A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



Christian Church, in ten volumes. He held the small living of Head- 

 bourne Worthy until Bishop Trelawney collated him in 1712 to Havant. 

 On Trelawney's death in 172 1 Bishop Charles Trimnell was translated 

 from Norwich to Winchester, but only survived the change for two years. 

 From the dedication that Bingham prefixed to the last two volumes of 

 his Antiquities, it may be gathered that he was a zealous and conscien- 

 tious administrator of his new diocese. He was a prolific writer of the 

 Whig school, and held most pronounced latitudinarian views on the 

 subordination of the Church to the State. 



To the same school belonged Bishop Richard Willis, who had pre- 

 viously held the sees of Gloucester and Sarum. Benjamin Hoadly, who 

 succeeded to Winchester in 1734 and who had been successively Bishop of 

 Bangor, Hereford and Sarum, was far more of a vehement controversialist 

 of the extreme latitudinarian and political school than a diocesan adminis- 

 trator. The value that he set upon the office that he held can be judged 

 from the fact that during the six years he held the bishopric of Bangor 

 and drew its emoluments the diocese never once saw him, and it is sup- 

 posed to have been the same with Hereford. To him belongs the shame 

 of being the cause of the suppression of Convocation for nearly a century 

 and a half. Two years after his acceptance of Winchester he endeavoured, 

 in a charge, to allay the feeling of his clergy against him by a laboured 

 defence of his writings, particularly of the painful Plain Account of the 

 Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The mere list of his 

 printed pamphlets, sermons and controversial books occupies thirty columns 

 of the British Museum catalogue. He much neglected his diocese, and 

 died in 1761 at the age of eighty-five. 



Whilst the spiritual interests of Hampshire were being thus 

 neglected in high places the warmth of the personal preaching 

 of John Wesley naturally made itself specially felt. In 1753 this 

 great itinerant preacher records his first impression of Portsmouth, 

 where he preached on the Common on Sunday evening, 8 July. 

 Wesley was favourably impressed, and describes the people as the 

 most civil of any seaport in England. He does not give too good 

 an account of the inhabitants of Newport, whom he visited on the 

 following Tuesday. In October Wesley again visited the Isle of Wight, 

 Portsmouth and Southampton. He was not here again till October, 

 1758, when he preached in Mr. Whitefield's tabernacle at Portsmouth. 

 In 1767 his journal records another visit to Portsmouth in the month of 

 October, and from that year down to 1790 Wesley hardly ever let a year 

 go by without his annual October visit to the great seaport and the Isle 

 of Wight. Winchester was also visited with some regularity between 

 1766 and 1789. Wesley was at Winchester on Friday, 10 October, 

 1783, when he entered in his diary that ' a clergyman having offered me 

 his church, I purposed beginning at five ; but the key was not to be 

 found ; so I made a virtue of necessity, and preached near the Cross 

 Street ; probably to double the congregation which would have been in 

 the church.' 



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