New Light on Susanna Wesley:
CHAPTER NINE
New Light on Susanna Wesley: 1969-2002 a the thirty-four years since Susanna Wesley and the Puritan Tradition in Methodism was published, there have been significant developments both in Wesley Studies and in the role of women in Church and society. In the field of Wesley Studies,
'scholars have shed new light on key members of the Wesley family, both through biographical studies and through a more extensive publication of their own writings. Notable among biographies has been Dr Henry D. Rack's magisterial study,
Reasonable Enthusiast: Fohn Wesley and the Rise of Methodism.' In terms of primary source material, pride of place must be given to the Bicentennial Edition of the Works of fohn Wesley (1975—), which is still in process of publication and, when complete, will be unrivalled in its comprehensiveness and critical scholarship. It will ultimately include, 'all Wesley's original or mainly original prose works, together with one volume devoted to his Collection of Hymns (1780) and another to his extensive work as editor and publisher of extracts from the writings of others'.
If John Wesley's writings are in process of being made fully available, the same is true of those of Charles, who has not ' Published 1989 by Epworth Press; 3rd edition 2002.
2 The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of Fohn Wesley (1975-), Vol. 22, Introduction, p. v. (Hereafter cited as "BE. Wesley, Works').
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hitherto received nearly as much scholarly attention as his older brother. Here much pioneering work has been carried out by Professor Kenneth G.C. Newport, as the Director of the Charles Wesley Research Centre at Hope University College,
Liverpool. Dr Newport has already published a volume of The Sermons of Charles Wesley,' and he is now preparing a two-volume edition of Charles's Letters. In addition, he is engaged in editing the first full-length, critical edition of Charles's Journal.
This major work will run to many volumes and will include a translation of all the sensitive passages which Charles recorded in shorthand, which often relate to the differences in churchmanship between John and himself. Charles once summed up the essential variance between John and himself in the following trenchant judgement: 'All the difference between my brother and me was that my brother's first object was the Methodists and then the Church; mine was first the Church and then the Methodists." Charles was indeed much more-the stiff High churchman than John. In this regard, as in others,
Charles resembled his father, Samuel. John, on the other hand, though a loyal churchman, was much more flexible with regard to canon law and church order. Here, he was very much his mother's son and may be seen as reverting, albeit unconsciously, to his Puritan, Nonconformist ancestry. Susanna, as we have seen, was prepared to hold unauthorized services in the rectory during her husband's enforced absence at Convocation, and, once she had become a Methodist, helped persuade
John to accept a wider ministry of lay preaching within the movement.'
When Professor Newport's comprehensive editions of Charles's writings are complete, they will furnish materials for a fuller and more nuanced account of the rise and progress of the Methodist movement. Hitherto, the story has been written very
' Kenneth G.C. Newport, ed., The Sermons of Charles Wesley. A Critical Edition with Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2001).
* John Telford, ed., The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley M.A. (1931), 8 vols., VIlI.267.
* See above, p. 181 for the case of Thomas Maxfield.
NEW LIGHT ON SUSANNA WESLEY
much from the perspective of John Wesley, as the movement's leader. The importance of Charles as hymn-writer has been amply acknowledged but in other respects his voice has been only partially heard. Recent scholarship and work now in progress should remedy that deficiency and allow the silence to be broken.
There has been similar progress in providing opportunity for Susanna to speak more adequately for herself. Here Professor
Charles Wallace has produced an invaluable tool in his Susanna Wesley: The Complete Writings.' His work on Susanna was, by his
- Own account, *.. . prompted by a concern to recover the works of women in various religious traditions .
. in their struggles and triumphs in more restrictive times and places'." This wider concern to publish women's writings from previous centuries is one that has grown considerably in the last three decades.
It is significant that Oxford University Press, the publishers of Susanna's Complete Wntings, remind readers that they have also made available writings of women as diverse as Anne
'Askew, Hildegard of Bingen, and Lady Eleanor Davies. Yet within this wider framework of classic women's writings, Professor Wallace, as a Methodist historian, has a special interest in Susanna.
He is, of course, interested in highlighting her formative influence—direct and indirect—on the beginnings of Methodism. More than that, however, he is intent on enabling her own distinctive voice to be more fully heard, and her manysided personality to be adequately appreciated. As he states in his Introduction, In putting together material for this collection, I am assuming that Susanna Wesley's own writings allow her finally to speak for herself and yield a richer and fuller identity than she has ever been accorded before.'
' Susanna Wesley: The Complete Writings, ed. Charles Wallace Jr. Oxford University Press 1997. (Hereafter cited as "Wallace').
? Wallace, p. 4.
> Thid., loc. cit.
2i1
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He infers that, 'Our age may not regard her as St Susanna, mother of St John, any longer, but it might justly discover her to be a competent, practical theologian-educator and a complex and extraordinary woman in her own historical context."
The Complete Writings comprise Susanna's Letters, Journals, and what Charles Wallace terms her 'Educational, Catechetical, and Controversial Writings'. The seventy-two Letters date from 1702 to 1741, and include thirty-six to John Wesley, which, 'focus intensely on issues of "practical divinity", imparting theological advice appropriate for the various early career changes he was going through'.' Professor Wallace has been able to draw on sources which were not available when I wrote in 1968, notably the Methodist Archives in the John Rylands
Library of the University of Manchester. These Archives contain an important letter-book of John Wesley, in which he copied letters written to him by members of his family, including some significant ones from Susanna.
For example, on 19th August 1724, Susanna wrote to son John—-still addressing him as 'Jacky', though he by this time a twenty-one-year-old Oxford graduate—a letter which breathes maternal concern, and is also typically haunted by money worries. She writes:
Dear Jacky, I am somewhat uneasy, because I've not heard from you so long and think you don't do well to stand upon points and write only letter for letter, since I decline apace, and 'tis more trouble for me to write one than for you to write ten times. Therefore let me hear from you oftener, and inform me of the state of your health, how you go on, and whether you are easier than formerly, and have any reasonable hopes of being out of debt.
Debt was an all too familiar fact of life in Epworth Rectory, and Susanna is anxious that John should have had to resort to borrowing money. She is also embarrassed that, in her present state, she is unable to help him repay his debts. She continues:
' Wallace, p. 18.
? Wallace, p. 31.
NEW LIGHT ON SUSANNA WESLEY
We have dismal weather, and can neither get hay, corn, nor firing, which makes us apprehensive of great want. I am most concerned for that good generous man that lent you £10 and am ashamed to beg a month or two longer, since he was so kind to grant us so much time already. Give my service to him and thanks, however.
She concludes, despite her continuing anxieties, with words of encouragement to John, who, like herself, must continue to contend with pressing financial worries:
Dear Jacky, be not discouraged; do your duty, keep close to your studies, and hope for better days; perhaps, notwithstanding all, we shall pick up a few crumbs for you before the end of the year.
Dear Son, I beseech Almighty God to bless thee!!
These letters from Susanna to John serve to underline the intimate relationship between mother and son. From his birth he had held a special place in her affections, in that he was born of the reconciliation of his parents after their celebrated quarrel over the legitimacy of King William III. The rift had led
Samuel to suspend marital relations with Susanna ("Madam, if 'we are to have two kings, we must have two beds!'), and these
_ were only resumed after the quarrel had been resolved. Jacky was the first child born of their reunion, the seal of their reconciliation. In addition to the special circumstances of his birth,
Jacky's place in his mother's affections was further reinforced by his narrow escape, as a child of six, from the fire which destroyed the rectory. Following his deliverance, Susanna took a solemn vow before God that she would, 'be more particularly careful of the soul of this child that Thou hast so mercifully provided for, than ever I have been .
. ." She was as good as her word, and the bond between them was accordingly further deepened.
That John Wesley reciprocated his mother's special feelings for him may be inferred from his seeking advice from her well into his adult life. Henry Rack has helpfully drawn attention, in ' Wallace, pp. 103-4. This letter is also printed in BE. Wesley, Works, Vol. 25,
Letters I, 1721-1739, ed. Frank Baker{1980), p. 148.
? See above, p. 112.
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this connexion, to Wesley's remarkable sermon, 'On Obedience to Parents', which he printed in the Arminian Magazine of 1784. Wesley takes the biblical injunction to "Honour thy father and mother' to entail lifelong obedience to parents, and confesses.
When I had lived upwards of thirty years I looked upon myself to stand just in the same relation to my father as I did when I was ten years old. And when I was between forty and fifty I judged myself as much obliged to obey my mother in everything lawful as I did when I was in my hanging-sleeve coat.'
Wesley's strict interpretation of the injunction to obey parents needs, as Rack points out, to be tested against his actual behaviour when it came to a difference of judgement between him and one of his parents. He was not prepared, for example, to accept his father's strong request, in 1734, that he should leave
Oxford and return to Lincolnshire to succeed his ageing parent as Rector of Epworth. Again, when it came to his mother's will for him, his obedience was by no means unconditional. He drew the line at the crucial point of deciding on a marriage partner. In 1781, in a revealing letter to Elijah Bush, one of his itinerant preachers, he urged Bush never to marry without his parents' consent to his choice of wife:
I was much concerned yesterday when I heard you were likely to marry a woman against the consent of your parents. I have never in an observation of fifty years known such a marriage attended with a blessing. I know not how it should be, since it is flatly contrary to the fifth commandment. I told my own mother, when pressing me to marry, 'I dare not allow you a positive voice herein; I dare not marry a person because you bid me. But I must allow you a negative voice: I will marry no person if you forbid. I know it would be a sin against God.' Take care what you do.'
It is not known whether Susanna ever exercised any formal veto on a possible marriage partner for her son. What is clear,
BE. Wesley, Works, Vol. 3, Sermons III, 71-114, ed. Albert C. Outler (1986), p. 364. See also Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, p. 56.
* See Bufford W. Coe, John Wesley and Marriage (London: Associated University Presses, 1996), p. 81, citing The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. J. Telford,
8 vols., 1931, 7: 83-4.
NEW LIGHT ON SUSANNA WESLEY
from John's own account, is the overwhelming influence of Susanna on his ideal of womanhood and on his model of what a wife should be. In his private diary, he records his thoughts on celibacy and marriage, and gives a number of reasons, both practical and theological, for his conviction that he is called to the single life. Significantly, the reason he places first in the list goes back to his childhood and to the potent influence of Susanna:
From the time I was Six or Seven years old, if any one spoke to me - concerning marrying, I used to say, I thought I never should, 'Because
I should never find such a woman as my Father had.'
The other reasons he gives are a mixture of the practical and the theological:
2. When I was about Seventeen (and so till I was Six or Seven and twenty) I had no thought of marrying, 'Because I could not keep a Wife.'
3. I was then persuaded, 'It was unlawful for a Priest to marry,' grounding that Persuasion on the (supposed) Sense of the Primitive
- Church.
4. Not long after, by reading some of the Mystic Writers, I was brought to think 'Marriage was the less Perfect state,' and that there was some degree (at least) of "Taint upon the Mind, necessarily attending the Marriage-Bed.'
5. At the same time I view'd in a strong light St Paul's words to the Corinthians: And judg'd it 'impossible for a married man to be so without carefulness, or to attend upon the Lord with so little
Distraction, as a smgle man might do.'
6. Likewise, being desirous to lay out all I could in feeding the hungry and cloating [sic] the naked, I could not think of marrying, "because it would bring such Expense, as would swallow up all I now give away.'
7. But my grand Objection for these twelve years past has been, 'A Dispensation of the Gospel has been committed to me. And I will do nothing which directly or indirectly tends to hinder my preaching the Gospel."!
There is no need to doubt Wesley's sincerity in citing such prudential, practical, and religious reasons for remaining a celibate. Yet it is hard to resist the conclusion that these later
! Cited in Coe, John Wesley and Marriage, p. 58.
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reasons are subordinate to the first one he adduces, going back to his early years, his conviction that he, 'should never find such a woman as my Father had'.
I have written elsewhere, in a brief study of "Wesley and Women', of the, ..
. particularly close bond between mother and son, which endured to her death and no doubt beyond. That is not to imply that the umbilical cord was never cut, or that Wesley was held in infantile dependence on his mother. He grew up, as did his brothers and sisters, into a spirited independence of character. Yet the bond, even in his maturity, still held.'
John Wesley had numerous women friends, correspondents, helpers, whom in his letters he characteristically addresses as,
'My dear Sister .. ." Yet it remains true that, 'Susanna had set the standard of womanhood for him. It was a high standard, so high, perhaps, that no other woman could ever attain to it. John Wesley gave and received much in his wide range of friendships with women; they were to him advisers, coadjutors, supporters, and colleagues. His mother had been to him all these and more. Though he might have many "Sisters", he had only one mother. He remained, first and last, "Son to Susanna"'?
Dr Bufford W. Coe's recent study of John Wesley and Marnage (1996), which I have drawn on here, has served to underline
Susanna's crucial relationship with her son, and its influence on John's attitudes to other women. There have been a number of other areas, over the last three decades, in which our understanding of Susanna and her world has been considerably enhanced. More light has been shed on her own upbringing, as the daughter of Dr Samuel Annesley, the distinguished Puritan pastor and theologian. Mrs Betty Young, a Librarian at Duke
University, North Carolina, has carried out detailed research,
© .
J.A. Newton, 'Wesley and Women', in John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. John Stacey (Epworth Press, 1988), p. 133. r Thid., p. 137.
NEW LIGHT ON SUSANNA WESLEY
using seventeenth-century parish registers, wills, and correspondence, to explore Susanna's family background, in her article 'Sources for the Annesley Family'.' In particular, she draws attention to Mary Annesley, Susanna's mother, who, as she rightly infers, 'must have been a remarkable woman'.
Citing Roger Thompson's Women in Stuart England and America (1974), which concludes that in the seventeenth century girls usually received their education from their mothers, Mrs
Young ventures the judgement that, 'Susanna, as one of the Annesley children, must have brought the training of her mother, as well as that of "Dr Annesley", to her influence on her sons. Like her mother she had to cope with the responsibility of rearing a large number of children with a husband who was sometimes absent and always busy. Perhaps Susanna's well-known methodical approach to the task was copied from her own childhood upbringing'.
The same number of the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical _ Society (September 1985), which carried Mrs Young's essay, also contained an article which I devoted to "Samuel Annesley
(1620—1696)'.' It examines the life and ministry of this distinguished representative of seventeenth-century Nonconformity.
It explores the close relationship between Annesley and Susanna, his favourite daughter. It also examines how far
Annesley's impact on John Wesley may be seen as an aspect of that Puritan—Methodist continuity for which I have argued elsewhere.' As far as Susanna is concerned, I sought to show that, Loyalty to conscience, humility before God and boldness in the face of men, and a zeal for practical godliness: these were the traits which Dr
Annesley shared with his daughter. She, in turn, by teaching and ' Betty Irene Young, 'Sources for the Annesley Family', Proceedings of the Wesley
Historical Society (Hereafter 'PWHS'), Vol. XLV.Pt.2, September 1985, pp. 44-57.
? Tbid., p. 57.
3 John A. Newton, 'Samuel Annesley (1620-1696), PWHS, Vol. XLV.Pt.2, September 1985, pp. 29-45.
4J.A. Newton, 'Methodism and the Puritans', Friends of Dr Williams's Library Lecture, 1964.
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example, inculcated these same virtues in the minds of her children, including, most notably, John Wesley himself.'
Another development which has enabled a fuller understanding of Susanna's life and work has been the proliferation of women's studies which help place her against the background of her culture. These studies include Sheila Rowbotham's Hidden from History: Rediscovering Women in History from the 17th Century to the Present (1974); Mary Prior, ed., Women in English Soctety, 1500-1800 (1985); and Patricia Crawford's Women and Religion in England 1500-1720 (1993). My own biography considered Susanna primarily in relation to Methodism, with due regard to her Puritan formation and her leaving Nonconformity for the Church of England. These more general studies of the life of women in seventeenth and eighteenthcentury England allow us to set her in a wider context, rather than seeing her simply as 'Mother of the Wesleys' or as the "Mother of Methodism'.
Finally, the growing interest in women's writing in theology and spirituality has led to a number of illuminating studies of Susanna's teaching and religious experience. Future exploration in this field will be much indebted to Charles Wallace's pioneering work in publishing—in Susanna Wesley: The Complete
Wntings—the first comprehensive, critical edition of her devotional journals and theological writings. He points out that,
*,.. diaries were, in addition to letters, the main mode of written self-expression open to early eighteenth-century women."
Here again, recent scholarship has provided much illuminating background to Susanna's diary-keeping. Two works singled out by Wallace are: Sara Heller Mendelson's 'Stuart Women's
Diaries and Occasional Memoirs', in Mary Prior ed., Women in English Society 1500-1800 (1985), and Harriett Blodgett, Centuries of Female Days: Enghshwomen's Private Diaries (1988). Professor
Wallace himself places Susanna in this wider context in his ' Newton, PWHS, XLV.Pt.2, p. 41.
? Wallace, p. 198.
NEW LIGHT ON SUSANNA WESLEY
article, "Susanna Wesley's Spirituality: The Freedom of a Christian Woman'.' He emphasizes that, 'even in the midst of the conflicting claims of wife, mother and de facto head of the household, she continued to pursue a contemplative vocation, the contours of which are visible to us in her devotional journal'. Hence, he argues, 'to the extent that this tension is not unique, and because she was such a remarkable and influential woman, Susanna Wesley's "inner history" may usefully serve as . a case study in the history of women and religion, until lately a neglected corner of research'. He concludes that Susanna, 'as seen from the evidence of her devotional journal, represents a kind of "missing link" in the history of women and western religion. She may be seen, on the one hand, as the somewhat tamed successor of Puritan prophetesses and, on the other, as the hopeful predecessor of women fired by the eighteenthcentury revival (and, paradoxically, by the ascendancy of rationalism in the same century) for non-traditional roles."
Dr Michael McMullen has made available two brief but representative selections of Susanna's devotional writings. In 1995, he published Hearts Aflame: Prayers of Susanna, Fohn and Charles Wesley. He followed this in 1999 with a volume devoted solely to Prayers and Meditations of Susanna Wesley. Both of these handy paperbacks make Susanna's devotions easily accessible to readers who may not have access to Professor Wallace's 500page edition of Susanna's Complete Writings. Dr McMullen's choice of Susanna's prayers brings out her impressive union of active service and the life of contemplation.
In sum, then, we may be grateful that we now have an unprecedented wealth of material for understanding the mind and work of an outstanding Christian woman. From her own writings, available now in their fullness, she speaks to us in her own distinctive voice. Her sons, John and Charles, are both
! Charles Wallace, 'Susanna Wesley's Spirituality, The Freedom of a Christian Woman', Methodist History, XX11:3 (1984), pp. 158-73.
2 Wallace, pp. 159-60.
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' included in the Calendar of saints in the Church of England's Alternative Service Book of 1980. They are commemorated, appropriately enough, on the 24th of May, as 'Priests, Poets,
Teachers of the Faith'. Their mother was neither priest nor poet; but she was most certainly an impressive teacher of the Faith, and without her devoted nurture her sons might well never have featured on the Calendar, nor occupied the place they have in Christian history. That is one measure—though by no means the only one—of her greatness.