CHAPTER III.

SCHOOL DAYS-1662-1683.

SAMUEL WESLEY was born at Winterborn-Whitchurch, at the close of the year 1662. He was educated at the Free School, at Dorchester, by Mr Henry Dolling, to whom, out of respect, he dedicated the first work that he published.* Dorchester Free School was built by Edward Hardy, of Wyke, near Weymouth, about the year 1579. Young Wesley remained here until he was a little more than fifteen years of age, when he was sent to an academy in London. He continued in London until August 1683, when he had nearly arrived at the age of twenty-one.

Perhaps there is no period in English history more pregnant with painful interest than the first twenty-one years of Samuel Wesley's life. He came into the world four months after that dark day of St Bartholomew, when his father, and his grandfather, and more than two thousand other godly ministers of Christ, were ejected from their churches, and driven from their homes. When he was yet a child, the great plague of London swept away one hundred thousand of its inhabitants; and the great fire made nearly the whole city a sightless heap of cinders, from the Tower to Temple Bar. Taking advantage of the confusion produced by these terrible events, the Covenanters in the West of Scotland rose up, and demanded redress of their grievances, and the removal of Episcopacy. Archbishop Sharp, exchanging the crosier for the sword, took the field against them. Forty were killed on Pentland Hills, and one hundred and thirty taken prisoners. Ten were hanged in Edinburgh upon one gibbet,

• Mr Dolling became master of Dorchester School in 1664, and held the office until 1675. He was LL.B of Wadham College, Oxford; and translated "The Whole Duty of Man" into Latin. The work, a copy of which is in the Dorches ter School Library, was licensed in 1678.-HUTCHIN'S History of Dorsetshire.

and thirty-five more were sent back to the west of Scotland, and there hanged, in front of their own dwellings, the ministers of the Established Church declaring them damned to all eternity for their rebellion, and the archbishop employing his Episcopal genius in the invention of a new infernal instrument of torture, and spending his hours out of the sacred pulpit, not so much in sacred exercises as in studying how to make "the boots" excruciate the surviving associates of those executed men. Clarendon, who had much to do with the passing of the Act of Uniformity, was now deprived of the great seal, was accused of treason, and obliged to flee to France for safety. Sir Matthew Hale, Bishop Wilkins, and others, made an effort to have the Presbyterians comprehended in the Established Church, and to secure toleration for all the other dissenting sects; but the orthodoxy of parliament was as intolerant as ever, and it was a common saying at the time, that whoever proposed new laws about religion ought to do it with a rope round his neck. The bishops and High Churchmen continued to preach the divine right of kings and passive obedience, and the court plunged more deeply than ever into debauchery and sin.

In 1668, the Puritans and apprentices about Moorfields took the liberty to pull down a number of brothels, and then to say, with some significance, that having demolished the little ones they ought not to spare the great one at Whitehall. Colonel Blood, the villainous desperado, after nearly murdering Lord Ormond, and after stealing the crown of England from the Tower, was not only pardoned, but admitted into the privacy and intimacy of the court, became a personal favourite of the king, was constantly seen about the palace, and had granted to him, for his base and bloody deeds, an estate in Ireland, worth £500 a-year. In 1673 the Test Act was passed, which provided that all who refused to take the oaths, and to receive the sacrament, according to the rites of the Church of England, should be debarred from public employment. In 1677, Charles not only permitted his nephew, the Prince of Orange, to come to England, but hastily made up a marriage between the prince and his niece, Mary, the elder daughter of James, the Duke of York, by Anne Hyde,-Charles alleging that this measure was forced upon him by the jealous fears of the nation, particularly since the Duke of York had declared himself a Papist.

In 1678, the year in which Samuel Wesley was sent to school in London, the popish plot of Titus Oates was developed. Titus was the son of an Anabaptist ribbon weaver. After acting as chaplain to one of Cromwell's regiments in Scotland, he took orders in the Church of England, and obtained the living of Hastings in Sussex. Whilst discharging his sacred duties, he was twice convicted of perjury. He was then appointed chaplain on board a man-of-war, but was dismissed with added infamy. Two years before the development of his plot, he was admitted into the service of the popish Duke of Norfolk, and suddenly became a Papist. He was now sent to a Jesuits' College in Spain, from which, in a short time, he was disgracefully expelled. He recrossed the Pyrenees, and presented himself, as a mendicant, at the gate of the Jesuit College, at St Omar. Here, for a while, he lived among the students and novices, and was then cast out with shame, and was obliged to return to England without cassock and without coat. It so happened that, just at this juncture, Dr Tonge, rector of St Michael's, in Wood Street, London, was a great Protestant alarmist. Titus obtained access to him, worked upon his fears, and, by his means, was brought before the Privy Council. Here, in a new suit of clothes and a sacerdotal gown, he alleged that, by the authority of the pope, a number of Jesuits were plotting the murder of the king, and of his brother James, the Duke of York; that these Jesuits had £60,000 a-year at their command, to assist in carrying out their murderous intentions; that repeated commissions had been given to shoot the king, and that the queen's physician had been urged to poison him; that a wager had been laid that the king should eat no more Christmas pies, and that if he would not become R. C. (Rex Catholicus) he should no longer be C. R. (Charles Rex ;) that the Jesuits had been the authors of the great fire in London, and were now concocting a plan for the burning of Westminster, Wapping, and all the ships upon the river; and that, with the full expectation that all these things would be done, the pope had already, by a secret bull, filled up all the bishoprics, and had made appointments to most of the high offices of state.

The Privy Council heard these statements of Titus Oates with astonishment. Meanwhile, Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, who had taken Oates' depositions, suddenly disappeared from his house in * Dryden's Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. notes, p. 54. 1760.

Westminster, and was found brutally murdered in a ditch near Primrose Hill. The ghastly body was exhibited to many thousands, who shuddered and wept at the sight of one whom they deemed to be a Protestant martyr. The funeral was attended by an immense procession, having at its head seventy Protestant divines, in full canonicals. The panic spread, and Protestants, of all classes, conformists and non-conformists, royalists and republicans, considered their lives in danger. Titus Oates was summoned before parliament. Lord Stafford and four other Catholic lords were committed to the Tower. Common prisons were crammed with Papists. The House declared "that there hath been, and still is, a damnable and hellish plot, contrived and carried on by the popish recusants, for assassinating the king, for subverting the government, and for destroying the Protestant religion." Titus Oates was proclaimed the saviour of the nation, and had a pension awarded of £1200 ayear. Charles yielded to the storm of agitation, and Catholics were expelled from their seats in both Houses of Parliament,-seats which were not regained, by their successors, for one hundred and fifty years afterwards, until 1829. Titus Oates went further still, and even accused the Queen of England, at the bar of the House of Commons, of high treason, declaring that he himself had heard her say, "I will no longer suffer such indignities to my bed; I am content to join in procuring his death, and in the propagation of the Catholic faith." This accusation, however, was allowed to drop; but Stayley, the banker, Father Ireland, the Jesuit, and five other persons, were tried and convicted, and then executed at Tyburn for their complicity with the alleged popish plot.

Space forbids further details, except to add, that as soon as King James ascended the throne, Titus Oates was thrown into prison, and was tried for perjury in reference to his assertions respecting the popish conspiracy. He was found guilty, and was sentenced to be stripped of his clerical habit, to be pilloried in Palace Yard, to be led round Westminster Hall, with an inscription over his head declaring his infamy, to be pilloried again in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, and, after an interval of two days, from Newgate to Tyburn. If he survived this horrible infliction, he was to be kept close prisoner for life, and, five times a-year, he was to be brought forth from his dungeon, and exposed in the pillory in different parts of London.

The whipping, says Neal, was inflicted with a severity unknown to the English nation. Dr Calamy tells us that he saw Oates at the cart-tail from Newgate to Tyburn, and that his back, fearfully swollen with the first whipping, looked as if it had been flayed. He adds: "Oates was a man of invincible courage, and endured what would have killed a great many others; and yet, after all, he was but a sorry, foul-mouthed wretch." Macaulay says: "Whilst he was being whipped from Aldgate to Newgate, the blood ran down in rivulets, and his bellowings were frightful to hear. When brought out again, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn on a sledge. A person who counted the stripes on this second day, said that they were seventeen hundred." The whipping was so terribly cruel, that it was evidently the intention of the court to kill him; but, by the care of his friends, he recovered. During many months, he remained ironed in the darkest hole in Newgate, sitting whole days, uttering deep groans, with his arms folded, and his hat over his eyes. He lived to the reign of King William, when a pension of about £300 a-year was settled on him,-a sum which he thought unworthy his acceptance, but which he took with the savage snarl of disappointed greediness. About the year 1698, he was restored to his place among the Baptists; but, in a few months, was ejected from their communion as a disorderly person and a hypocrite. He died in 1705.

But to return. Such was the excitement created by Oates's allegations, that, in 1679, one of the first acts of the House of Commons was to pass a resolution, " that the Duke of York, being a Papist, and the hopes of his coming such to the crown, had given the greatest countenance to the present conspiracies and designs against the king and the Protestant religion." The House also voted an address to the king, requesting him to banish all Papists in London twenty miles from its borders, and to put all sea-ports, fortresses, and ships into trusty hands. In the meantime, Charles induced his unpopular popish brother to retire to Brussels; but, before he went, James exacted from the king a formal declaration that the young Duke of Monmouth was illegitimate. The Commons, not satisfied with what they had already done, proceeded with their famous Bill of Exclusion, by which the crown of England was to pass from Charles to the next Protestant heir, as if the Duke of York were dead. This bill was