Page:Susanna Wesley (Clarke 1886).djvu/67

55 heard, and asked for a statement of his affairs. Mr. Wesley was able to explain all satisfactorily, and, after detailing the falsehoods fabricated and spread by his opponents, adds:—

" My debts are about 300, which I have contracted by a series of misfortunes not unknown to your Grace. The falling of my parsonage barn, before I had recovered the taking my living ; the burning great part of my dwelling-house about two years since, and all my flax last winter ; the fall of my income nearly one half by the low price of grain ; the almost entire failure of my flax this year, which used to be the better half of my revenue ; with my numerous family; and the taking this regiment from me, which I had obtained with so much expense and trouble : have at last crushed me, though I struggled as long as I was able. Yet I hope to rise again, as I have always done when at the lowest; and I think I cannot be much lower now."

How Mrs. Wesley and the family fared at home, he tells in a letter written on the 12th of September:—

"Concerning the stabbing my cows in the night since I came hither, but a few weeks ago; and endeavouring thereby to starve my forlorn family in my absence, my cows being all dried by it, which was their chief subsistence; though, I hope, they had not the power to kill .any of them outright.

"They found out a good expedient, after it was done, to turn it off, and divert the cry of the world against them; and it was to spread a report that my own brawn (boar) did this mischief, though at first they said my cows ran against a scythe and wounded themselves.

"As for the brawn, I think any impartial jury would