Mr. Wesley was in politics a strong Royalist, but having
seen James II. shake "his lean arm" at the Fellows of Magdalen
College, and threaten them "with the weight of a king's right hand,"
he conceived a prejudice against that monarch, and took the side of
the Prince of Orange. His wife, a very pious woman and a strict
disciplinarian, was a Jacobite, would not say "amen" to the prayers
for "the king," and was therefore deserted by her husband for a year
or more in 1701-1702. They came together again, however, on the
accession of Queen Anne.
Unpopular for his politics, hated by the Dissenters, and at odds with
the "cunning men," or local wizards against whom he had frequently
preached, Mr. Wesley was certainly apt to have tricks played on him by
his neighbours. His house, though surrounded by a wall, a hedge, and
its own grounds, was within a few yards of the nearest dwelling in the
village street.
In 1716, when the disturbances began, Mr. Wesley's family consisted of
his wife; his eldest son, Sam, aged about twenty-three, and then
absent at his duties as an usher at Westminster; John, aged twelve, a
boy at Westminster School; Charles, a boy of eight, away from home,
and the girls, who were all at the parsonage.
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