Reviews
John Wesley’s simple, enchanting building
David Warnes reviews…. The Cradle of Methodism 1739-2017 GM Best New Room Publications June 2017 978-1910089606 Many HMC Heads seem not to break stride when retirement comes. Gary Best (Headmaster of Kingswood from 1987 to 2008) almost immediately took on the challenging role of Warden of the New Room, the historic meeting house in Bristol built and later rebuilt at the instigation of John Wesley to accommodate the activities of the religious societies which were flourishing in that city in the early stages of the evangelical revival. His latest book, The Cradle of Methodism, is a history of a beautiful building which, as Best writes, has “a tangible sense of calmness”. The chapel on the ground floor of the building is windowless – the Wesleys had good reason to fear the anger of local mobs – and is illuminated from above by an octagonal lantern which passes through the common room on the upper floor, and which enabled John Wesley to keep an eye on what was happening in the worship space. The chapel, the second building on the site, was equipped with a portable communion table. For many years the Wesleys were careful to ensure that communion services in the New Room did not coincide with those held in local parish churches. To the end of his days, Charles Wesley resisted the idea that there should be any separation between the Methodist movement and the Church of England, and this became one of several causes of tension between him and his brother. Those tensions are among the many aspects of the early history of Methodism documented in what is a very capacious cradle. This is far more than the story of an historic building. Roughly three quarters of the book are devoted to the lifetime of the Wesleys. The connections between the New Room and
the school which Wesley founded at Kingswood, near Bristol, in 1748 are explored in depth, as are the brothers’ early involvement of laymen and women in the revival, including John Cennick and Sarah Perrin, housekeeper at the New Room and later the wife of John Jones, formerly chief master of Kingswood. Of their union John Wesley wrote “I do not know that her marriage increased either her usefulness, or her knowledge and love of God.” Wesley felt that wedlock was a distraction, and disapproved of his brother Charles’ marriage to Sarah Gwynne, which turned out very happily. His own marriage to Molly Vazeille proved disastrous. The story that she pulled him round the room by his hair is almost certainly apocryphal but, as Best shows, she found the hardships involved in accompanying him on his preaching journeys unacceptable, and his lengthy absences from home difficult to bear. In 1757 Wesley chose Sarah Ryan, a convert with a very chequered marital history, to be the housekeeper of Kingswood School and also of the New Room. It was, in the words of Wesley’s biographer Stanley Ayling, “an extraordinarily incautious appointment”. Molly Wesley made her disapproval clear during a dinner-time gathering of Methodist preachers in Bristol at which Sarah was acting as hostess. “The whore now serving you” she told them “has three husbands living!” Shortly afterwards, Molly went through her husband’s pockets and found an unposted letter to Sarah which used language that could be read as bordering on the romantic. The marriage never fully recovered, and effectively ended in 1776.
Spring 2018
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