A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



him again for a repetition of his former offence, and upon his second 

 conviction he left the kingdom. It was after Norwich had had this 

 unfortunate example of Methodism, and when the city was still in an uproar 

 about the conviction of James Wheatley, that John and Charles Wesley for the 

 first time visited the place, though John Wesley was in feeble health, 8 July, 

 1754.^ Perhaps it is hardly to be wondered at that he was not favourably 

 impressed by his Norfolk experiences. On this occasion the brothers seem 

 to have remained in retirement at first, at the residence of Captain Gallatin, 

 but on the 14th Charles ventured to preach in the open street, when he 

 reports that the congregation was tolerably quiet, all things considered ; five 

 days later John Wesley had to leave for London, having become seriously ill, 

 and Charles continued at Norwich alone, preaching to large congregations, 

 which included many clergymen. He received the sacrament from the 

 hands of the bishop, took a lease for seven years of a large old brew- 

 house to serve for preaching, and a little society of eighteen members was 

 instituted. The opposition was fierce and sometimes brutal, but Charles 

 Wesley preached with amazing success, and Methodism was fairly started in 

 Norwich. 



Wesley was in Norfolk on many subsequent occasions, but even after 

 Norwich had become a Methodist station of great importance, work there 

 was critical and difficult, probably, to a certain extent, in consequence of the 

 James Wheatley episode. The meeting-house there, the Foundry, was 

 rebuilt in 1757,' an unknown friend having given the money ; and in that 

 year, and in 1758, when he purchased the chapel built by the notorious 

 James Wheatley, Wesley was more than once in Norwich.' He paid three 

 visits to the city in 1759,* and at his second in April, he described the 

 congregation as ' the most ignorant, self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, untract- 

 able, disorderly, disjointed society that I know in the three kingdoms.' It 

 was at Norwich in 1760,^ that the three preachers, Paul Greenwood, 

 Thomas Mitchell, and John MurHn began, without Wesley's permission, and 

 against his wish, to administer the sacrament. At a visit in 1762 he excluded 

 200 members who neglected to meet in class ;* and at another in 1764 he 

 describes the society as 'the most changeable in all England.'^ In 1764 he 

 preached for the first time at Lowestoft, and wrote afterwards, ' a wilder 

 congregation I have not seen ' ; but he was able to speak of being in 

 Norwich in 1765,* as 'with more comfort than ever before,' and again in 

 1767' to say that 'all that remain seem deeply serious. Our old friend 

 King Mob has departed,' though later Norwich was in trouble again, and he 

 insisted strongly on ' members meeting their class every week, and being 

 constant at church and sacrament.' He died in 1790, and Norfolk was one 

 of the last places he visited. In October he was at Loddon, North 

 Swaffham, King's Lynn, and Diss.^" At Lynn where he preached twice, 

 making a collection the second time for the Sunday schools, he administered 

 the sacrament, and had all the clergy of the town to hear him except one, 

 whose lameness prevented him ; and at Diss, his application to the rector for 



' Tyerman, Ufe ofJVesley, ii, 189. ' Ibid. 273. 



' Ibid. 313. * Ibid. 325, 334, 342. ' Ibid. 381. Mbid. 397. 



' Ibid. 518. In 1759 it numbered 660 ; in 1761, 412 ; in 1762, 630 ; in 1764, only 174. 

 « Ibid. 535. " Ibid. 615. '» Ibid, iii, 629. 



