For the better intelligence of the tale, we must know who
the inmates of the Epworth Rectory were, and the nature of their
characters and pursuits. The rector was the Rev. Samuel Wesley, born
in 1662, the son of a clergyman banished from his living on "Black
Bartholomew Day," 1666. Though educated among Dissenters, Samuel
Wesley converted himself to the truth as it is in the Church of
England, became a "poor scholar" of Exeter College in Oxford,
supported himself mainly by hack-work in literature (he was one of the
editors of a penny paper called The Athenian Mercury, a sort of
Answers), married Miss Susanna Annesley, a lady of good family, in
1690-91, and in 1693 was presented to the Rectory of Epworth in
Lincolnshire by Mary, wife of William of Orange, to whom he had
dedicated a poem on the life of Christ. The living was poor, Mr.
Wesley's family multiplied with amazing velocity, he was in debt, and
unpopular. His cattle were maimed in 1705, and in 1703 his house was
burned down. The Rectory House, of which a picture is given in
Clarke's Memoirs of the Wesleys, 1825, was built anew at his own
expense.
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