shake "his lean arm" at the Fellows of Magdalen College, and threaten them "with the weight of a king's right hand," he conceived a prejudice against that monarch, and took the side of the Prince of Orange.

His wife, a very pious woman and a strict disciplinarian, was a Jacobite, would not say "amen" to the prayers for "the king," and was therefore deserted by her husband for a year or more in 1701-1702.

They came together again, however, on the accession of Queen Anne.
Unpopular for his politics, hated by the Dissenters, and at odds with the "cunning men," or local wizards against whom he had frequently preached, Mr.Wesley was certainly apt to have tricks played on him by his neighbours.

His house, though surrounded by a wall, a hedge, and its own grounds, was within a few yards of the nearest dwelling in the village street.
In 1716, when the disturbances began, Mr.Wesley's family consisted of his wife; his eldest son, Sam, aged about twenty-three, and then absent at his duties as an usher at Westminster; John, aged twelve, a boy at Westminster School; Charles, a boy of eight, away from home, and the girls, who were all at the parsonage.

They were Emily, about twenty-two, Mary, Nancy and Sukey, probably about twenty-one, twenty and nineteen, and Hetty, who may have been anything between nineteen and twelve, but who comes after John in Dr.Clarke's list, and is apparently reckoned among "the children".