se by the parish church stood the Hall, the great house of the
Lord Marquis of Normanby who in 1694 made Mr. Wesley his domestic
chaplain. The Marquis was a rake, and he and his mistresses gave the
poor clergyman many searchings of heart. There was one who took
a fancy to Mrs. Wesley and would be intimate with her. Coming home
one day and finding this visitor seated with his wife, Mr. Wesley
went up to her, took her by the hand and very fairly handed her out.
It cost him his living: but the Marquis, being what is called a good
fellow in the main, bore him no grudge; nay, rather liked his spirit,
and afterwards showed himself a good friend to the amount of twenty
guineas, to which the Marchioness (but this is more explicable) added
five from her own purse.

By good fortune the living of Epworth fell vacant just then, and in
accordance with some wish or promise of the late Queen Mary, to whom
he had dedicated his _Life of Christ_, Mr. Wesley was presented to
it, a decent preferment, worth about 200 pounds a year in the
currency of those times. But by this time his family was large; he
was in debt; the fees to be paid before taking up the living ate
farther into his credit; a larger house had to be maintained, with
three acres of garden and farm-buildings; and his new parishioners
hated his politics and made life as miserable for him as they could.
They were savage fighters, but they found their match. In 1702 they
set fire secretly to the parsonage-house, and burned down two-thirds
of it. In the winter of 1704 they destroyed a great part of his crop
of flax. This was the year of Blenheim, and upon news of the victory
Mr. Wesley sat down to commemorate it in heroic verse. The poem
(published in the early days of 1705), if inferior to Mr. Addison's
on the same occasion, ran to five hundred and ninety-four lines, and
contained compliments enough to please the great Duke of
Marlborough, who sent for its author, rewarded him with the
chaplaincy of Colonel Lepelle's regiment, and promised him a
prebend's stall. The Dissenters, who (with some excuse, perhaps)
looked upon Mr. Wesley as that worst of foes, a deserter from their
own ranks, using their influence in Parliament and at Court, had him
deprived of his regiment and denied the stall. In April Queen Anne
dissolved Parliament, and in May the late Tory members for the county
of Lincoln, Sir John Thorold--and the Dymoke who then held--as his
descendant holds to-day-