NEWLY published letters by Charles Wesley, the co-founder of the
Methodist movement, suggest that the extravagant habits of his
wife, Sally, were a constant source of tension between them. And
close examination of 700 letters from Wesley suggests that some of
his earnings from the hymns he wrote were used to pay for her
luxury lifestyle.
The details are disclosed in The Letters of Charles Wesley:
A critical edition, by Dr Gareth Lloyd, of the University of
Manchester, and Professor Kenneth Newport, the Pro Vice-Chancellor
of Liverpool Hope University. They are among a handful of people
who are capable of transcribing Wesley's personal shorthand,
comprised of a mixture of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
When Wesley married Sally Gwynne, 19 years his junior, he
promised her parents that he would keep their daughter "in the
manner to which she was accustomed". Dr Lloyd says: "Charles Wesley
effectively married above himself. His wife came from a wealthy
Welsh family, and his future father-in-law was a sheriff of the
county and a large landowner.
"Her friends came from higher ranks of society, and she would
entertain them with parties and soirées. They obviously weren't
entertaining on a vast scale, but if you were inviting your
aristocratic friends around to tea, there were obviously certain
standards that needed to be maintained, so that caused some
grievance.
"Wesley came from a family where there wasn't a great deal of
money; so he was maybe a bit paranoid about it. He told his
children that she was a poor manager of money. He was worried about
whether they would be able to pay the bills." In one letter to his
daughter Sarah - who, like her mother, was also known as Sally - in
August 1787, Wesley suggested that money was "a difficulty that
never comes into your mother's head".
The situation led to friction between Wesley and his brother
John, co-founder of the movement, when he asked if profits from the
sale of hymn books could be diverted to fund his wife. Dr Lloyd
says that the money became a "bone of contention" between the
brothers in later years, as John accused Charles of profiting.
Professor Newport says: "These letters . . . show Wesley as a
devoted, but sometimes rather puzzled, family man who struggled at
times to curb his young wife's extravagance."
The two academics have spent a decade working on the letters,
which were written between 1727 and 1788, the year of Wesley's
death. "Wesley's genius as a preacher and religious leader
contributed to the birth of the evangelical movement, probably the
greatest success story of the modern Church," Dr Lloyd says. "His
life and ministry, even within Methodism, have received scant
attention; so we are pleased that this collection will change
that."