The Puritan Maid
CHAPTER TWO
The Puritan Maid There's no Time for preparing for Heaven like the Time of Youth. Tho Death were never so near, I can look back with Joy on some of the early years that I sweetly spent in my Father's House, and how I comfortably lived there.
O what a Mercy it is to be Dedicated to God betimes!
Elizabeth Annesley bes ESE words of her sister Elizabeth,! spoken on her death-bed, were echoed by Susanna, as she too in her turn looked back to the early years which she had sweetly spent in her father's house. Her Puritan home and upbringing set a stamp upon her which she never lost, exercised a formative influence on her piety and devotion, and are vital for any true understanding of the way in which she later managed her own household at Epworth.
Her father had a large brood of children, having, in the pious metaphor of John Dunton, 'produced much fruit for Heaven!' Dunton continued his reminiscence of his fatherin-law, 'I heard him say, "'he has had twenty-five children''.
1 Rogers, Character of a Good Woman, p. 158.
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Dr Manton baptizing one of them, and being asked how many Children the Doctor had, he returned this answer:
"that he believed it was two dozen, or a quarter of a hundred ;"? which reckoning of children by dozens was a thing so very uncommon, that I have heard Dr Annesley mention
. it with a special remark.'!
Susanna was the youngest child, and far more is known of her than of any of her numerous brothers and sisters. For the most part even their names have perished, but the scattered references to the Annesley children which have come down to us suggest a spirited and lively family. Samuel Annesley junior grew rich in the service of the East India Company, and in 1724 had planned to sail for England and bring home his wealth. Susanna left her family at Epworth, and made the long journey to London to meet his ship, only to find no sign of him on board. She returned home, presuming him dead, in circumstances which gave strong suggestion of foul play."
Benjamin, the only other brother whose name is known, was intending, at the time of his father's death, to follow him into the ministry. This knowledge proved a great comfort to his devout sister Elizabeth in her last illness: 'It was a great
Support to her to think that her Brother Benjamin was design'd for a Minister, and she hoped that God would
(as her Father was confident he would) use him as an Instrument to promote his Glory, and,the Good of Souls.'®
Elizabeth Annesley was the sister whom Susanna most closely resembled, both in person and character, so that, as Eliza Clarke infers, 'anything recorded of Mrs Dunton
(i.e. Elizabeth) throws a side light on Mrs Wesley's character.'4 Elizabeth early showed the temper of piety and * Dunton, Life and Errors, 1, 166. For Dr Thomas Manton, (1620-77), a Presbyterian colleague of Dr Annesley, see D.N.B. s.v. Manton. Annesley had two wives, but the second bore twenty-four of his children, including
Susanna.
* For a full account, see Clarke, Wesley Family, I, 381f.
® Rogers, Character of a Good Woman, p. 149.
' Eliza Clarke, Susanna Wesley, p. 24f.
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goodness which was to be hers until the day she died.
According to Timothy Rogers, her father used to say that she 'never displeased him in all his life'. For her part, Elizabeth acknowledged 'the good Providence of God, in giving her
Religious Parents, that with United Endeavours, took a mighty Care of her Education; and she was good when she was very Young. She found her heart changed to the Love of the Best Things, but when she did not particularly know; as is the Case of many Children of Good People, into whom
Goodness is instilled by Degrees, and who find themselves alive, though they do not know the first moment, when they began to live. She received with her Father the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, between Fifteen and Sixteen; betimes it seems had she fortified her self against the Pomps and Vanities of the World by the Sight of a Crucified Jesus.'?
As a result of this careful religious training, she grew up, like Susanna herself, an informed and balanced Christian, devoted to prayer and meditation, sermon and sacrament.
'She married in 1682 a young London printer and bookseller ~ named John Dunton. Dunton was undoubtedly something of a fool, but an amiable one. There was a Boswellian streak of vanity and ostentation in him, and large sections of his rambling autobiography consist of lists of well-known people
—divines, politicians, and booksellers—whom he boasted of numbering among his friends. He was unbelievably indiscreet, and frequently printed private and personal correspondence to fill out his story, so that one exasperated acquaintance wrote him an acid note in 1718, informing him, 'You will hear no more from me, and I desire you would write no more to me without I give you new directions.
There is no writing to a man that prints everything." Yet odd and unpredictable as he was, Dunton remains an attractive character. He had a genuine feeling for religion, and his
1 Rogers, Character of a Good Woman, p. 126f.
2 Dunton, Life and = I, xxx:
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Life and Errors is suffused by his own peculiar brand of Puritan piety. His bookselling flourished, despite his misadventures, and he and Elizabeth were to live happily together.
Dunton first met his future wife, when as a young apprentice he slipped one Sunday into Dr Annesley's meeting-house, and, thanks to a sight of one of the Annesley girls, had the utmost difficulty in concentrating on the sermon. 'One
Lord's-day (and I am very sensible of the sin) I was strolling about just as my fancy led me; and stepping into Dr Annesley's Meeting-place, where, instead of engaging my attention to what the Doctor said, I suffered both my mind and my eyes to run at random .
. I soon singled out a young lady that almost charmed me dead; but, having made my inquiries, I found to my sorrow she was pre-engaged. However, my Friends, to keep up the humour I was in, advised me to make an experiment upon her elder Sister (they both being the Daughters of the Reverend Dr Annesley) ; and the hint they gave me, as Providence would have it, made a deeper impression upon me than all the recommendations they had given me before .
. .» He went ahead and secured Dr Annesley's permission—after his master, Mr Parkhurst, had vouched for his character—to sue for the hand of his daughter: "The Doctor told me, I had his free consent, if I could prevail upon his Daughter for hers; which was more than Mr Cockeril (deceased) could ever obtain, after a long courtship.' Dunton fared better than the late Mr Cockeril, won Elizabeth's consent, and so embarked on, 'the greatest happiness I have as yet met with in this life.'?
In the summer of 1682, Elizabeth had to accompany her father to Tunbridge Wells, apparently so that Dr Annesley might take the waters for his health. On July 6th, an impatient Dunton wrote to her from London a gallant loveletter, using the romantic pseudonymns Iris and Philaret,
* Dunton, Life and Errors, 1, 64-5.
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and begging, 'Why will not you write a long Letter? Nay, lovely Iris, let me have one from you as large as a Folio; nothing can drop from your pen, but will give poor languishing Philaret all the transports that a Lover can imagine.' In her reply 'Iris' brings him down to earth and reveals the fruit of her Puritan training, in deprecating his extravagant expressions :
Tunbridge, July 9, 1682 Dear Sir, I have received your Letters ; but, being obliged to take a small journey from Tunbridge with my Father, I had no opportunity to make you any answer. You seem impatient at my silence, but it is only a matter of course ; though were your impatience represented with less of fancy, I should be disposed to believe you sooner. But all Courtships must, at one time or other, have a little
Knight-errantry in them, otherwise, the Lover is reckoned to be something dull; however, you have said enough that way to secure you from any such imputation, and I would have you express yourself in no warmer terms than a primitive simplicity may admit of. One that loves till he loses his reason, will make but _ an odd figure for a husband. You will say, perhaps, I am preaching up passive obedience; but we shall agree upon that point afterwards. At present please to deny yourself a little luxuriance in your Letters, lest my Father should find them, and be offended with them.} Poor Dunton can hardly have been gratified at having his ardours quenched in this matter-of-fact way, and yet, temperamentally inclined to hyperbole as he was, he probably needed this mild reproof. What is more interesting in Elizabeth's letter is her attachment to her father, and the thorough way in which she had learned the lesson of 'primitive simplicity', which her Puritan home had taught her. Her objection to Dunton's flowery epistles was no mere petty scrupulosity. It sprang basically from a strict Puritan regard for truth, and Puritan love of the simple, plain, decent, comely, in speech as in all else.
Lest it be thought that the home in which the Annesley 1 Dunton, op. cit., a"
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girls grew up was rather severe, and somewhat lacking in human warmth and feeling, we may look at the sermon which Dr Annesley preached on the occasion of Elizabeth's marriage to John Dunton, at Allhallows the Wall, on August 3rd 1682.1 We hear Dr Annesley expatiating upon the joys of married love, with real tenderness and understanding. Preaching from Ephesians 5: 32 ("This is a great mystery ...'), he stressed that, "The Duties of the Married
State must be performed, if the Comforts of it be expected,' and then continued, according to Dunton's summary, in the following way:
Under this head the several duties were insisted upon at large; but the necessity of Love, as the fundamental article, was clearly argued, from which all the other duties would follow, out of inclination and choice. The motive to it was the innocence of pleasure. Prov. v. 19. 'Be thou always ravished with her Love.'
The place would answer the original much better, were it read, 'Err thou always in her Love;' as if it were said, this degree of love would be an Error in any other case, but here thou mayest err, and yet be innocent; here thou mayest roam, and wander, and lose thyself, and yet not sin; it must be a nonsuch-love.?
Besides Elizabeth, three more of Susanna's sisters are known to us by name, Sarah, Judith, and Anne. Sarah is little more than a name, unfortunately. Judith, like Susanna, combined good looks with a pious disposition. She never married, though not because she lacked a suitor. She refused the man who wanted to marry her, on the ground that he was 'addicted to much wine'.® This fact alone might warrant the inference that Judith Annesley also had responded positively to her Puritan upbringing; but John Dunton fills in the picture so as to make the point quite clear: 'She is a Virgin of eminent piety. Good Books (and, above all, the Book of Books) are her sweetest entertainment; and she finds
? Dunton, Life and Errors, 1, 69, says the sermon was preached, (presumably at Dr Annesley's meeting-house), 'preparatory to the Marriage' at Allhallows.
2 Tbid., I, 70.
5 Clarke, Wesley Family, I, 395.
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more comfort there than others do in their Dressing-room, or Wardrobe. In a word, she keeps a constant watch over the frame of her soul, and the course of her actions, by daily and strict examination of both.'! This last lesson of daily selfexamination was one which Susanna also learned well, and practised to the end of her life. The two girls were goodlooking as well as good, and Judith's beauty was set down on canvas by the hand of Sir Peter Lely. Yet a friend who knew them both commented that, 'beautiful as Miss Annesley appears, she was far from being as beautiful as Mrs Wesley.'?
Finally, there was Anne Annesley, who is also favoured by a vignette from Dunton: 'She was the first (and happy) occasion of my being acquainted with dear Iris; and therefore to drop her pious Character would be ungrateful. She is a Wit for certain; and, however Time may have dealt by her, when I first beheld her, I thought Art never feigned, nor Nature formed, a finer Woman.'* The story that Anne married Daniel Defoe is now disproved,* or Dr Annesley
' would have been able to add yet another flamboyant son-in_ law to the three his daughters brought him,—John Dunton,
Thomas Dangerfield, and Samuel Wesley!
We might well infer, both from the descriptions of Dr Annesley's cheerful good nature, and from his children's happy reminiscences of their home, that the early years of Susanna and her brothers and sisters were filled with quiet joys and pleasure. At this point it will probably be objected that a puritanical home life is hardly consistent with a happy childhood. If Puritan homelife was uniformly marked by unsmiling austerity, the objection may be sustained ; but was it? It is here that we must beware of the caricature of Puritanism fostered by scholars like Macaulay and Gardiner, and try to see Puritanism dispassionately as it was; for, as 1 Dunton, Life and Errors, I, 355-6.
2 Quoted by Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family, p. 161.
§ Dunton, Life and Errors, 1, 354-5.
| "See Proceedings of a ass Historical Society, XXIII, 23.
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M. Henri Talon so pertinently reminds us, 'We must see the Puritan in his home if we really want to understand him: only then a whole legend collapses!' M. Talon's sensitive and perceptive study of Bunyan has a far wider reference than the title suggests, and sheds a great deal of light on the inner meaning of Puritanism. Earlier in his book he shows the importance of Bunyan's understanding of the Church in terms of the home and family: 'The Palace Beautiful is the Church as Bunyan conceives it: a sort of home where one draws refreshment in communion with God and brotherly fellowship. His Church is social, if one can accept this use of the word.'?
If the Church was seen in terms of a home or family, as the household of faith, then the converse was also true, and for the Puritan the family was a microcosm of the Church.
Home religion was quite central to Puritan piety, which was by no means focused solely upon the pulpit. John Geree, writing in 1646, and describing the character of an 'old
English Puritan', said of him: 'His family he endeavoured to make a Church, both in regard of persons and exercises, admitting none into it but such as feared God ; and labouring that those that were born in it, might be born again to God.'
That this Puritan emphasis had not become old-fashioned in the later seventeenth century, can be seen from the writings of Dr Annesley's friends and contemporaries. Geree's sentiments are echoed by Joseph Allein, who counsels, 'Let every family with you be a christian church, every house a house of prayer.'4 Family religion is specifically dealt with in a number of the books of Annesley's friend Richard Baxter. In 1H. Talon, John Bunyan, the man and his works (E.T. 1951), p. 191. Talon's whole paragraph merits careful attention.
2 Talon, op. cit., p. 149.
% John Geree, The Character of an old English Puritane or Non-Conformist (1646), p. 5. For further references to Puritan home life, see H. S. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, (1958), pp. 221ff.
'Joseph Allein, A Counsel for Personal and Family Godliness, as reprinted by John Wesley in his Christian Library, XIV, 174f.
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The Reformed Pastor, he is quite adamant that ministers must pay special attention to catechizing families in their homes, and to 'instruction from house to house'. He is sure that religion will never be securely based until it is built into the very structure of family life: "The life of religion, and the welfare and glory of church and state dependeth much on Family-government and duty .
. What are we like to do ourselves to the reforming of a congregation, if all the work be cast on us alone, and masters of families will let fall that necessary duty of their own, by which they are bound to help us!' He concludes: 'You are likely to see no general reformation till you procure family-reformation. Some little obscure religion there may be in here and there one; but while it sticks in single persons, and is not promoted by these societies, it doth not prosper, nor promise much for future increase.'} If we may anticipate, Baxter's word here about 'general reformation' in the Church waiting upon 'family reforma- 'tion', is strangely suggestive of the relation which Susanna's
-work at Epworth rectory was to bear to the Methodist Revival ; and it is interesting that Baxter uses for the family the very term, 'society', which was later to denote the gatherings of the People called Methodists. Certainly John Wesley agreed with Baxter on the primary importance of family religion, which he called 'the grand desideratum among the Methodists'.2 In his sermon On Family Religion, he argues that only if religion can be rooted in family life, will the Revival prove to be more than a passing phase: What will the consequence be . . . if family religion be neglected ?— if care be not taken of the rising generation? Will not the present revival of religion in a short time die away?'
1 The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter,ed. W. Orme (23 vols., 1830),
XIV, 97, 99.
2 The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. N. Curnock (8 vols., n.d., Preface 1909), V. 193 (entry for 16 Nov. 1767). Hereafter cited as Journal.
3 Wesley, Works, ed. aporpar Jackson (14 vols., 1831), VII. 77.
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s Baxter returns to the same theme in a section of his great Christian Directory which he calls 'Christian Oeconomicks: or,
The Family Directory'. He prefaces it with a note to 'all that fear God' in Kidderminster, where he had ministered for so long, and rejoices: that once more before I dye, I have opportunity to speak to you at this distance, and to perswade you to, and Direct you in, that Family Holiness and Righteousness, which hath been so much of your Comfort and Honour, and will be so while you faithfully continue in it: O how happy a state is it, to have God dwell in your Families by his Love and Blessing, and rule them by his
Word and Spirit, and Protect them by his Power, and delight in them and they in Him, as his Churches preparing for the Coelestial Delights!
O how much of the Interest of true Religion must be kept up in the world, by the Holiness and Diligence of Christian Families !?
We can be reasonably certain that Dr Annesley, who had Baxter's Reformed Pastor, Christian Directory, and Poor Man's
Family Book (1674), on his shelves,? shared to the full his friend's concern for family religion. Besides Baxter's works, he kept within his study other works in the same field,—a Parents Primmer, Stockton's Family Instruction, Williams' Vanity of Childhood, and Lamb's Religious Family. His concern for family religion shows in his sermon before the House of Commons in 1648, when one of the peremptory questions he rapped out at the members was, 'What are you in your
Families? Are they well-ordered (little) Common-wealths, well disciplined Churches?'4 That Dr Annesley tried to make his own family a well disciplined Church, we may gather from the tributes he paid to two of his ministerial friends. In a funeral sermon for William Whitaker, Dr Annesley commended him warmly for his 'relative piety', that is, his
* Baxter, A Christian Directory (1673), p. 473f.
® Bibliotheca Annesleiana, pp. 10, 13.
3 Ibid., pp. 13ff.
~ Annesley, A Sermon preached to the Honourable House of Commons, July 26, 1648, Pp. 23.
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fostering of religion among his near relations.
'For his relative Piety, besides the family-duties that are common to all serious Christians, he kept a set-time of praying with his wife every day. And for his way of instructing, reproving, convincing, and counselling every person of his family, severally and privately in his Study as occasion required, praying with them ere he dismist them, that his words might abide; I never heard the like of any other.'! At another friend's funeral, Annesley quoted approvingly some words spoken on his death-bed: '. .
. speaking to one about Family Prayer, he said, a Camel may as well go through the Eye ofa
Needle as a Man that prays not in his Family go to Heaven.'?
Susanna's father, then, fully shared the Puritan ideal of the family as a little gathered Church, where prayer, Biblereading, catechizing, and detailed personal instruction in the Christian faith, provided a framework for the whole shared life of the home. How did Susanna react to such training?
Her devotional writings and her letters provide part of the 'answer. Once, she confessed in her spiritual journal, she had been, 'discouraged by the experience of daily renewed failings,' and was tempted by doubt and fear to think that God might have cast her off. The grounds of her reassurance are significant. 'If he had been willing you should perish,' she told herself firmly, 'he might have let you have perished without the expense of so many miracles to save you. Why did he give you birth in a Christian Country, of Religious
Parents, by whom you were early instructed in the principles of Religion? Why hath he waited so long to be gracious?
Why hath his providence so often prevented you?'® Again, in a letter to her son John, dated 31 January 1727, having commended him for his thrift, she urged, 'Believe me, dear
1 Annesley, A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of Reverend Mr Will. Whitaker, (1673), Preface to the Reader.
2 Annesley, The Life and Funeral Sermon of the Reverend Mr Thomas Brand,
(1692), P. 75-
® Headingley MSS, Afp2,
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son, old age is the worst time we can choose to mend either our lives or our fortunes. If the foundations of solid piety are not laid betimes in sound principles and virtuous dispositions ; and if we neglect, while strength and vigour lasts, to lay up something ere the infirmities of age overtake us, it is a hundred to one odds that we shall die both poor and wicked.' We may be confident that 'the foundations of solid piety' had been well and truly laid for Susanna in her earliest years ; and the success of her father's training is most clearly seen in the thorough grounding in the Faith which she gave to her own children at Epworth.
The training continued for the boys even after they had left Epworth to go away to school. Susanna still guided and advised them by her letters, in which she gives revealing glimpses of her own childhood, as she addresses herself to the problems of theirs. Samuel, then a seventeen-year-old student at Westminster School, asked of his mother, 'some directions how to resist temptations', though without specifying the particular ways in which he was troubled. Susanna points out that this omission makes it difficult to give really detailed or helpful spiritual direction: 'You never informed me of any particular temptation to which you are exposed, and it is impossible from dark hints and general expressions to collect the true state of your case. Therefore I can but offer at general things; and if I happen to omit anything that I should chiefly insist on, I cannot help it.'? Nevertheless, she manages to give a good deal of shrewd advice about such typical temptations of a teenage boy as impure thoughts, neglect of prayer, over-eating or drinking, and finally overindulgence in pleasure or recreation. It is under this last head that Susanna divulges to her son the way in which she had dealt with the claims of recreation in her girlhood:
* Clarke, Wesley Family, II, 23.
* Letter of 27 November 1707, printed in G. J. Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family, p. 188.
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The last instance of temperance in recreation I shall say little to.
I do not know what time is assigned to you for it, and I think your health and studies require that you should use a pretty deal of exercise. You know whether your heart be too much set upon it.
If it be, I will tell you what rule I observed in the same case when I was young and too much addicted to childish diversions, which was this: never to spend more time in any matter of mere recreation in one day than I spent in private religious duties.
I leave it to your consideration whether this is practicable by you or not. I think it is.?
This passage is striking for the light it sheds, not only on her childhood, but on her method of spiritual direction. She does not dictate the moral decision to be made. She advises, she suggests a norm she had herself found helpful, but she leaves
Samuel the moral and psychological space in which to make up his own mind.
Two years later, in the general context of the importance of redeeming the time—a typically Puritan emphasis—she repeated the same advice to 'Sammy' :
-First I would advise you, as much as is possible in your present circumstances, to throw all your business into a certain method, by which means you'll learn to improve every precious moment, and find an unspeakable facility in the performance of your respective duties. Begin and end the day with him who is the Alpha and Omega; and though my ignorance of the orders of your school makes it impossible for me to assign what time you should spend in private devotions, yet I'm sure if you do but really experience what it is to love God, you'll redeem all the time you can for his more immediate service. What is in your own power you may dispose of, nor are your rules so strict as not to admit of some diversions. I'll tell you what rule I used to observe when I was in my Father's house, and perhaps had as little, if not less, liberty than you have now. I used to allow my self as much time for recreation as I spent in private devotion. Not that I always spent so much, but so far I gave my self leave to go, but no further. So likewise in all things else, appoint so much time for sleep, eating, company, &c..
Such passages as these suggest that Susanna was both an 1 Stevenson, op. cit., p. 193.
2 Headingley MSS, C if 4f. a
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earnest and a strong-willed child, and also give some insight into the ethos of a Puritan home. It should not be assumed that 'The education of Puritan children' necessarily involved
'an over-serious and humourless upbringing'. There was a tone of high seriousness, of course, in any Puritan home; but it was by no means incompatible with recreation and laughter. Susanna makes it clear that she was allowed games and amusements as a child, and she by no means forbade them to her children. There were certainly games at Epworth, including an innocent game of cards, though no 'loud talking or playing', and Hetty Wesley recalled the joys of family life in the rectory:
Nay, to high heaven for greater gifts I bend:
Health I've enjoyed, and I had once a friend!
Our labour sweet, if labour it might seem, Allowed the sportive and instructive scene.
Yet here no lewd or useless wit was found ; We poised the wavering sail with ballast sound.
Learning here placed her richer stores in view, Or, winged with love, the minutes gaily flew !?
It is significant that when Susanna made the time she spent in prayer the limit of the time she spent in play, she did so of her own free choice. No doubt her home was conducive to such a choice, but she made it. It was an act of selfdiscipline, not a self-denying ordinance imposed from above.
Sound learning, true religion, gaiety 'and wit, marked the home of her children at Epworth. There is no reason to believe that any of these elements were lacking as she grew up in her father's house in Bishopsgate.
Such then was the temper of Susanna's home, and it seems clear that her Puritan upbringing marked her for life. She was always, in a spiritual as well as physical sense, Dr
Annesley's daughter. It might be countered, however, that 1R. A. Marchant, The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese af York,
1560-1642, (1960), p. 115.
* From her poem, 'A Farewell to the World', printed by Clarke, Wesley Family, I1, 307f.
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all that has been said of the influence of her Puritan home must be drastically revised in the light of the step which Susanna took in 1682. In her thirteenth year, by her own account, she deliberately left Dissent to join the Church of England. Does not this decision represent a quite radical breach with her Puritan past? It would be foolish to deny that it marked a very real turning-point in her life, but it is an over-simplification to see it as a cancellation of all that her Puritan childhood meant to her. She was a precocious child, coming thirteen, and on the threshold of young womanhood. In many ways her character was already formed, and the fact that she then changed her denomination need not imply a repudiation of her previous spiritual development.
Susanna wrote down a carefully considered account of her reasons for becoming an Anglican, and was about to send it to her son, Samuel, when the rectory fire of 1709 destroyed all her papers. As she explained to Samuel, 'Because I was
'educated among the Dissenters, and there was somewhat remarkable in my leaving them at so early an age, not being full thirteen, I had drawn up an account of the whole transaction, under which head I had included the main of the Controversy between them and the Established Church, as far as they had come to my knowledge; and then followed the reasons that determined my judgement to the preference of the Church of England. I had fairly transcribed a great part of it, but you writing to me for some directions about receiving the Sacrament, I begun a short discourse on that head, intending to send all together: but before I could finish my design, the flames consumed that with all the rest of my writings.'! This document would have been of supreme interest for an understanding of Susanna's religious development, and it is tantalizing to have to guess at its contents.
1 Headingley MSS, c. f. 9 (11 October 1709). The letter is printed with alterations in Clarke, Weer Family, II, 33.
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Why did she become an Anglican? Was it through disenchantment with Nonconformity, or because her mind was gripped by the attractiveness of the Anglican synthesis—its carefully ordered worship, its sense of Christian continuity, its studied moderation? It may well have been both. Certainly, Susanna must have been familiar from girlhood with the main issues which divided Dissent from the Church of England, for her father's home and meeting-house were the scene of frequent discussions among his Nonconformist colleagues.! When she decided to join the Church in 1683, the Great Ejection of 1662 was more than twenty years away, and must have seemed to this intelligent child rather a matter of old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago. At any rate, it had all happened before she was born, and she could view it fairly dispassionately. She must have heard the rights and wrongs of conformity debated ad nauseam. She would hear, too, equally bitter debates which centred on the internal divisions of Nonconformity, ranged as it was under its Presbyterian, Baptist and Independent banners. Did the obsession with 1662 and the interminable wrangles which marked the dissidence of Dissent, incline her to give a long, thoughtful, sympathetic look at the alternative presented by the Established Church?
When she did look at the Anglicanism which was nearest to her, there was much in it to command her respect, and make her willing to inquire further. It so happened that at this period there were preaching in London pulpits several
Anglican divines who combined marked ability with moderate views and a distinctly charitable and irenical attitude towards Dissenters. Some of them had themselves made the very transition from Puritanism to Anglicanism which Susanna was contemplating. Notable among them was John
Sharp, who years later as Archbishop of York was to prove 1For the Latin disputations held in Dr Annesley's vestry, see John Stoughton, History of Religion in England (6 vols., 1881), V, 287.
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so good a friend to both Susanna and her husband. Sharp's biographer describes the change after 1670, when, 'Moderate
Anglican opinion definitely swung in their (i.e. the Nonconformists') favour, and, indeed, even angled for their support, on conditions. Of this latter school of thought Sharp was by no means the least conspicuous member. He himself had sprung from a family of strong Puritan traditions, and in his extreme youth had favoured the doctrine of predestination ; his best friend Tillotson had had yet closer affinities with Nonconformity ; and Baxter, one of Dissent's most venerated champions, was actually worshipping in his church."} Sharp's mother-in-law was puritanically minded, and so great an admirer of Baxter that she would not agree to her daughter's marriage to Sharp until Baxter had given his approval to the match. In a sermon of 1674, Sharp pleaded for a policy of tolerance towards the Nonconformists, and in his writings sought to persuade them back into the fold of the Establishment.
' Other able and moderate Anglican divines were then to be found in London, whose sermons Susanna may have heard at first hand or through the discussions of her father's ministerial friends. They combined learning and preaching ability in a formidable way, and tried by their studied moderation to win Dissenters back to the Church. Perhaps the most notable was John Tillotson, later Archbishop of Canterbury, under whose preaching Richard Baxter sat with such profit. He had been a Puritan, and a colleague of Dr Annesley in the Morning Exercise at Cripplegate. He had married Elizabeth French, a niece of Oliver Cromwell, and was responsible for a number of efforts to make concessions to the Nonconformists' point of view, and so comprehend them within the national Church. In the words of 1 A, Tindal Hart, The Life and Times of Fohn Sharp Archbishop of York, (1949), p. 86. Sharp was Rector of St Giles-in-the-Fields, 1675-81. For Baxter's worshipping in Anglican parish churches, as well as in Nonconformist gatherings, see Reliqutae nace ed. Matthew Sylvester (1696), p. 437-
SUSANNA WESLEY
John Dove,} 'Hitherto the pulpit had been the stronghold of puritanism; under Tillotson it became a powerful agency for weaning men from puritan ideas.' Did his preaching help to win Susanna for the Church?
* Another influential and moderate Anglican was Thomas Tenison, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields from 1680 to 1692. At St Paul's from 1678 to 1689, the Dean was Edward
Stillingfleet, who twenty years before he came to St Paul's had published, in his Jrenicum (1659), proposals for a union between Presbyterians and Episcopalians. In 1681, a year or two before Susanna joined the Church, he brought out his
The Unreasonableness of Separation, in which he set out fresh terms for the comprehension of the Dissenters within the Church." In the same year, William Beveridge, Vicar of St Peter's, Cornhill, preached a sermon in his new church rebuilt after the Great Fire, in which he 'tried to comménd the Book of Common Prayer to its opponents in a spirit, on the whole, of sweet reasonableness'.* That spirit, from all that we know of Susanna, would have made a powerful appeal to her, and this background of moderate Anglican opinion, together with her father's tolerant and catholic disposition, make the step which she took in 1682 much more readily intelligible.
What were the personal repercussions of Susanna's decision? How, in particular, did her 'father view the matter?
Before trying to answer these questions, it is well to note that Susanna's account of her change suggests a studied moderaJohn Dove, Biographical History of the Wesley Family, (1840), p. 38. For his
Puritan background, see T. Birch, Life of Tillotson, p. 5.
* For details, see C. E. Whiting, Studies in English Puritanism from the Restoration to the Revolution, 1660-1688, (1931), p. 526f.
® Whiting, op. cit., p. 531.
" For the spate of pamphlets put out by Anglican divines at this period and intended to deal with 'cases of conscience' raised by the scruples of Nonconformists over Anglican worship and teaching, see Whiting, Studies in English Puritanism, pp. 536-7. The whole of his long chapter on 'The theological controversy between Church and Dissent' in the period 1660-89, sheds considerable light on Susanna's decision.
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tion, not an act of rebellion against her family and her upbringing. When she became an Anglican, she did not unchurch the Dissenters, but merely expressed her own considered 'preference of the Church of England'. Nonetheless, there were reasons why Dr Annesley should have felt very bitter about her return to the Church which had compelled him to renounce his living. He and his friends had suffered considerably for their Nonconformity, and at this very period (1682) his house was broken into by the informers and his goods distrained for breaches of the harsh religious laws against Nonconformists.! He had taken every care of his daughter's religious education, only to find that it had led her into the Conformist camp. A child's change of religious allegiance, even when the child is of mature years and the times are not torn by religious controversy, nearly always involves much heart-searching for the devout parent.
A fortiori, then, to have a daughter go over to another communion before she had reached thirteen, and in the embittered religious atmosphere of the 1680s, might well have seemed to warrant Dr Annesley's putting his foot down, and forbidding his daughter to go any further in the matter until she was of age to judge for herself.
This might well have been the attitude of a Puritan father ; it says a great deal for Dr Annesley that it was not his. He respected his young daughter's conscientious decision, and allowed it to make no difference in their personal relations.
To the end of his life, Susanna remained his favourite daughter, and it was to her he bequeathed all his manuscripts and sermons.2 On Susanna's side, her affection for her father was quite unabated. She named her first child Samuel, perhaps after her father as well as her husband, and one of the twins born in 1694 was called Annesley. When her father had been dead forty years, Susanna is found writing to her
1 See above, p. 27.
2 These too, unfortunately, were lost in the fire of 1709 at Epworth Rectory.
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* son, Charles, lamenting his brother Samuel's death, but comforting herself with some words of her father: 'As your good old grandfather often used to say, "That is an affliction, that God makes an affliction!" '! No doubt many such sayings brought back to Susanna the kindness and wisdom of her father, qualities that were never more impressively displayed than when his youngest daughter made her peace with the Church which had driven him into the wilderness.
Dr Annesley's magnanimity is to be explained chiefly in terms of his personal character and convictions. His charitable temper has already been illustrated, and he would no doubt have endorsed his daughter Elizabeth's judgement,
'that different Names do not make different Religions; but the Image of Christ is the same Lovely Thing, whether formed in a Church or in a Meeting.'? He had never been a party man, and singled out for praise the moderation of his friend and colleague Thomas Brand, who 'exercised towards the Conforming Clergy' a 'right Christian Temper'.® All we know of him suggests that Dr Annesley did the same, and that he would think no worse of his daughter for becoming an Anglican, because she did so simply and sincerely in obedience to her mind and conscience. Since her conscience had led her to renounce no fundamental of the faith, but only to change her churchmanship, what objection could her father make? Had he not taught her to be utterly loyal to a conscience illuminated by the Word of God? And had not some of his own close associates, from the same conscientious scruples, chosen the path of conformity in 1662? That year had been such a time of sifting and testing, that any moderate
Puritan of the stamp of Annesley or Baxter must inevitably ? Cit. Kirk, The Mother of the Wesleys, p. 224f. In context, the saying seems to mean that our relation to God determines whether or not a happening
'afflicts' or harms us. Prosperity may gravely harm a worldling, whereas, by God's grace, the believer may find that even sorrow yields a blessing.
* Rogers, Character of a Good Woman, p. 1392f.
® Annesley, Life and Funeral Sermon of the Reverend Mr Thomas Brand, p.
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have been torn between conformity and nonconformity.
Dr Annesley could, therefore, well understand and sympathize with his daughter both in her dilemma and in her choice.
It is indeed a serious mistake to see 1662 as creating a complete rupture between the conforming and the nonconforming Puritans. Richard Baxter could write, some years after the Great Ejection, 'I still profess, that in all my experience, those called Nonconformists, did heartily love, honour, praise and hear a Bishop or Conformist that preached and lived seriously, spiritually, and in Christian
Love, such as through God's mercy we have had many ..
."!
Ralph Thoresby describes an impressive funeral of a leading Puritan divine, at which he saw more ministers together than on any previous occasion of his life. They followed the coffin two by two, a conformist and a nonconformist together, as a demonstration of their solidarity in mourning their brother.
The Puritans of 1662 did not all make the same choice, but among the moderates on either side there was no final breach of fellowship, and the same was true of Susanna and her father when they found themselves on opposite sides of the Anglican-Nonconformist division after 1682. Susanna's continuing fellowship with her father, and the retention of her
Puritan heritage, were to be vital factors in influencing her own household when she began to bring up her children in the faith of their fathers. The Annesley tradition was not lost upon the little Wesleys, and in one parsonage at least it was to prove true that if one scratched an Anglican, one would find a Puritan.
1 Baxter, An Apology for the Nonconformists' Ministry, (1681), Preface. The work was mainly written in 1668-9.