The Rev. Bartholomew Wesley, Mr. J. Wesley's Great-Grandfather
From whatever part of the world the family of the Wesley 8 may have originally come, whether from Asiatic, Spanish, or Saxon progenitors; or whether indigenous in Britian, through a long train of ancestry; posterity can mount no higher in tracing it than to about the middle of the seventeenth century: but so far as we can trace it back, to use the words of one of Mr. J. Wesley’s biographers, “his ancestors appear respectable for learning, conspicuous for piety, and firmly attached to those views of Christianity which they had formed from the Sacred Scriptures.”
The Rev. Bartholomew Wesley, great grandfather to the founder of the Methodists, is mentioned by Hitchins among the rectors of Catherston, in Dorsetshire, in the year 1650. And in the year 1662 we find him among those who suffered by the aforesaid Act of Uniformity; being ejected from his living of Charmouth, a village in the same place, remarkable for its singular situation at the foot of a hill which is one thousand and five feet high, and opposite to another which is nine hundred and seventy feet. His own name was to him ominous, as he was deprived of every earthly good, and suspended from his ministerial functions on the festival of the saint after whom he was called. He was succeeded in his living of Charmouth by a person of the name of Burd, or Bird, October 14, 1662. See the Nonconformist’s Memorial, by Palmer, Vol. II. p. 125.
I cannot find of what university or college he was: but most probably of Oxford. Dr. Calamy states, that when he was at the university he applied himself to the study of physic as well as divinity. In the former practice he appears to have acquired some celebrity; for while he was in his living of Charmouth, he was often consulted as a physician; and after his ejectment he applied himself chiefly to this profession, and gained a livelihood by it; though he continued as the times would permit, to preach occasionally.
It appears from the history of the Nonconformists, that many of the Ministers when ejected had recourse to the practice of physic for a subsistence; as there were no other means left in their power by which they might gain their bread. They were proscribed and incapacitated as preachers, both in public and private, by the Act of Uniformity; and though their learned education had qualified them to be instructors of youth as public schoolmasters, or to give private tuition in the families of the nobility and gentry; yet, this also was on grievous penalties proscribed by the Act: hence they had no alternative but to study and practise medicine. For this, some had received previous qualifications at the university, as was the case of Mr. Bartholomew Wesley. But others had no advantage of this kind; and, therefore, practised at great hazard. This caused one of them to say to the persons by whom the ejectment was put in force against him, “I perceive that this is like to occasion the death of many.” The commissioners, supposing these words to savour of contumacy and rebellion, questioned him severely on the subject.” To whom he replied, “that being deprived by the Act of every means of getting his bread in those ways for which he was qualified, he must have recourse to the practice of medicine, which he did not properly understand; and thereby the lives of many of his patients would most probably be endangered.”
This was no doubt the case in very many instances. They acted according to the best they knew, in order to help their neighbours and gain an honest livelihood: but like many, even to the present day, though useful where disease bore no uncommon type, were often deceived by fallacious appearances, and took the more prominent symptoms, which were only indications of complication, or of spurious morbid action, as the immediate cause of the disorder; prescribed accordingly; and thereby formed a new disease, which not unfrequently terminated the life of the unhappy patient.
If regular and well educated practitioners be liable to make such mistakes, and nothing is more certain; what must it be with the unskilful, and the immense colluvies of quack doctors, who now vend medicines for the infallible cure of every disorder, under authority of indisputable patents!
Dr. Garth nervously describes the ruin spread through society by licensed and unlicensed empirics. IVow tamen telis vulnerat ista agyrtarum colluvies, sed theriaca quadam magii perniciosa: non pyris sed pulvere necio quo exotico cert at; non globulis plumbeis, sed pilulisque lethalibus interficit.
66 This herd of vermin inflict no wound by daggers; but by a certain mithridate much more pernicious. They arm not themselves with cataplasms; but with a species of unknown exotic powder. They kill not with leaden bullets; but with pills equally lethalP
From Dr. Calamy’s account, it appears that Mr. Wesley’s preaching was not very popular; owing, he says, to a peculiar plainness of speech. In what this consisted we are not told: but this we well know, that plainness of speech while the sense is good, and the doctrine sound, would not prevent the popularity of any preacher in the present day. His great grandson studied the utmost plainness of speech in all his ministrations. — yet who more popular! who more successful!
Mr. Bartholomew Wesley does not appear to have lived long after his ejectment: but when he died is uncertain. All that we know is this, that he was so affected by the premature death of his excellent son John, who was also a minister, that his health rapidly declined, and he did not long survive him. This must have been some time after 1670. See the succeeding account of his son John.
There is a story told of Mr. B. Wesley by Anthony a Wood, in the Athence Oxonienses, Vol. II. col. 963, which requires examination.
Speaking of the Rev. Samuel Wesley, sen. Rector of Epworth, he
says,” The said Samuel Wesley is grandson to: Wesley,
the fanatical minister, some time of Charmouth, in Dorsetshire, at what time [1651] the Lord Wilmot and King Charles II. had like to have been by him betrayed, when they continued incognito in that country.”
Though a good sire may have a bad son, and a good son a bad sire; and the delinquency of ancestors should not be imputed to their posterity; yet I own I should feel grieved could a charge of treachery be fairly proved against the Wesley family; or that it could be made to appear that it had ever produced a person disaffected to the state.
I have taken some pains to inquire into the authenticity of this story so confidently related by Wood.
In the wonderful adventures of Charles II., in his attempts to recover his paternal kingdom, the story of his narrow escape at Charmouth is told by most of our historians and annalists.
It appears that Lord Wilmot and Colonel Wyndham, who had accompanied the king in disguise, after his unfortunate defeat at Worcester, September 3d, 1651, wishing to escape to the continent, came to Lyme in Dorsetshire; and agreed with one Limbry, master of a small sloop of thirty tons, then bound to St. Malo, to take over two gentlemen, and land them on any part of the French coast. The vessel then lay at the Cable in Lyme; and the owner having agreed to bring it out to a little creek near Charmouth, his Majesty and ’ his party, deeply disguised, waited for its arrival.
Lord Clarendon states, that while they were waiting, the day having been appointed by the parliament for a solemn fast, a fanatical weaver, who had been a soldier in the parliament army, was preaching against the king, in a little chapel fronting the obscure inn where his Majesty had stopped. Charles, to avoid suspicion, was among the audience. It happened that a smith of the same principles with the weaver, who had been called to fasten on a shoe belonging to the king’s horse, came to inform the preacher, that he knew from the fashion of the shoes that the horse had come from the north. The preacher immediately affirmed that this horse could belong to no other than Charles Stuart; and instantly went with a constable to search the inn. But the king being disappointed of the vessel that was to come out for him in the night, and take him to the French coast, had left the inn, and was gone with Colonel Wyndham to Bridport, and thus escaped.
This is the substance of the relation given by Lord Clarendon, who does not mention the name of the preacher; but merely tells us that he was a fanatical weaver, and had been a soldier in the parliament army.
Here we might rest, and safely affirm that the story of Anthony a Wood is confuted, as far as it relates to Bartholomew Wesley; as none of these characters belong to him. There is no evidence that while he enjoyed the living of Charmouth, (which he did at this time, 1651, and continued to do till ejected by the Act of Uniformity in 1662,) he had been zioeaver, or had ever served in the parliament army. He appears to have been regularly bred at the university for a minister, and never to any handicraft business. He is reckoned among the rectors of Catherston, and had the living of Charmouth, and consequently would not be reputed a fanatical preacher.
The story therefore to which Anthony a Wood alludes, as told by Lord Clarendon, is wholly inapplicable to Bartholomew Wesley.
But it may be asked, where did Wood get the name of Wesley that he so circumstantially appropriates to the rector of Epworth’s grandfather ?. I answer. — He got it partly by mistaking a name and partly from his own invention. I shall produce the proof.
We have a very circumstantial relation of the king’s escape from Worcester, taken from his own mouth by Mr. Pepys, Secretary to the Admiralty, in several days attendance for that purpose. In that authentic relation, the story as inserted by Mr. Carte, (in his General History of England,) no friend to Nonconformists, is as follows: —
“The king with his company sat up all night, expecting the ship to come out (i. e. out of the Cable, to come to the creek near Charmouth, according to agreement, see before,) and upon her failure? Wilmot was sent with Peters, a servant of Colonel Wyndham’s, to Lyme the next morning, to know the reason. Being troubled how to spend the day, the horses were ordered to be got ready, and the king’s which carried double, (for he rode before Mrs. Judith Conisby. as a servant, by the name of William Jackson) having a shoe loose, a smith was sent for. who looking over the shoes of the other horses.
he said he knew that some of them had been shod near Worcestei When he had fastened the shoes, he went presently to consult Westbya rigid foolish Presbyterian minister of Charmouth, who was then m a long-winded prayer; and before he had done, the king was gone on with Mrs. Conisby and Mr. Wyndham to Bridport.”
Now, it may be allowed that Westby may be a mistake for Westley, or W estley for Westby; and therefore there is no evidence here that Bartholomew Wesley is intended: but were there even no doubt concerning the name, yet the pretended fact, so positively affirmed by the author of the Athence, that Lord Wihnot and King Charles II. had like to have been by him betrayed, when they continued incognito in that country, is wholly unsubstantiated; for there is not a word said by Mr. Pepys, who took the relation from the king’s own mouth, of any attempt, secret or outward, on the part of this Westby to betray the king: for the account only states that the smith went to consult this Westby, who was then in a long-ivinded prayer; and before he had done the king had departed for Bridport. Nor is there any hint that this so called rigid, foolish, presbyterian minister took any steps to discover the king. Betray him he could not, because he was not in his confidence, — nor is it hinted that the smith communicated his supposed discovery to the preacher, or that he even waited till he had finished his long-winded prayer.
Lord Clarendon does state that the fanatical weaver, who had been a soldier, did get a constable, and went to detect the king, but he gives no name; and by the preacher having been a soldier, and then a weaver, it must be evident for the reasons above assigned that Bartholomew Wesley could not be intended.
There might have been a preacher at Charmouth of the name of Westby who had been a soldier in the parliament army and then a weaver: and as Anthony a Wood must have known that Mr. Bartholomew Wesley had the living of Charmouth, for lie was contemporary, he applied to the regular divine what was only true of him whom he calls the fanatical minister. But Wood’s evidence is little worth, for he was a man of a bitter and intolerant spirit, much more inclined to the Church of Rome than to the Protestant Church of England. Bishop Burnet, who lived at the same time, and was well acquainted with the virulence of his spirit, gives him the following character in a letter to the Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry: —
“That poor writer has thrown together such a tumultuary mixture of stuff and tattle, and has been so visibly a tool of some of the Church of Rome to reproach all the greatest men of our church, that no man who takes care of his own reputation will take anything upon trust that is said by one who has no ruputation to lose.’* I contend, therefore, that the tale of Anthony a Wood is unlikely, inconsistent, and absurd, as it relates to Mr. B. Wesley and we need not wonder that the man who was capable of styling the celebrated John Locke a prating troublesome fellow, should call Mr. B. Wesley the fanatical minister of Charmouih.
To conclude, as far as I have been able to search into the political principles of this family, especially from the days of the rector of Epworth, I have found their sentiments of loyalty among the strongest and purest I have ever known.
As this principle has descended to the last branches of the family, (for it is now nearly extinct) each appears to have possessed it as a kind of heirloom that has been handed down from the remotest ancestry. John, Mr. Wesley’s grandfather, appears to have been shaken for a time in his attachment to the house of Stuart, from the conviction that was very common in the country, that Charles I. was endeavouring to alter the constitution of the kingdom, establish an arbitrary government, and bring back Popery: but on the restoration of Charles II. he cheerfully took the oath of allegiance, and faithfully kept it to the end of his life.
Doubts also relative to the legitimacy ef the Orange succession, in prejudice of James II. and his heirs, were entertained by some of the collateral branches of the family: but their principles of loyalty could never be successfully impeached; and these very scruples arose from their high sense of duty and loyalty, which this history will shew was carried to as great lengths as moderation could at all justify. And it should not escape the notice of the historian, as it cannot the attention of the politician and philosopher, that the immense body of Methodists, who may be properly called the spiritual progeny of the last great men of this family, have imbibed the same spirit, and have been as remarkable for their loyalty, as they have been for the simplicity of their manners, the purity of their doctrine, and their zeal for the best interests of their fellow-creatures.