Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/232



In the church of Belton is a fine effigy of a knight in chain armour, an hour-glass-stand on a pillar near the pulpit, as at Leasingham, and a monument to Sir Richard de Belwood. Temple Belwood, in the centre of the island, was a preceptory of the Knights Templars. Epworth is the chief town, and is famous as the birthplace of John Wesley. His father, Samuel, was the rector of S. Ormsby when he published his heroic poem in ten books on the Life of Christ, which caused him to be hailed by Nahum Tate, the Laureate of the day, as a sun new risen, before whom he and others would naturally and contentedly fade to insignificance.

"E'en we the Tribe who thought ourselves inspired Like glimmering stars in night's dull reign admired, Like stars, a numerous but feeble host, Are gladly in your morning splendour lost."

Queen Mary, to whose "Most sacred Majesty" the poem was dedicated, bestowed on him the Crown living of Epworth, to which he was presented in 1696, two years after her death. But, though he owed his living to the Whigs, rather than side with the dissenters, he voted Tory, and was accordingly persecuted with great animosity by high and low, thrown into prison for a debt, his cattle and property damaged, and in 1709 his home burnt down, which made a deep impression on his six-year-old son John, who never forgot being "plucked as a brand from the burning."

John, the fifteenth child, was the middle brother of three, who all had a first-rate public school and university education, getting scholarships both at school and college: John at Charterhouse, the others under Dr. Busby at Westminster, and all at Christchurch, Oxford, whence John, at the age of seventeen, wrote to his mother "I propose To be busy as long as I live." Eventually he became a Fellow of Lincoln. The whole family were as clever as could be, and the seven daughters had a first-rate education from their father and mother at home. Mrs. Wesley was a remarkable woman, a Jacobite—which was somewhat disconcerting to her husband, who had written in defence of the Revolution—and a person of strong independence of spirit. Of her daughters, Hetty was the cleverest; and she is the only one who gives no account of the famous "Epworth Ghost," which is significant, when both her parents and all her sisters wrote a full account of it.