A MEMORANDUM in Wesley’s own writing shows that on January
28th, 1714, he was nominated by the Duke of Buckingham on the
foundation of Charterhouse. His Grace,. who was at that time Lord
Chamberlain, had long been a friend of the Wesleys. Within a week
of their disastrous fire the Rector sent an account to him, with
a description of his boy’s deliverance. The Duke and Duchess
had given £26 17s. 6d. to help Samuel Wesley during his financial
troubles in 1703, so that they were old friends. This nomination
introduced John Wesley to that famous school for which he cherished
a life-long affection. It celebrated its centenary in the year
he came up from Epworth. Its founder—Thomas Sutton, the
merchant prince—who died at Hackney on December 12th, 1611
at the ripe age of seventy-nine, had resolved to devote his vast
wealth to some worthy charity, and after long and anxious thought,
determined to found a hospital or home for the poor or aged and
also a free schooL At first he intended to erect the buildings
at Little Hallingbury, in Essex, but he afterwards bought Howard
House for £13,ooo. This mansion, the home of the dukes of Norfolk,
had formerly been a Carthusian monastery, in which both Sir Thomas
More and Dean Colet “found a temporary retreat from the
cares of the world.” The house Was founded in 1372, and
perished at the dissolution of the monasteries in Henry VIII.’s
reign. Its prior suffered on the scaffold rather than betray his
trust.
The property passed into the hands of the Howards
in 1 565. The Duke of Norfolk, who was beheaded because of his
correspondence with Mary, Queen of Scots, was living here at
the time he was committed to the Tower. He was released after
an imprisonment of some months, and returned to his mansion,
under the surveillance of Sir Henry Nevil. He spent much time
in beautifying his house, but in 1571 he was again in the Tower.
John Wesley’s warm sympathy with the unfortunate Queen
may have been first stirred by the associations of his school
The property, confiscated for a time by Elizabeth, was afterwards
restored to the Howards. In 1603 James I. made this mansion
of the family, that had suffered so much for his mother, his
first home when he reached London. He kept court there for four
days, and knighted more than eighty gentlemen. Such were the
historic associations of the Charterhouse. Seven full-length
portraits which were entrusted to the care of one of the officers
of the hospital by the Duchess of Monmouth, who intended to
claim them when happier days dawned, still remain on the walls
where they hung in John Wesley’s time. The monastery,
which was on the system of La Grande Chartreuse, bequeathed
its name to the famous foundation of Sutton. Charter-house is
simply a corruption of Chartreuse. In its “Governors’
Room,” where the managers of the charity used to meet,
almost all the illustrious men of England from the time of Henry
VIII. to the Restoration have been familiar figures.
The school was opened on October 3rd, 1614, with
forty boys on the foundation, who were educated free of charge,
and wore gowns of broad cloth lined with baize. Hence they were
called gown-boys. A schoolmaster and an usher had charge of
their education. About sixty “town-boys” who were
not on the foundation were admitted on payment of school fees.
The number of these scholars steadily grew. In 1677 there were
forty-four boys on the foundation, but forty was the usual
number.
During all the time John Wesley was at the Charterhouse
Dr. Thomas Walker was the schoolmaster. He had been appointed
in 1679, after four years spent as usher, and held the post
till 1728. Andrew Tooke, who succeeded him as schoolmaster,
was usher during John Wesley’s school-days. Both had been
gown-boys. Dr. Walker was sixty-seven years old when John Wesley
entered Charterhouse. For forty years he had devoted himself
to the school. The inscription on a memorial tablet in the chapel
speaks of his exceedingly accurate knowledge of Hebrew, Greek,
and Latin, and of his diligence in the discharge of his office.
Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Law, Bishop of Carlisle, Benson,
Bishop of Gloucester, and Dr. Davies, the President of Queen’s
College, Cambridge, who was reputed to be the best Latin scholar
of his day in England, were all educated under him. He died
on June 12th, 1728, in the eighty-first year of his age. Wesley’s
quietneis, regularity, and application are said to have made
him a special favourite with Dr. Walker.’
Andrew Tooke, the usher, was Gresham Professor
of Geometry, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and an author of
some eminence. His “Pantheon,” a school summary
of heathen mythology, went through at least twenty-two editions.
He was forty-one when John Wesley entered, and had been usher
for nineteen years. He died at the age of fifty-eight, having
held the headmastership for three years.
Any picture of Wesley’s school would be incomplete without
some reference to the hospital and its pensioners. No Thackeray
had yet arisen to immortalise those eighty decayed gentlemen
for whom Thomas Sutton’s bounty provided an asylum in
their declining years. But the very fact that the school and
the hospital were parts of one great institution must always
have been impressive. The Master of Charterhouse was both the
head of the hospital and a governor of the school. He must be
carefully distinguished from the schoolmaster. For one year
after Wesley became a scholar this high office was held by Thomas
Burnet, whose writings enjoyed a great reputation among all
the scholars of Europe. Addison wrote a Latin ode in praise
of his “Telluris Theoria Sacra,” a learned work
on terrestrial revolutions. He had successfully resisted James
II.’s attempt to intrude a Roman Catholic on the foundation,
not quailing even before the brutal Jeffreys. Archbishop Tillotson’s
recommendation won him t position of secretary and chaplain
to William III. He w an intimate friend of Godfrey Kneller’s.
He died in 1715, at the age of eighty. Dr. King, who had been
Preacher of Charterhouse for twenty years, was Burnet’s
successor. On January 20th, 1726, Dr. Byrom says that he went
with Dr. King and two other friends to the Horn Tavern, where
they had a pleasant time together. He says that Dr. Kini always
carried in his pocket a copy of the “Imitation of Christ.”
The system of fagging seems to have been in full force., during
Wesley’s schooldays. His life there was one of much privation.
The elder boys * took the animal food from the juniors,* so
that he says, “From ten to fourteen I bad little but bread
to eat, and not great plenty of that. I believe this was so
far from hurting me, that it laid the foundation of lasting
health.” Isaac Taylor says, “Wesley learned, as
a boy, to suffer wrongfully with a cheerful patience, and to
conform himself to cruel despotisms without acquiring either
the slave’s temper or the despot’s.” One thing
helped much to preserve his strength. His father had given him
strict injunctions to run round the garden, which was of considerable
extent, three times every morning. Wesley was careful to obey
that injunction.
One pleasant instance of the influence
he exerted at school has been preserved. Mr. Took; the usher,
one day missed all the little boys from the playground. He found,
when he began to search, that they were all in the schoolroom
around Wesley, who was relating to them instructive stories,
which proved more attractive than the playground. Mr. Tooke
expressed his pleasure, and wished the boy to repeat this entertainment
as often as he could find listeners. A malicious construction
has been given to this story. John Wesley is said to have harangued
his school-fellows from the writing desks, and when taken to
task by Mr. Tooke for associating with such little boys, to
have answered, “Better rule in hell than serve in heaven.”
Fortunately Charles Wesley’s daughter, who had received
the true account from her father, was able to Confute these
statements.
About the time that Wesley entered
Charterhouse, his brother Samuel returned from Oxford to his
old school al Westminster as usher. He seems to have married
in 1715, and lived close to Dean’s Yard. Charles, their
youngest brother, came up to Westminster School in 1716, so
that the three Wesleys were all in London together for four
years, until John went to Oxford in 1720. We catch a glimpse
of one pleasant meeting, and see how much Wesley’s progress
gratified his scholarly brother Samuel. In 1719, when the Rector
was in doubt as to the future of Charles, Samuel wrote, “My
brother Jack, I can faithfully assure you, gives you no manner
of discouragement from breeding your third son a scholar.”
Two or three months later he tells his father, “Jack is
with me, and a brave boy, learning Hebrew as fast as he can.”
Wesley was elected to Christ Church,
which he entered on June 24th, 1720.1 In 1630 there were twenty-seven
exhibitioners at the universities from the foundation of Charterhouse,
at a cost of four hundred and thirty-two pounds to the house.
The number seems to have varied from twenty-four to twenty-nine.
The school thus secured for Wesley the best education he could
receive in England. He cherished a life-long feeling of affection
for the place, and took a walk through it every year when in
London. §One of these visits forms a singularly interesting
link to the thoughts and feelings of the schoolboy. On Monday,
August 8th, 1757, he says, “I took a walk in the Charter-house.
I wondered that all the squares and buildings, and especially
the schoolboys, looked so little. But this is easily accounted
for. I was little myself when I was at school, and measured
all about me by myself. Accordingly, the upper boys, being
then bigger than myself, seemed to me very big and tall, quite
contrary to what they appear now, when I am taller and bigger
than them.” *
Charterhouse was not a fashionable
school like Westminster, so that we do not find many aristocratic
names among Wesley’s schoolfellows. Charles Wesley’s
journals refer to not a few of his contemporaries at Westminster,
men of title and position. His brother mentions one of his schoolfellows
who lived half a mile from Barnard Castle. When he visited that
place in May, 1764, this Mr. Fielding invited him to breakfast.
“I found we had been schoolfellows at the Charterhouse;
and he remembered me, though I had forgot him. I spent a very
agreeable hour with a serious as well as sensible man.”
Four years later he lodged at this gentleman’s “lovely
house” during his stay in Barnard Castle. Twenty years
after his first visit he came again to the neighbourhood, and
found that both Mr. Fielding and his wife were dead. His had
let the house to a stranger.
On June 13th, 1748, the journals
record a visit which Seems to show that Wesley was at the Charterhouse.
“I Spent an hour or two with Dr. Pepusch.” On April
29th of the same year Charles Wesley writes, “Mrs. Rich
carried me to Dr. Pepusch, whose music entertained us much,
and his conversation more.” Mrs. Rich, who had been converted
under Charles Wesley’s ministry, was the wife of the proprietor
of Covent Garden Theatre, and had free access to all the best
musicians of the time. Pepusch had been organist at the Charterhouse
for eleven years, and lived there after his appointment. Wesley
was evidently as much interested as his brother by the conversation
of the aged musician. He makes a careful notes of it in his
journal. Dr. Pepusch asserted that the art of music was dead.
He maintained that it depended on nature and mathematical principles,
which only the ancients understood in their perfection. Tallis
and Purcell had made efforts to revive it, but the present masters
had no fixed principles at all. Such was the conversation which
seems to have taken place within the precincts of the Charterhouse.
One incident of Wesley’s
schooldays shows that he was a high-spirited youth. “I
remember,” says Alexander Knox, “Mr. Wesley told
us that his father was the person who composed the well-known
speech delivered by Dr. Sacheverell at the close of his trial,
and that on this ground, when he, Mr. John Wesley, was about
to be entered at Oxford, his father, knowing that the Doctor
had a strong interest in the college for which his son was devoted,
desired him to call on the Doctor in his way to get letters
of recommendation. ‘When I was introduced,’ said
Mr. John Wesley, ‘I found him alone, as tall as a maypole,
and as fine as an archbishop. I was a very little fellow, not
taller’ (pointing to a very gentlemanlike but very dwarfish
clergyman who was in the company) ‘than Mr. Kennedy there.
He said, “You are too young to go to the University; you
cannot know Greek and Latin yet. Go back to school.” I
looked at him as David looked at Goliath, and despised him in
my heart. I thought, “If I do not know Greek and Latin
better than you, I ought to go back to school indeed.”
I left him, and neither entreaties nor commands could have again
brought me back to him.”
One word about Wesley’s religious
life at Charterhouse is necessary. At the time of his conversion,
in 1738,* after describing his earlier life at home, he proceeds,
“The next six or seven years were spent at school, where,
outward restraints being removed, I was much more negligent
than before, even of outward duties, and almost continually
guilty of outward sins, which I knew to be such, though they
were not scandalous in the eye of the world. However, I still
read the Scriptures, and said my prayers, morning and evening.
And what I now hoped to be saved by was, (i) not being so bad
as other people, (2) having still a kindness for religion, and
(3) reading the Bible, going to church, and saying my prayers.”
It is evident that the old notions of” universal obedience”
in which he had been so carefully trained at home had broken
down. He was, he says, as ignorant of The true meaning of the
Law as of the Gospel. More evangelical teaching would probably
have preserved him from the “outward sins” to which
he refers. We must not, however, forget how sensitive his conscience
was. A schoolboy who read his Bible morning and evening had
not gone far astray.
On Founder’s Day, December
12th, 1727, the stewards for the annual dinner of old Carthusians
were Dr. King (Master of the Charterhouse), Mr. John Wesley,
Mr. Robert Vincent, and Mr. Edward Doyley. The sum of £34 was
paid to Mr. West, the cook for the dinner; wines, etc., cost
£30 5s. 6d.; “paid musick, as in number two French horns,
£12 12s.” Eighty-four persons were at the t These particulars
and the bill of fare have been kindly furnished by the Rev.
Andrew Clark, of Lincoln College. When we state that roasted
pike, fried whitings, flounders, spitched eels, shrimps, tongues,
udders, pigeons, venison pasties, chines and turkeys, lamb and
ragouts, wild fowls, sweetbreads and dinner, of which the total
expenses were £92 I Is. Mr. Vincent paid the bills. At the time
of this dinner Wesley had been Fellow of Lincoln College for
more than eighteen months.
asparagus, almond tarts, roasted
lobsters, pear tarts, sirloin of roasted beef, fruit, jellies,
custards, and florentines, figure on this bill of fare, it will
be seen that the stewards made a good bargain. They met “at
the Crown behind the Exchange” on November 27th to arrange
for the dinner, and again on Monday, December 4th. These meetings
cost four pounds. “It was judged that twelve servants
were enough to wait at the table.” The preacher for the
day was Mr. Thomas Rowel, "on account of Mr. Blackwell’s
indisposition.”
Sponsored by Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, Idaho.
