Seeking Susanna Wesley in Epworth

Susanna Wesley (1669-1742) easily becomes a historical figure who reflects the preferred image of the one looking for her.


To prepare lectures and academic papers on Susanna Wesley, I have read her letters and essays*. Her voice is direct, theologically confident, and  focused on matters of faith. She is not prone to small talk beyond relaying family health concerns. She writes to promote right belief and faith in her children, resolve family and church conflicts. and address a lack of money to run her household--a recurring worry.

What might seeing the church in Epworth, standing in Susanna's kitchen and walking through the village where she raised her children and buried her husband reveal that her writings had not? Before heading to Lincolnshire, I had seen the memorial to her at the Wesley Chapel on City Road in London and walked through the nearby Bushkill cemetery where she is buried not far from poet William Blake. These two memorials mark her as mother of the Methodist movement, but they were made of stone and didn't seem to reflect the flesh and blood person behind the monuments.  

Would I find the model methodical mother that homeschoolers love in Epworth? Her most famous son, John, shared her writings “On Educating My Family” with the early Methodists commending his mother’s disciplined ways of teaching her sons and daughters to read and “do well” in the Lord’s sight. She gave birth to 19 children and 10 survived. She was the youngest of 25 children born to Samuel Annesley, a minister whose church in East London counted more than 800 congregants before he was forced out for nonconformist views. Her mother, Mary White, was his second wife, and that is all that is known about her. Susanna's whole life was lived surrounded by a large families.

Susanna  famously is remembered by her children for throwing her apron over her head when she needed some solitude and for allotting one-on-one time with each child. John’s time was on Thursday, his brother, Charles’, on Saturday.  One biographer, John Newton,  claims Susanna functioned as an informal spiritual director to John throughout his life. He claims John met with her after “heart, strangely warmed” experience in 1739 to do a life-review—a Puritan practice of retelling of God’s work to a trusted mentor after a major spiritual or religious experience to gain a larger view of God's ongoing guidance.

Most of the furniture in the Old Rectory
is representative of the time period. This
is though to have belonged to the family. 

Would I find  in Epworth a prototype of self-assured public female leadership sought by women in ministry?  Susanna knew her own mind and was convinced that ministry that brought glory to God would make one seem “peculiar” to the world. Wagging tongues did not change her mind or actions. Early in life, at 13, she aligned herself with the Church of England, choosing a different path from her Presbyterian parents. At 19 Susanna married Anglican Samuel Wesley, who had  turned away from his father's nonconformist views, too. After a brief time in London, Samuel became curate at Epworth, where the couple lived for the next 40 years. Samuel was a poet as well as a minister and spent lots of time and money on his literary dreams. His debts were a source of marital stress. Susanna and Samuel were also known to harbor conflicting political views. Differing ideas about who was England's rightful monarch, led Samuel to declare if she did not pray for the king, they would not share the same bed. Samuel soon left for London, but John's birth, proved that he returned and that this vow was not ultimately kept.

Michael and Rebecca at
Samuel & Susanna's place 

In 1711, Susanna conducted family prayers on Sunday afternoons in her home when her husband was again away in London. Dozens of people came to hear her teach and read one of her absent husband's sermons. (She did this because the curate left in charge of St. Andrew’s Church in Epworth did not “do well” and people were not attending church). Her husband, Samuel heard about the controversy and wrote home for her to stop. She said she would do so if he “commanded” her to do so. He  (wisely) did not.

 After Samuel died, Susanna left Epworth  and moved in with Samuel, Jr. who died before she did. She moved among her daughters' homes in her widowhood before ending her years with John at the Foundry in London.

Shortly before she died, she wrote a broadside pamphlet stepping into the theological controversies between John Wesley and Charles Whitefield, an early member of Oxford’s holy club and successor to John’s and Charles’s failed mission to Georgia. Susanna weighed in favor of  ‘universal salvation’ vs.  ‘limited election.’ Now in her 70s  she both defended the reputations of her sons and made the case for God’s love extending to all who would receive.  

St. Andrew's Church, Epworth

Getting to Epworth required navigating many roundabouts while driving on the left side of the road. It was a relief to turn into the village and find Wesley House, the local bed and breakfast, that is kept in business by people like me seeking a connection with the Wesleys.

Epworth is a charming, rural village with lots of green, open areas. St. Andrew’s Church, a 12^th century, stone structure is tucked away at the edge of town next to a large field. The tidy graveyard remains serene with walking paths and a marker identifying  Samuel’s grave.  John famously preached standing upon it on June 6, 1742 when his offers to assist at services were refused. The early Methodists were labeled “enthusiasts”  and the new curate did not want the Wesleys stirring things up in his church. John’s father had served the parish for 40 years, and John had returned there from Oxford to serve the nearby church at Wroot before going to Georgia as a missionary. The local community knew him well. He did not experience a hometown welcome and the experience left an uneasiness in John about Epworth for many years.

We visited 265 years after first John preached outdoors In Epworth. He recalled in his journal, “I stood near the east end of the church upon my father’s tomb and cried, ‘The kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost!’”  It was easy to imagine dozens of people standing on the slight rise near the grave listening to him on a summer night.

A short walk from the church, the worn market cross near the square is said to also be a location where he preached. Would I have gone to hear John preach? Probably. Would I have been drawn by his spirited preaching and rousing antics? I am not sure. Curiosity would have made me want to hear him and evaluate his claims for myself.  

A short walk to the east, is the Old Rectory. The brick Queen-Anne style house replaced the thatched house that burned when John Wesley was six-years-old nearly trapping him in the flames. His  mother saw his rescue as providential proof that God had something in store for John. Now restored with 18^th century furnishings, it was easy to imagine the large family climbing the stairs, gathering by the fire or crowding into the sunny kitchen. My favorite places were outside in the physic garden where John’s favorite medicinal herbs are grown and the orchard where some of the trees date from the time the Wesleys were in residence. I could imagine the family picking herbs and apples and the kids sneaking off to play among the trees. (Susanna did not prioritize play. Learning, devotion and service were higher priorities).

Standing in the orchard, I looked across the nearby field and could see the statue of John Wesley that was erected in 2003 on the 300^th anniversary of his birth. It seemed fitting that John was standing in a preaching pose looking out at a field of sheep. He was always seeking the lost ones.

Susanna was present in photos in the house and stories told. The guide pointed out a small bed with a very old patchwork quilt. It was original; she would have used to keep warm. That was a personal glimpse but little else gave me a sense of her outside of her role as mother and mentor. The kitchen was in a sunny corner. It was easy to see the children working nearby as she cooked or rocked a baby but it was harder to imagine dozens straining to hear her on a Sunday afternoon reading out a sermon or holding a class meeting. 

Just a few blocks south, is Wesley Memorial Church built after the Methodist church separated from the Church of England. John and Charles are remembered in portraits in the entry and in life-sized stained-glass profiles over the chancel. The communion table is said to have come from Saint Andrew's and been used by two generations of Wesleys.

I walked to the brass baptismal font and saw my own reflection in it as I bent to read the inscription, “Erected to the Glory of God and Given in Reverent Memory of Susannah Wesley, Mother of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A.”  Seeing myself in the bowl of Christian initiation moved me as the stone memorials and sunny kitchen had not. Susanna Wesley had once written, “There are few if any, that would entirely devote above twenty years of the prime of life in hopes to save the souls of their children, which they may be saved without so much ado; for that was my principle intention, however unskillfully and unsuccessfully managed.” She had given her life to the primary vocation of all Christians, to give one’s life to serve those nearby and witness to God's persistent love in a challenging world.


I stood there and thought about her children, those nearest to her. She had buried nine, including a couple sets of twins. Daughter Molly lived with a disability making walking a challenge.  After one of the fires that decimated her home, the children had been scattered to various families. No doubt grateful for help, she also rued the habits and attitudes they brought back home. She watched her three sons go to Oxford and return clergyman, but then the younger sons choose revivalism and non-ecclesial tactics that did not initially make much sense to her or to her oldest son, Samuel, who opposed the Methodist movement. Six of her seven daughters had disastrous marriages. The stories of abuse, polygamy and early death are heartbreaking. Only Anne and son, Charles, seemed to marry happily. Then as her life was near its end, the revivals were taking off, and it looked like her sons may "do well" for God, they came under attack. It is my conclusion that she wrote her furious tract defending them and the family name as much as their shared theological view.

Leaving Epworth, I ruminated on what I had seen. Susanna Wesley knew that lowering a child into the waters of faith would not inoculate against hardship, misunderstanding, suffering or early death. She knew, however, that it would ready them to face life trusting that provisions might be slim or friends fickle, but faith in God's saving and sustaining action was a sure thing. She bet her life on it.

The Susanna Wesley, I found at Epworth became three-dimensional while looking in the baptismal waters. Birthing, Washing, Cleansing. Claiming. Purifying. Sustaining. Saving. Sanctifying. Burying. Raising. Co-laborer with Christ is who I saw reflected back at me.

* Read her letters, essays and pamphlet in Susanna Wesley: The Complete Writings, ed. Charles Wallace, Jr. Oxford University Press, 1997.