Yorkshire Almanac 2026

Unedited excerpt

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Having [in 1763] united himself to the people of God, he shortly after received the remission of his sins, and lived to declare to succeeding generations the great things which God had done for him. About twenty-three years before his death he became blind, and continued so for thirteen years, but was providentially directed to a remedy. “When I received,” said he, “I prayed earnestly over it, that God would bless it, and make it the means of restoring my sight.” By the blessing of God, the sight of one eye was restored, and continued to the time of his death. Having been so long deprived of this precious gift, he was much surprised to see the alterations which had been made in the town and neighbourhood, and especially in the dress of the people. He retained the peace of God to the end of his life; and on being questioned by one of his sons a little before his death, whether he felt any obstruction of his intercourse with God, he replied, “No! no!” He fell asleep in Jesus, having been a member of the Methodist Society nearly sixty-five years. The remains of this venerable man were followed to the grave by about one hundred of his posterity. He left a surviving progeny of seven children, seventy-three grandchildren, one hundred and seventy-nine great-grandchildren, and fifty great-great-grandchildren; in all, three hundred and nine descendants; exclusive of one hundred and one descendants, who died before him. The sum total of his descendants is four hundred and ten. Some of these are treading in the footsteps of their father.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Of course, his children were probably all born before his conversion.

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Tags

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• 📌Bingley (10), market town on the River Aire and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal six miles northwest of Bradford in the West Riding W/G ·
• Church of England (94) W/G ·
• Methodism (38) W/G ·
• Miracle (5) W/G ·
• Visual impairment (4) W/G ·
• Wesley, John (1703-91) (21), cleric and leader of a evangelical revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism W/G ·
• Wesleyan Methodist Magazine (3) W/G ·
• Wilsden (5) W/G ·

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

Of course, his children were probably all born before his conversion.

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Similar

12 November 1819: The first, nocturnal vision of Prophet Wroe in one of his fields at Tong Street, Bradford following his near-fatal fever

18 July 1784: Wesley finds children “restrained from open sin” at one of the first Sunday schools, at Bingley

15 August 1781: The ineffably peripatetic John Wesley discovers a movable pulpit in Sheffield

20 April 1835: A teetotallers’ tea-party at the first, great, Wilsden Temperance Festival

9 May 1757: John Wesley rides into Huddersfield in the Wild West Riding

19 April 1747: The Methodist John Nelson is attacked by an affluent mob while preaching at Heworth Moor and Acomb (York) on Easter Sunday

28 April 1747: John Wesley visits “the new house of the Germans” (the Moravians) at Pudsey, which is financed by overseas donations

27 May 1776: Samuel Hick, apprentice blacksmith, overcomes his pacifist leanings to rescue the Wesleyan Richard Burdsall from an Anglican assailant at York

18 June 1847: A local historian tells the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine that Guisborough is not – as an evangelist claims – “a nest of atheists and infidels”

6 May 1744: John Nelson, one of the first Methodist preachers, finds the welcome from gaoler James Barber at Leeds Gaol superior to the accommodation

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Comment

James Wardell gives the date and the name of the gaoler, the latter apparently on the authority of Nelson, though I can’t find it; no idea where he got the date, but 6 May 1744 was a Sunday:

The old prison of the Borough, (originally situate in that part of Briggate, lately called “Cross Parish,”) was removed to the south side of Kirkgate in 1655; it was a most wretched place, and contained five or six dark and miserable apartments, without even a sewer or a fire place, in addition to which, the windows thereof were not even glazed. It was remarked by the philanthropic Howard in reference to this building, that an hour was too long to remain in such a place. Yet it was here, that John Nelson, one of the first Methodist preachers, was confined on the 6th May, 1744, when passing through the town, after having been illegally impressed for a soldier: the name of the gaoler, who, (according to Nelson’s Journal,) kindly permitted above one hundred of his friends to visit him the same night in the gaol, was “James Barber,” late “an Innholder in this Burrough.” Opposite the prison was the common bakehouse which had existed from an early period, but the privileges with which it was invested, have, together with the building, long ago ceased to exist (Wardell 1846).

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