2. Susanna Annesley Marries Samuel Wesley
Susanna Annesley Marries Samuel Wesley
The visitors to the Annesley home included others besides mature scholars. Several students came too, and they were drawn not only by the Doctor’s experience and knowledge, but also by the presence of his talented and attractive daughters.
One who came was a youth named Daniel Defoe, who was later to achieve prominence as a writer and who is best remembered as the author of Robinson Crusoe. Another was John Dunton, who became anoted publisher. He says, concerning the first time he entered Little Saint Helen’s Church, ‘Instead of engaging my attention to what the Doctor said, I suffered my mind and my eyes to run at random. I soon singled out a young lady who almost charmed me mad.’[1] This was one of the Annesley girls, but to Dunton’s immense displeasure she proved to be already engaged. But he quickly took up with her sister Elizabeth and became equally enthralled with her.
Before many months had passed, Dunton and Elizabeth were married. And there at the wedding was Dunton’s close friend, a student named Samuel Wesley. As a wedding gift Wesley read before the assembled guests a tribute to the bride and groom that he termed ‘an epithalamium’. It was a romantic poem that he had composed and was liberally sprinkled with such expressions as ‘little Cupids’, ‘golden Hymen’, ‘marble-hearted virgins’, ‘envious swains’ and, of course, ‘the charming bride’.
The wedding may well have been the occasion of the first meeting between Susanna and Samuel. He was nineteen at the time but she, although extraordinarily mature for her age, was apparently still no more than thirteen. There is reason to believe that a firm friendship sprang up between them at about this time. It is particularly significant that, just as Susanna had left the Dissenters and had joined the Church of England, so Samuel also now prepared to take the same step.
Like Susanna, Samuel had grown up under the teachings of Dissent. Four months before he was born, his father had been a victim of the Great Ejection. Refusing to conform to the practices of the Church of England, he was turned out of his church and his parsonage and was forbidden to preach. With his pregnant wife he fled to another town in his native Dorsetshire, only to find that he was refused entry. He moved on to one town after another, and he defied the authorities by preaching virtually every day. As the months went by he was arrested three times, served the sentence each time and was released, but during a fourth incarceration, in which he was forced to sleep on the cold, bare earth of the loathsome prison, he fell ill and soon died. He was only forty-two, a martyr for the Dissenting cause.
While Samuel’s father suffered greatly, all this was especially hard for his mother. She had come from an excellent family, for her father had been a member of the committee that produced the Westminster Confession of Faith, and she was also a niece of the eminent historian, Dr Thomas Fuller. Yet after only a few years of married life, this worthy woman suffered this long period of homelessness, to which was added the pain of losing her husband. Very little is known about her life at the time, but twenty years later we find her living in poverty in London and maintained by the kindness of her sons.
Samuel was cared for during his schoolboy years by friends among the Dissenters, some of whom, recognizing special qualities in him and believing that he intended to enter the Dissenting ministry, were responsible for his being placed at the age of fifteen in one of their academies in London. Although men who were not members of the Church of England could enter the universities, they were not allowed to graduate and therefore the Dissenters had established these institutions, most of which maintained an academic standard as high as that of Oxford or Cambridge.
During his time at the Dissenting academy, Samuel proved himself a capable student and became learned in classical studies. But he was also impulsive and quick-tempered and he confesses that he ‘had a narrow escape from debauchery and ruin’.[2]
After spending four years in the academy, young Wesley was planning to attend Oxford University. He tells us that Dr Owen was sure that times were soon to change, and the Dissenters would be allowed to graduate from the universities, and he counselled Samuel to attend in the expectation that he would be able to graduate when the change in the ruling came about.[3]
Samuel, however, was not merely thinking of following Dr Owen’s plan; he was considering going all the way — leaving the Dissenters and joining the Church of England. He claims that he had witnessed certain actions among Dissenting men that made him loth to remain in fellowship with them. His whole outlook on life also leads us to believe that he saw greater possibilities of advancement within the hierarchical system of the Church of England than in the lack of organization that characterized the Dissenting cause.
There is good reason to believe that Samuel would have discussed this matter of church versus Dissent with Susanna, who had recently been through a similar experience, and who would still have clear in her mind the reasoning which had caused her to take so serious a step. Although there is no document actually reporting such conversations, we may be sure that they took place. We do know that, as part of his work at the academy, Samuel was asked to research all the reasons in favour of Dissent, and he says, ‘I found I lived in groundless separation from the Established Church.’[4]
Accordingly, in characteristic manner, he quickly took action. Notwithstanding the great moral debt he owed to Dissent, he left the church of which he had been a member and joined one belonging to the Church of England. Now he would go to Oxford, not as an outsider who had merely been allowed to attend, but as a fully fledged member of the university. Moreover, when he had obtained his degree he would seek ordination in the Church of England and would spend the rest of his life in the ministry of that church.
However, supporting himself throughout a five-year course was a weighty undertaking for a fatherless youth, the son of a penniless mother. In fact, Samuel had already incurred debts, but he accepted a grant of £30 from a Dissenting fund[5] and paid what he owed. Then, since he lived with his mother and knew his action would severely distress her, he said nothing about his intentions. Instead, he got up very early one morning and, carrying his earthly possessions in a bag slung over his shoulder, he ‘footed it’ to Oxford, where he entered himself as a servitor at Exeter College. The date was August 1683.
In this capacity Samuel had to wait upon one or two students who were financially better off. These duties freed him from paying for his tuition, but he was still responsible for the cost of his books, his food and his clothing, and during the winter months for the fuel he burned in his fireplace. Samuel launched himself into the task of obtaining money, doing so with his usual fervour and determination.
First, he wrote to relatives and visited acquaintances seeking help, ‘till they grew weary,’ he says, ‘of my asking and I of doing so.’[6] But these requests brought him nothing.
Secondly, he published in booklet form some poems he had written. He possessed a definite gift for writing verse and he now brought out into the open certain items he had composed during his schooldays. The booklet, which he entitled Maggots, contained verse with such titles as ‘A snake in a box of bran’, ‘The grunting of a hog’, ‘To my gingerbread mistress’, ‘The bear-faced lady’, ‘A pair of breeches’, ‘A cow’s tail’ and ‘A box like an egg’. This work did bring him some income but the titles attracted the ridicule of his fellow-students.
Even so, Samuel’s poverty did not prevent him from coming to the aid of a child in still greater need than himself. His first winter in Oxford was one of the coldest on record and as he was walking one morning, he came upon a small boy, very poorly clad, lying beneath a hedge and crying from hunger and cold. Samuel had in his pocket two pennies — all that he owned — but he was so moved by the little lad’s suffering that he gave him both of them. The boy ran to buy bread for himself and his still younger sister.[7] But a very welcome surprise greeted the now penniless Samuel when he returned to his college. He found that a relative had sent him five shillings and that a gift from his mother was waiting for him. She had sent him a cheese.
As the months went by, while Samuel was proving himself to be a diligent and capable student, there came an occasion on which he found himself unable to pay his battels — his accounts for provisions from the college kitchen. He was pressed for payment and, since he could see no means of obtaining money, he faced the sad prospect of having to leave the university and seeing all his efforts to put himself through five years of study ending in failure. In preparation for his departure he wrote a poem bidding a sorrowful farewell to Oxford. But when returning a book he had borrowed he accidentally left this poem in it. The owner of the book, a senior student, found these farewell verses and was so moved by them that he took steps to see that Wesley would not need to leave the university. First, he paid Wesley’s battels himself and then he arranged for certain students who needed help in their studies to use Samuel as their tutor.[8] He also got them to agree to pay him exceptionally well for his services.
Samuel Wesley
Samuel was well able to undertake these added duties while he continued with his own academic work. Moreover, the remuneration was so high that his circumstances now took on a totally new complexion. This extra work proved available as long as he remained at the university, so that he could say, ‘I continued in plenty and prosperity till ready for my degree.’ He also did some important translation work for the Bodleian Library, and this added still further to his income.
Finally, after five years in Oxford, there arrived the occasion that Samuel had been anticipating. In June 1688 he graduated,[9] and was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts of Oxford University. He deserves much credit for his determination and his scholastic ability, but recognition is also due to the man who paid his battels for him and arranged for the other students to pay him so well for his tutoring.
Immediately after graduating Samuel returned to London. Within a short space of time he was ordained as a minister of the Church of England and secured a curacy that paid him £28 a year. And now that he had a regular income his first thought was about marrying the girl he had known for six years, Susanna Annesley.
There is no record of any letters between them during his days in Oxford, but the circumstances require us to believe that they must have written to each other. At any rate, the association was now renewed and without any time-consuming effort on his part, or any feminine refusals on hers, they arranged to be married.
The ceremony took place on 11 November 1688.[10] Where it was performed is not known, but we may be certain that it was a Church of England service. Susanna’s father would not have been allowed to take any part in conducting the rite, but it is to be hoped that he and his family were at least present to witness the marriage.
No description has come down to us of Susanna’s physical appearance at this time, but we do have one of her sister, which reads: ‘She is tall; of good aspect; her hair of a light chestnut colour; dark eyes, her eye-brows dark and even; her mouth little and sufficiently sweet; her air somewhat melancholy, sweet and agreeable; her neck long and graceful; white hands, a well-shaped body; her complexion very fair.’[11] Sir Peter Lely, a prominent artist of those times, painted a portrait of Susanna’s sister Judith, displaying, we are told, ‘a very beautiful woman’. But someone who knew them both declared, ‘Beautiful as Judith Annesley is, she is far from being as beautiful as Mrs Wesley.’
Susanna and Samuel were alike in that each had left the Dissenting background in which they had been brought up and had become very hearty adherents of the Church of England. But in other ways they were very different. Susanna was much the taller of the two and carried herself in an easy but dignified manner. Samuel was only about five feet four and his bearing had something military and autocratic about it. Thoughts constantly flowed in his mind in the form of meter and rhyme, but while there was rich beauty in her language she possessed nothing of his poetic skill. His speech was frequently marked by wit and humour, but although she revealed a deep inner peace there is no record of her joking or even laughing. She makes no mention of her emotions in being joined to Samuel, but he says of his being married, ‘for doing which before my fortunes were settled, I have no excuse, unless a most passionate love may be taken for one’.[12]
At the time of their marriage Samuel was twenty-six and Susanna nineteen. Before them lay the years of their life together as husband and wife, and we now follow that story, with its hills and its valleys, its trials and its triumphs, ‘till death did them part’.