1. A Promising Girlhood
A Promising Girlhood
‘How many children does Doctor Annesley have?’
‘I am not sure, but it is either two dozen or a quarter of a hundred.’[1]
This conversation took place in London in 1669, following the christening of yet another child recently born into the Annesley home. And the latter estimate proved correct; this was indeed the twenty-fifth child to take its place in the doctor’s family.
The future of this infant was far from ordinary. This little one, a girl, was to have a very important part in the history of the church. Given the name Susanna, she would grow up to marry Samuel Wesley and to bear nineteen children of her own. Two of her sons would rise to great prominence in the founding of Methodism and would leave mankind good reason to know their accomplishments and to remember their names, both in the field of evangelism and in the writing of hymns, for they were none other than John and Charles Wesley.
Susanna manifestly inherited many of the qualities possessed by her father — beside the tendency to produce a large family. The Reverend Samuel Annesley, M.A., LL.D., was a man of noteworthy character. Born of devout Puritan parents, he stated that he was so early instructed in the way of salvation that he could not remember a time when he was conscious of not knowing the Lord. At the age of five he began to read twenty chapters of the Bible a day and this practice he continued till the close of his life. Early in his teens he entered Oxford University and upon graduating in 1644 he was ordained and became the pastor of a church in the county of Kent.
His actions soon demonstrated what kind of man he was. The previous pastor had joined with his people in their ‘dancing, drinking and merriment on the Lord’s day’. But Samuel Annesley declared his opposition to all such worldly behaviour and ‘they hailed him with spits, forks and stones’ and threatened his life. His reply was, ‘Use me as you will, I am resolved to continue with you till God has fitted you, by my ministry, to entertain a better man.’[2] He stayed with them till there was evidence of a widespread turning to better practices, when he moved to London.
There he faced still greater difficulties. During the 1640s England had endured a civil war, with, on the one hand, the Royalist army fighting for the king and the Church of England, and on the other, the army of the Parliamentarians, demanding a Puritan form of government. The Parliamentarians, under Oliver Cromwell, were victorious and the king, Charles I, was captured, tried and beheaded. A form of peace was then established, but could not destroy the bitter hostility in men’s hearts throughout the nation.
After a few years the Royalists regained power and King Charles II acceded to the throne. In 1662, in the hope of stamping out all traces of Puritanism, Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity. It commanded all ministers to conform to the beliefs and practices of the Church of England. Some 2,000 refused to submit to this edict and, in what became known as the Great Ejection, these men, called nonconformists or Dissenters, were driven out from their positions in the universities, from their churches and from their parsonages. They were forbidden to preach, and were turned out with their wives and families, often to face homelessness and utter poverty. The authorities kept a strict watch on their activities and the slightest attempt to hold a religious service could bring a man a heavy fine, or several years in a foul jail, or banishment to semi-slavery in a foreign land. It was as a result of this law that John Bunyan suffered his now celebrated imprisonment.
Samuel Annesley was one of these 2,000 brave men. His action cost him a salary of £700 a year, and although he appears to have found other employment, his family undoubtedly suffered some loss and deprivation. His activities were constantly watched by the Royalist officials, and although he was never arrested there was an occasion on which an officer suddenly fell to the floor, dead, in the very act of signing a warrant for his arrest. But the danger of being seized and thrown into prison was always hanging over him and must have been a constant strain on his wife and family as well as himself.
Susanna’s mother also appears to have been a person of great strength of character. Samuel Annesley’s first wife had died at the birth of their first child. He remarried and this second wife bore the other twenty-four children, several of whom died in infancy. It is said of her that ‘The few dim intimations concerning her impress us with the idea that she was a woman of superior understanding and earnest and constant purity. She spared no labour in endeavouring to promote the religious welfare of her numerous children.’[3] She must also have been hard-working and endowed with remarkable patience, to have borne and brought up so large a family.
After the Dissenters had endured the prohibition on their worship for ten years, the king, Charles II, relaxed some of the laws forbidding their activity. The majority of the ejected men who were still alive immediately launched into vigorous ministries.
Dr Annesley was particularly aggressive. Leasing a meeting-house in a London district known as Little St Helen’s, Bishopsgate Street, he soon built up a flourishing congregation. He loved his flock and was loved by them, and from the subjects dealt with in his preaching he appears to have fed them on the meat as well as the milk of the Word of God. It is said of him: ‘He lived in the unclouded light of the divine countenance’;[4] ‘Many called him the instrument of their conversion’; and ‘During the next quarter of a century he was one of the most attractive, laborious and useful preachers of his day.’ The forces of nonconformity looked upon him as their most prominent figure and their leader.
Samuel Annesley also became known for his generosity. He gave liberally to widows and orphans, the sick and afflicted regarded him as their friend and the needy flocked to his house. Both in the pulpit and out of it, he was a striking personality, and a biographer has stated, ‘His personal appearance was noble and commanding. “Fine figure,” “dignified mien”, “highly expressive and amiable countenance” are the phrases used by his contemporaries. Hardy in constitution and almost insensible to cold, hat, gloves and top-coat were no necessities to him, even in the depths of winter. The days of hoar frost and chilling winds found him in his study at the top of his house, with open window and empty fire-grate. Temperate in all things, he needed no stimulants, and from his infancy hardly ever drank anything but water. He could endure any amount of toil, preaching twice or thrice every day of the week without any sense of weariness. Until the time when the divine voice said unto him, “Get thee up and die,” his “eye was not dim nor his natural force abated”.’[5]
It is evident that from such a father Susanna would have inherited gifts of a rich and unusual nature, and these qualities would have been complemented by those which she received from her capable mother.
During the years of his pastorate in Little Saint Helen’s, Samuel Annesley lived in Spital Yard, a street of good homes in a highly respectable district. And in this house his children grew up. The names of all the twenty-five have not been recorded. But we know those of two of the boys: Samuel and Benjamin. And as to the girls, we know of five; Judith, Anne, Elizabeth and Sarah, and, of course, the youngest of the family, Susanna.
We have reason to believe that these children grew up in a peaceful home. We may be sure that even during the period when he was harassed by the authorities Dr Annesley steadily maintained his self-control and that although he demanded obedience from his youngsters he never gave way to outbursts of temper. And after the law against Dissenters was relaxed, the atmosphere in the Annesley home would undoubtedly have been even more one of peace and concord.
This was the background in which Susanna grew up. We can only wish that more information was available about her early years, that reports existed of her as a little girl, playing with her sisters, learning to read, acquiring knowledge and growing into her teenage years. But of these things we are told very little.
However, she speaks of ‘preservation from ill accidents and once from a violent death’.[6] Since in those days large open fireplaces were used for heating, and lighting was by candles, fires were frequent occurrences and she may well be referring to an escape from fire at some point in her childhood. And since horses and boats were the common means of travel it is likely that she may have come near to losing her life in an accident involving one or other of these.
The question arises, ‘What education did Susanna have?’ She may have attended a local grammar school, or have been taught at home by her father or by one of her older sisters, and it is possible that she was instructed by a private tutor. Certain authors have assumed that she came to be versed in French, Latin and Greek, but this was not the case. Nevertheless, throughout her days as a busy mother and as the teacher of her own children, she revealed a fully trained and richly stored mind. She used the English language with precision and possessed a theological knowledge superior to that of many ministers of that day, or this. Her life was governed by a self-discipline that allowed not the least deviation from its principle and purpose. The universities did not admit women in those days, but if they had done so, we may be sure that she would have proved as able a scholar as any of her three sons.
And what about Susanna’s religious practices as a young girl? Many years later, in a letter to her son John, she stated, ‘I will tell you what rule I observed . . . when I was young, and too much addicted to childish diversions, which was this — never to spend more time in mere recreation in one day than I spent in private religious devotions.’[7] Here was the principle of her life put into practice. She also tells of making much use of ‘good books’. She was the kind of person who would never give a second thought to even the best of the literature that had been produced by the Restoration authors, but with her father’s library available she undoubtedly read certain of the Reformers and the Puritans, difficult as their works would seem for a young girl to read.
Was Susanna converted while she was still a girl? Certainly two years before she died she had an experience which her sons Charles and John regarded as her conversion, declaring that until that event she was in ‘a legal night’. However, several persons have objected to that description of her, asserting that she had displayed the marks of true Christianity ever since her childhood. But as we examine her life in the coming chapters we shall see evidence of a confusion in her mind as to how one becomes a Christian, as, on the one hand, she frequently declared the need of faith and of a belief in the heart, but also manifested at times a reliance on human works. Whatever her true state at this time, we can rejoice that she ultimately came into a full assurance of salvation through the experience that her sons considered to be her conversion.
During Susanna’s childhood, the Annesley home was visited by several of her father’s associates, leaders of the Dissenting cause. Among these men were some of the most learned ministers of the century, including, for example, Thomas Manton, whose Works occupy twenty-two volumes, and Richard Baxter, the author of numerous books, of which the best-remembered are The Reformed Pastor, The Saint’s Everlasting Rest and A Call to the Unconverted. But the most eminent of all those who came was John Owen, formerly Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, famous as a theologian and esteemed as the ‘Prince of Puritans’ and many of whose books are still in print and highly prized in our own day.
These men and others who visited the Annesley home talked frequently of the subject uppermost in their minds: the differences between the Church of England and themselves. This meant that from her earliest days, Susanna listened to this matter being discussed by exceptionally capable men, and heard every argument against the church and in favour of Dissent presented with logic and force. She also knew that her father had endured ejection from his church and had suffered the loss of a considerable salary because of his convictions in the Dissenting cause, and it would not have been strange had she manifested a distinct hostility towards the Church of England, its people and all of its clergy.
But the opposite proved to be the case. Despite having heard so much to persuade her to the contrary, Susanna gradually came to the conclusion that Dissent was wrong and the Church of England was right. She wrote out a report of her reasoning in the matter, but it was burned in the fire that later destroyed the Epworth rectory. She tells us, however, ‘Because I had been educated among the Dissenters, and there being something 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 I included the main of the controversy between them and the Established Church, as far as it had come to my knowledge.’[8]
It would be very interesting to know all that she included in this account. She says she dealt with ‘the main of the controversy’, which indicates that she must have considered the historical events of the conflict and the arguments in favour of the hierarchy of the church, as opposed to the unorganized condition of the Dissenters. Nowhere does she give any indication that she sought to discover the doctrine of the church taught in the New Testament, but she evidently assumed she must choose between these two systems, and she turned to the one she felt was the better of the two.
Having made this decision, Susanna quitted the church of which her father was pastor and was received into one belonging to the Church of England. Samuel Annesley had sacrificed and suffered for the cause of Dissent and he could not have failed to be sorely aggrieved by this action on the part of his youngest daughter. There is much reason to believe that Susanna’s relationship with her parents was, to say the least, strained from this point onwards.
We notice, too, how young she was. She was, in her own words, ‘not full thirteen’. Here was a girl displaying an independence of mind and a strength of decision virtually unheard of in a child so young. Here was a girl who gave promise of living a rich life and of growing into a woman of remarkable force of character. And if, as was especially true in those times, a woman’s greatest accomplishment lay in the qualities she imparted to her offspring, then her chief achievement would be witnessed, not in her successful teaching of her children, nor in the exercise of her unbounded patience, but rather, as we shall see, in the transmission to her sons, by natural inheritance, of her independence of mind, her strength of decision and her numerous other rare qualities.