ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



in the charge to other writers and authorities, it is tempting to believe that it 

 was written by him at an earher period and was adapted in the opening 

 hne to the present occasion/-^ He ignores the work of the Wesleyan 

 societies, which in England generally, and in the diocese of Durham in par- 

 ticular, were now in vigorous activity. It is an interesting fact that from a 

 month or so before Butler came to Durham as bishop, until the time of 

 Wesley's death, the great preacher made the county a constant scene of 

 his mission work, and for many years strove to visit the district every 

 other year.^" His first recorded visit to Durham itself was in May, 1751, 

 when he met a few people on his way to Stockton. He came again in 

 1752 and addressed at Durham 'a quiet stupid congregation,'^"^ whereas 

 at Sunderland he found ' one of the liveliest societies in the north of 

 England.' '^' At Barnard Castle a jostling crowd gathered round him, and in 

 rough horse-play some of the rabble pumped water on the listeners from a 

 fire-engine which they brought up."° It was at this time that the important 

 work of Wesley in Weardale •'*' was begun, which matured rapidly and en- 

 countered many vicissitudes in the years that followed. 



Bishop Trevor (1752-71) was one of the most amiable of the 

 Durham bishops, and the remembrance of his cliaracter recorded at the 

 time of his death by a Durham friend was long cherished in the diocese. 

 Occupied much with improvements which Butler had only begun, he was not 

 idle in the administration of his diocese, and some fragmentary notices and 

 returns of some of his visitations survive."^ More than one building, as at 

 St. John's, Sunderland, and at Esh, also Parkhurst's Hospital, remains to attest, 

 at all events, some activity at the time. There is, however, no proof of any 

 active sympathy manifested by the bishop for the rapidly deepening volume 

 of the Wesleyan revival in all the chief centres of the county, and also in 

 parts more inaccessible. ^'^ At the beginning of Trevor's episcopate Wesley 

 made a tour of some duration in the county, and at Gateshead drew together 

 on Whit Sunday ' a huge congregation,' for he had already found in the 

 pitmen listeners as sympathetic as those he had known at Kingswood."* He 

 returned to the county in 1755, and again in 1757. On the latter occasion 

 he preached in Durham ' in a pleasant meadow near the river side,' identified 

 not improbably with the Sands below the city.^^^ The congregation was 

 large, and many of them he noticed as wild in appearance. As he crossed 

 the Tees and reached Yarm on his way south he summed up his impressions : 

 ' I find in all these parts a solid serious people quite simple of heart, strangers 

 to various opinions, and seeking only the faith that worketh by love.'^^^ 



Two prebendaries of some importance were promoted by Bishop Trevor 

 — Dr. William Warburton and Dr. Robert Lowth. The disuse of the 



"•^ He quoted three or four writers who had lived in the earlier years of the eighteenth century. Butler, 

 in ill-health, left the diocese for Bath a few months after his charge was given. 



"' See the handy edition of Wesley's "Jouni. in ' Everyman's Library,' 4 vols. 



»' Ibid, ii, 195. "' Ibid. 225. ™ Ibid. 228. •■" Ibid. 



™ Visitation returns for Dur. City 1754^; cf Surtees, Hist. Dur. iv, 165. A visitation of 1770 is referred 

 to in Hutchinson, Hist. Dur. i, 726. For the chapel at Esh, Surtees op. cit. i, 337 ; Sunderland, ibid. 254 ; 

 Parkhurst's Hospital, ibid, iv, 391. 



"^ Wesley's Journ. 



"* He says, ' They shame the colliers of Kingswood, flocking from all parts on the week-days as well as 

 the Sundays,' ibid, iii, 211. 



"^ Ibid, under 4 July, 1757 ; cf ii, 461. "= Ibid, ii, 383. 



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