o poor to buy fuel, the cold being so
severe in the Thames valley that coaches plied as freely on the river
from the Temple to Westminster as if they had gone upon the land.
Yet "I tarried," he afterwards wrote, "in Exeter College, though I
met with some hardships I had before been unacquainted with, till I
was of standing sufficient to take my Bachelor's degree; and not
being able to subsist there afterwards, I came to London during the
time of my Lord Bishop of London's suspension by the High Commission,
and was instituted into deacon's orders by my Lord Bishop of
Rochester, at his palace at Bromley, August 7th, 1688."

He had maintained himself by instructing wealthier undergraduates and
writing their exercises for them (as a servitor he had to black their
boots and run their errands); also by scribbling for John Dunton, the
famous London bookseller, whose acquaintance he had made during his
last year at Mr. Morton's. With all this he found time and the will
to be charitable, and had visited the poor creatures imprisoned in
the Castle at Oxford--many for debt. He lived to take the measure of
this kindness, and to see it repeated by his sons.

_Maggots: or Poems on Several Subjects never before Handled_ was no
very marketable book of rhymes. Yet it served its purpose and helped
him, through Dunton, to become acquainted with a few men of letters
and learning. He had something better, too, to cheer his start in
London. Dunton in 1682 had married Elizabeth, one of the many
daughters of Dr. Samuel Annesley, the famous Dissenter, then
preaching at a Nonconformist church which he had opened in Little St.
Helen's, Bishopsgate. Young Wesley, a student at Newington Green,
had been present at the wedding, with a copy of verses in his pocket:
and there, in a corner of the Doctor's gloomy house in Spital Yard,
he came on the Doctor's youngest daughter, a slight girl of fourteen,
seated and watching the guests.

She was but a child, and just then an unhappy one, though with no
childish trouble. Minds ripened early in Annesley House, where
scholars and divines resorted to discuss the battle raging between
Church and Dissent. Susanna Annesley had listened and brooded upon
what she heard; and now her convictions troubled her, for she saw, or
thought she saw, the Church to be in the right, and herself an alien
in her father's house, secretly rebellious against those she loved
and preparing to disappoint them cruelly. She k