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The Letters of John Wesley
Volume 2 Events
A PERIOD OF GREAT EXTENSION MAY 17, 1742, TO NOVEMBER 27, 1750
PRINCIPLE EVENTS
1742 | May 28 | First Visit to Newcastle-upon-Tyne |
| June 6 | Preaches on his father's tomb. |
| July 30 | Death of Susanna Wesley |
1743 | May 29 | Opens West Street Chapel, London |
| Aug.26 | Sets out for Cornwall |
| Oct.20 | Riot at Wednesbury |
1744 | June 25 | First Conference |
| Aug.24 | His last University sermon |
1747 | Aug. 9 | First Visit to Ireland |
1749 | Apr. 8 | Marriage of Charles Wesley |
| Oct. 3 | Grace Murray marries John Bennet |
Up to this period Wesley's parish had been limited to London and Bristol, with Oxford and a few places between these centres. John Nelson, who dreamt that the Wesleys were sitting at his fireside, wrote urgent invitations for Birstall to be visited. This and Lady Huntingdon's call to Donnington Park prepared the way for that extension to Newcastle-upon-Tyne which she had previously suggested to Wesley. He found that he had not come too soon. Newcastle became one of the chief centres of Methodist life and influence. Cornwall was also visited, and soon took rank as pre-eminently the Methodist county. Fierce riots mark this period in Staffordshire, Cornwall, and Ireland, which have left their trace on the letters.
The personal vindication of February 8, 1745, has been ascribed to John Wesley in Mr. Arnold Lunn's Life, and is therefore given in full, but the initials to the shorthand copy are Ch.W., who himself refers to it as his. See page 33.
Wesley's patriotism is seen in his letters from Newcastle when the city was threatened in 1745 by the army of the Young Pretender; and his detachment of spirit in the correspondence with 'John Smith,' begun in the midst of the panic.
His correspondence with Ebenezer Blackwell shows how Wesley enjoyed the confidence of the London banker and was ready to make inquiries for him in Ireland. Wesley laid before him his project for A Christian Library; and also warned him against being immersed in business cares. He himself found them 'apt to damp and deaden' his soul; what, then, must his friend feel, ‘engaged all the day long with such a multiplicity of them!’
Charles Wesley's marriage in 1749 gave him a home in Bristol. The deadly blow to Wesley's personal happiness caused by the marriage of Grace Murray to John Bennet gives a final touch of pathos to the letters of a period which includes the death of his mother and the distress caused by the moral collapse of his brother-in-law Westley Hall.
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