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303
The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
·
Andrew Lang
205
THE
WESLEY
GHOST
No
ghost
story
is
more
celebrated
than
that
of
Old
Jeffrey,
the
spirit
so
named
by
Emily
Wesley,
which
disturbed
the
Rectory
at
Epworth,
chiefly
in
the
December
of
1716
and
the
spring
of
1717.
Yet
the
vagueness
of
the
human
mind
has
led
many
people,
especially
journalists,
to
suppose
that
the
haunted
house
was
that,
not
of
Samuel
Wesley,
but
of
his
son
John
Wesley,
the
founder
of
the
Wesleyan
Methodists.
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.
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.
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