3. Early Years of Married Life
Early Years of Married Life
Samuel stayed merely a few months in his London curacy. Finding it difficult to live on £28 a year, when he was offered an opportunity to acquire, as he said, ‘some moneys to begin the world with’, he accepted it. This was the position of chaplain aboard a naval vessel on the Irish Sea and it promised him £70 per annum.
But he did not remain here long either. ‘I was very ill used,’ he reported, ‘and almost starved and poisoned, the captain for a great part of the time keeping no table, nor had we either fish, or butter, or cheese in the ship, and our beef stunk intolerably.’[1] He left after six months and was then told he must wait to receive his wages. He returned to London, virtually unemployed. During his absence Susanna had lived in a boarding-house and he joined her there.
However, Susanna was now pregnant, and as the time of her delivery approached she returned to her parents’ home.[2] We must assume that despite any coolness that had existed between her father and herself, her family realized that she needed a better place than a boarding-house in which to give birth to her first child. Accordingly, on 10 February 1690, in the home in which she had spent her girlhood, she gave birth to a son, who, like his father and grandfather, was given the name of Samuel.
It would seem that the birth was a difficult one and a trying experience for Susanna, even though there probably was a capable midwife to attend her. Years later, in a letter written to this son when he had grown up, she was to address him in the words: ‘you, my son — you who was once the son of my extremest sorrow in your birth. . .’
Samuel Wesley next gained employment as a curate in the suburb of Newington Butts, but he divided his time between his clerical duties and some literary work in London, and this displeased the rector of the church, who told him he was no longer wanted. Samuel and Susanna returned to the boarding-house, where Samuel continued his literary labours. But the income he received from these was small and he speaks of himself as being very downhearted. He longed, he says, ‘for a place of peace and quiet’ where he could write without obstruction. And just such a place he was now offered. He tells of visiting a home in the suburb of Hackney where he met a Colonel Mildmay. The colonel told him that he had a living to dispose of, the rectorship of St Leonard’s Church, in South Ormsby, Lincolnshire.[3] This offer Samuel immediately accepted.
Samuel already owed a sum of money to the owner of the boarding-house, and the cost of transporting himself and his family to his new parish increased his debt. He says, ‘I met with no inconsiderable difficulties in getting thither, lying sometimes money-bound here in town, being also indebted for my wife’s board and my own. . . I could not have stirred had not my patroness graciously offered to furnish me with what money I wanted on my note to repay it. Accordingly, I had £10 of her when I set out with my family, and ten more when I came to housekeeping.’[4]
As we read the story before us, we shall see Samuel in debt throughout his life, right up to the time of his death. However much our hearts are stirred by compassion, it is difficult, when we note the readiness with which he accepted these loans from his anonymous patroness, not to feel that he was inclined to rush too easily into debt.
His debt increased still further when he reached South Ormsby. He possessed no furniture and, having it all now to buy, he expected that Dr Annesley would provide the money, ‘which,’ he remarks, ‘he did not one quarter perform’. Apparently the Dissenting doctor was not ready to assist his Anglican son-in-law by furnishing his house for him!
Samuel began his duties in South Ormsby in June 1690. The population of the village was about 260 and he was to receive £50 a year. There was a rectory, but it was a poor primitive place, ‘composed of reeds and clay’.
We do well to remind ourselves that such a house, in a country village, was completely lacking in the host of conveniences that are found in almost all of our houses today. There was no electricity for lighting or heating and none of the domestic appliances that operate on it, no refrigerator, radio or television, no telephone or running water. There were fires to light and water had to be drawn from a well or carried from a stream. Because everything had to be done by hand, all but the poorest homes would employ a girl as a servant, and such help could be obtained for about fourpence a day. The Wesleys kept one servant most of the time and on occasions when Susanna was incapacitated they had two. This was not a special privilege, but was the practice in a large number of homes, and would have been expected in a clergyman’s household.
Bed belonging to Samuel and Susanna Wesley, preserved at the Old Rectory, Epworth
Susanna’s workbox, preserved at the Old Rectory, Epworth
Samuel and Susanna settled down to life in South Ormsby. He was the soul of industry and besides performing his clerical duties he laboured at literary undertakings. John Dunton, his brother-in-law in London, produced a bi-weekly journal, the Athenian Gazette, and Samuel was a partner in this publication, regularly contributing articles.
Readers were invited to send in their questions and Wesley was responsible for answering them. These enquiries included such topics as, ‘On what day did Adam fall?’ ‘How do angels eat?’ ‘How shall infants and deformed persons rise at the Day of Judgement?’ and ‘Whither went the waters of Noah’s flood?’[5] The answers Samuel gave to questions like these were undoubtedly more speculative than biblical. However, other questions were in the realms of theology and philosophy, and in answering these Samuel revealed a breadth of knowledge that was rare in a man of his age. He also published during these first months in South Ormsby two books, An essay upon all sorts of learning, and A discourse concerning the antiquity and authority of Hebrew vowel points. These works not only revealed Samuel’s scholarship, but they tended to parade it, and to manifest a measure of self-importance which was to be found in virtually all of his writings.
This latter tendency also characterized Samuel’s relationship with Susanna. Of course, in that century it was customary for a man to act as ‘king of the castle’ in his own home, and his wife was expected to serve him. Samuel’s attitude towards Susanna is expressed in some lines that he wrote during these days:
She graced my humble roof, and blest my life,
Blest me by a far greater name than wife;
Yet still I bore an undisputed sway,
Nor was’t her task, but pleasure to obey:
Scarce thought, much less could act, what I denied.
In our low house there was no room for pride;
Nor need I e’er direct what still was right,
She studied my convenience day and night.
Nor did I for her care ungrateful prove,
But only used my power to show my love;
Whate’er she asked I gave without reproach or grudge,
For still she reason asked, and I was judge.[6]
This was Samuel’s appraisal of his relationship with his wife. She proved a distinct blessing to his life, yet he subjected her to his ‘undisputed sway’ and her pleasure was to be found in obeying him. As we have seen, before her marriage she had been a girl of strongly independent mind, but now she could scarcely think, ‘much less could act’, in any manner in which he did not fully acquiesce. He declared his gratitude that she placed his convenience first, and although he gave her whatever she asked, he was ever the judge as to what she should ask.
So we see that married life was not proving a great success from Susanna’s point of view. Not only was she not allowed a mind of her own, they were also living in poverty and her husband was constantly in debt. She had grown up in her father’s comfortable home, but since marrying Samuel Wesley she had lived, first in the boarding-house, and now in this primitive rectory at South Ormsby. Similarly, her father had never known financial need, but it was becoming obvious that Samuel would probably remain in debt for the rest of his days. So by the time she had been married a few months Susanna must have come to realize that submission and poverty were likely to be permanent features of her life.
Susanna was by now pregnant for the second time. When she and Samuel had been in South Ormsby seven months another child was born. This was a girl and was named, like herself, Susanna.
A year later Susanna was again expecting a child. Samuel displayed an unfeeling attitude towards her, speaking of, ‘. . . my wife’s lying about last Christmas and threatening to do the same the next, and 2 children and as many servants to provide for (my wife being sickly, having had 3 or 4 touches of her rheumatism again, though we always fight it away with whey)’.[7] This child they called Emilia.
At this time Susanna and Samuel faced a grave disappointment over their first child, Sammy. They had early determined that he should become a clergyman, but to their dismay he failed to begin to speak. By the time he was four they assumed he was a deaf mute and their hopes of seeing him enter the ministry were dashed. One morning, however, Susanna could not find him and she went through the house and out into the yard, looking for him. She was afraid he might have come to some harm, and even though she did not think he could hear, she constantly called his name. Finally she heard a child’s voice say, ‘Here I am, mamma,’ and glancing down she saw Sammy underneath a table, holding his favourite cat in his arms. From that point onwards he talked as normally as any other child.
After he had been rector of South Ormsby for four years Wesley’s name was put forward as a candidate for a much higher position in the church. In a mansion adjacent to the village there lived a member of the aristocracy, the Marquis of Normanby. Some time earlier the marquis had made Wesley his domestic chaplain and he now wrote to Dr Tillotson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, suggesting that he appoint Wesley to a vacant bishopric in Ireland. Of course, Wesley, who was still only in his early thirties, lacked the maturity and experience necessary for such a responsibility, and the request was refused.[8] A short time later two of Wesley’s long-time associates, John Dunton and Daniel Defoe, claimed that he had himself asked the marquis to suggest him for the post and their assertion is undoubtedly true.
Nothing daunted, Samuel continued his search for advancement. In 1688 England had experienced a revolution in which the Catholic King James had been exiled, and his daughter Mary and her husband, William of Orange, had acceded to the throne. But William, a member of the royal family of Holland, had no true heritage in England, and although he was a strong Protestant, many people refused to swear allegiance to him. Mary, who had a right to the throne, was accepted by the majority, but she still sought declarations of loyalty from her subjects.
Such a need Samuel Wesley now supplied. He requested, and received, permission to dedicate to the queen a book he had recently written entitled, The life of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, a heroic poem. It was prefaced with. ‘A discourse concerning heroic poetry,’ and was illustrated with sixty copper plates. How much of it the queen actually read is not known, but at least it brought Samuel Wesley to her attention, displayed his poetic taste and declared his loyalty to her and to King William. It also addressed the queen in highly flattering terms. To gain the good will of the sovereign was an exceptionally valuable step, for she had at her command numerous ecclesiastical privileges and positions, and Wesley said that because of this book she appointed him to his next charge, which was, as we shall see, the parish of Epworth.
Samuel now took two other steps with a view to improving his position. Firstly, he received the degree of Master of Arts from Cambridge University, and secondly, he gained the curacy of another place which he says was ‘a mile or two from my own’. This was the parish of South Thoresby, and two years later he also acquired the parish of Swaby. He reports that the additions ‘added to my fortunes’, and although the amounts involved were probably small, the assumption of the responsibility for these churches indicates Samuel’s industry and his determination to succeed.
It was at this time, in 1694, that the Wesleys first witnessed the entrance of death into their home. Their second child, Susanna, had been sickly for some months; she grew steadily worse and finally passed away. It must have been especially painful for the mother to have to watch this little one gradually weaken, in spite of all that was done for her, till her life was taken. Susanna was to face this grim experience over and over again, for nine of her children. Much of her adult life was taken up with bearing children and watching them die.
In fact, she was to lose two more children very shortly after this first death. Early in 1695 Susanna gave birth to twin boys, who lived for only a month. She had not had time fully to regain her strength after the double births before she had the sorrow of seeing these two little ones placed in their graves.
Not long after this, she learned that her father was unwell. Dr Annesley had enjoyed vibrant health for most of his life, but in 1696 he became ill. The cost of travel, as well as family duties, would prohibit Susanna from visiting him in London, and besides praying for him all she could do was to wait for letters reporting his condition.
We are told that, as Dr Annesley lay suffering, ‘His mind had so long been filled with thoughts of God that even in moments of mental wandering he still breathed the same spirit. . . Then the floods of holy joy so inundated his soul that he exclaimed, “I cannot contain it! What manner of love is this to a poor worm! I cannot express a thousandth part of what praise is due to thee. . . I will die praising thee!. . . I shall be satisfied with thy likeness! Satisfied! Satisfied! O, my dearest Lord Jesus, I come!”’[9] At the age of seventy-seven Samuel Annesley went to abide in the joy of the presence of God.
There is no record of the amount of Dr Annesley’s possessions at the time of his death. One author suggests that he had been earning between £300 and £400 a year and another mentions £700. But his will reads, ‘My just debts being paid, I give to each of my children one shilling, and all the rest to be divided between my son Benjamin, my daughter Judith and my daughter Anne.’ He may have been unaware of the poverty the Wesleys were suffering, or his failure to include Susanna’s name along with her sisters and her brother may have been the result of his displeasure at her having left Dissent for the Church of England. In either case, the absence of any mention of her name from his will must have been a disappointment to her.
None the less, she was sorely moved by his death — so much so that she could hardly bring herself to believe he had truly departed from this earth. In later years, ‘Her son John heard her say that she was frequently as fully persuaded that her father was with her as if she had seen him with her bodily eyes.’ She firmly believed in the reality of the spirit world and was convinced that she frequently communed with his spirit.
The hope that Samuel Wesley had entertained in flattering Queen Mary in his Life of Christ — that she would appoint him to a more prominent parish and one that paid better — now came to fruition in a small measure, when he was appointed rector of the parish of the Lincolnshire town of Epworth. He stated, ‘Queen Mary gave me this benefice,’ but recent research has shown that he received it as a gift from the king. At least, he was right that a royal hand was behind the favour.
Accordingly, Susanna and Samuel prepared to leave South Ormsby. They had been there for six, or perhaps seven years, and it had proved a place of disappointment and almost constant child-bearing for her, and of literary labour and ever-increasing debt for him. But now they both hoped that brighter skies were before them. This they expected would be true especially in the financial realm, for whereas Samuel’s salary at South Ormsby had been a mere £50, he was informed that it would now be virtually £200. So, with this prospect of better times awaiting them, they said their farewells, loaded their waggons and set out for Epworth.
Epworth parish church, where Samuel was rector for thirty-eight years
The association of this town with the Wesley family was to establish its name in loving remembrance the world over for generations to come.