John Wesley's visit

The solitary horseman

JOHN WESLEY'S VISIT
TO BOURNE IN 1782

John Wesley

In the summer of that year, Wesley had started out to visit his societies in the north by way of Bedford, Kettering, Peterborough, Boston, Louth and Grimsby. Then he went on to the Conference at York and returned home along the Great North Road by Doncaster, Retford, Newark and Grantham where he learned that Methodism had recently been established in Bourne.

As a Lincolnshire man he felt great interest in his native county, and especially in Bourne, for when at Oxford he had read of the doughty deeds of Hereward the Wake and had seen the wonderful chain of churches of Lincolnshire standing up as sentinels along the border of the fens - nay, rather beacons and watchtowers of heaven.

Early one summer morning in the year 1782, a solitary horseman clad in the garb of a clergyman of the Episcopal Church turned off the Great North Road at Colsterworth to find out what his people called Methodists were doing at Bourne. Already at Newark and Grantham he had heard of a goodly farmer at Aslackby named Burrows, and another at Rippingale named Sands, who had opened their houses to the preachers, and in the yard of a Scotch Presbyterian in the North Road at Bourne, services had been commenced and at Thurlby several families were in touch with Crowland, Peterborough and Stamford, and their cry was "Come over and help us."

The solitary horseman paused and drew rein as he emerged through Bourne Wood and, casting his eyes eastwards, he saw the towers of Peterborough Cathedral and the remainder of Crowland's lordly abbey while in the north east he beheld the [Boston] Stump where only a week ago on his journey to Lincoln he had met with a goodly company of those whose heart God had touched, and from his lips there broke the prayer contained in the hymn "Begone unbelief, my Saviour is near."

Slowly proceeding into the honourable and ancient town of Bourne, he made his way to a quiet hostelry in West Street, the Golden Lion, kept by one John Bray. This good man stared in astonishment as the solitary horseman dismounted and unpacked his saddlebags. First came out his Greek testament, lined and scored in a thousand places; then the bible his mother gave him when he went up to Oxford, bound in brown leather and showing signs of continued and constant use, for he read them as he rode. He bade the ostler tend well his chestnut mare and proceeded to his room. As he sat down to meat, he had three books in front of him, for he had realised the worth and value of his bible, and to those who had joined his society he continually urged that they should make the bible their own, and his constant cry to his young people was: "Make the bible yours before you are twenty."

After partaking of a frugal meal, he sallied forth into the town to make a few judicious enquiries about his people called Methodists. He learned that there was a disposition on the part of the inhabitants to hear the word and that James Redshaw, a saddler, and George Hardwick, a cordwainer, and Thomas Pilkington, a builder, had joined together to rent a small room in North Street in which the Gospel of the Kingdom of God could be preached. In the Market Place, he erected his banner and preached to a crowd of curious people from John 3,16. telling them that if they would be saved they must repent and believe in the Gospel. He announced that a prayer meeting would be held at 5 o'clock the following morning and afterwards he would meet Brother Bellamy's class for tickets.

As the news spread that the solitary horseman had arrived, there gathered at that prayer meeting friends from Dyke, Toft and Thurlby, all eager to see and hear the wonderful man. As he enquired, he found that some had already received the call to preach and were found Sabbath by Sabbath filling the pulpits (and there were pulpits in those days, like the one at Duke) and telling the joyful news.

But the solitary horseman has to get on with his work and journey, so at 8 am the following day we see him bidding his little flock farewell, and before he leaves the district he distributes amongst them copies of the bible and the WM Magazine and again urging them to be not only hearers but doers of the Word, he commends them and theirs to God and goes on his way rejoicing, to Market Deeping and Peterborough and then on to London to meet his preachers in the City Road Chapel.

JOHN WESLEY (1703-91) - a biographical note

John Wesley was born at Epworth, Lincolnshire, where his father was rector. He studied at Oxford, was ordained deacon in 1725 and a priest in 1728, and became a Fellow of Lincoln and a lecturer in Greek. He was much influenced by the spiritual writings of William Law and became the leader of a small dedicated group which had gathered round his brother, Charles Wesley, nicknamed the Holy Club and the Oxford Methodists, a name later adopted by John for the adherents of the great evangelical movement which developed from it.
He travelled 250,00 miles and preached 40,000 sermons as well as completing an enormous amount of literary work, founding the Methodist Magazine in 1778 and several charitable institutions in Newcastle, London and Bristol. His journeys and spiritual odyssey were recorded in his Journal.

I look upon all the world as my parish
- from his journal entry for 11 June 1739.

NOTE: The above article is reproduced from Methodist Memories by H A Sneath, published circa 1930. His account was subsequently challenged by researchers from the Methodist Church who claimed that Wesley had reached no further than Corby Glen on his journey into South Lincolnshire and that before his death in 1931, Sneath had confessed to making up the story for use in one of his newspaper articles which preceded publication of his book. There is no documentary proof or personal testimony of this deathbed confession and so readers must make up their own minds whether a man of Sneath's honesty and integrity, someone who was revered almost as a saint by his fellow churchmen, would resort to fiction and pass it off as fact. However, there is one further factor that should be considered when deciding this. Recent research has indicated that the Golden Lion in West Street did not open until 1844.