for the sake of his health.
When the other gown boys, in their long robes with the pointed sleeves and silver-buckled shoes, dashed to the wash trough,
John was already there. He was clean and damp, and had been first to use the one roller towel. But this habit of doing things on time did nothing for him at table. The senior boys, big and tough, always took the meat from smaller fellows. For years, said John Wesley, he lived chiefly on bread and vegetables. All he ever got was the smell of roast meat.
John had to run errands for the big boys, to come running to them when they shouted "Fag!" and to submit to their tormenting ways without protest.
The days were long periods of study. In the big room the
older boys had a fireplace at one side, and the younger boys one at the other. But John was often called away from his writing table to get coals for the fire for the big boys. When he returned to his place, he had to stare hard at his pounce pot of blotting sand, as he dipped quill into the thick ink and tried to get his thoughts back on study.
John studied and worked hard. His older brother Samuel came to see him and reported to their father: "Jack is a brave boy, learning Hebrew as fast as he can."
In one corner of the writing room was a high stool. Here a lazy boy who had not done his work had to perch, wearing a big false face with "Dunce" written across it. John never had to sit on that stool. He was interested in his study of Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, and Philosophy. He studied Mathematics, too, although this subject was not looked on with respect by most of the teachers.
The masters required that Latin be spoken in the classrooms and even on the playing green. English, they despised as a vulgar tongue.
For amusement the students played at tennis, a simple cricket
game, and with marbles, kites, and battledores. A favorite game of the younger boys was a fast slide down the banisters to the first floor, when no master was around to catch them.
John did not like the ways of many of the older fellows. 'This was a time when cockfights, bearbaitings, and other cruel sports were indulged in throughout the city. These older boys often went to such fights, betting and drinking. Yet there were others, like
John, who were quiet and studious. And the walls of the old school seemed to hold within them the childhood memories of former
Charterhouse boys who had left to become famous literary men, scholars, and bishops.
Late one day Mr. Tooke, a young teacher, noticed that the smaller boys were not in the playground. He went to the long dark writing room. There he saw a group of boys listening eagerly to a story being quietly told to them by John Wesley. Mr. Tooke stood until the story was ended. Then he said with a smile, "I had thought to find these boys in some mischief. But you talk well to them, Wesley. You may do so again, whenever you find the time."
While John was still at Charterhouse, his younger brother Charles came up to London to enter Westminster School, not far away. [his was a joy to the three brothers, for now they could see each other from time to time.
John was well thought of at Charterhouse. He was a hard worker and a quiet, orderly student. Yet he had the same independence that had made his grandfather and great-grandfather willing to suffer persecution and arrest for not following the strict rules of the Church of England. He was already thinking seriously of his future, too. He loved the work with books that went with
bid wis
a university life, and thought that he probably could become a teacher. Yet he had grown up in a family where the men had all become clergymen, and where he had been taught to think first of religion.
As he reached his seventeenth year he thought often of becoming a minister and began to consider entering Oxford University. He knew that because of his good work at Charterhouse he would receive a scholarship at the University.
"T wish you to call on Dr. Sacheverell," wrote Mr. Wesley to John, not long before he was to leave Charterhouse, "and get a letter of introduction for the college." So John went to see the famous scholar, friend of his father.
"But," said John later to Charles, "when I was introduced | found him alone, as tall as a Maypole, and as fine as an archbishop."
"How do you do, young Mr. Wesley," boomed the doctor.