The Wesleyan Methodists first appeared in Norwich in 1754, when the Revs. John and Charles Wesley visited the city, and the Rev. J. Wesley preached here for some time, and on leaving, appointed Mr. T. Oliver in his room. One of his successors was the Rev. R. Robinson, afterwards at Cambridge, who also preached for some time at the Tabernacle; and another was Dr. Adam Clarke, the learned Commentator, who was appointed in 1783, but left in 1785. Their first chapel was built in 1769, in Cherry Lane. CHAPTER XIV. Social State of the City from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. BEFORE we proceed to chronicle the leading local events of the 18th century, it may not be altogether unprofitable to review briefly the social state of the city during some 300 or 400 years preceding. In doing this we may now and then have to advert to matters to which we have alluded already; but at the risk even of an occasional repetition, it will be worth while—in order to help our readers to appreciate subsequent improvements at their proper worth—to consider a little more minutely than we have yet done, the physical circumstances under which the citizens have lived in former centuries, and the various influences to which they have been subject. A “Chapter of Horrors” might be written, descriptive of the plagues, pestilences, famines, floods, and fires, which devastated the city and county for 300 years. It would seem as if the darkness and gloom of the physical world corresponded at times with the superstitions and vices of the people. The dark ages were ages of terrible calamities, and England was then a terrible country to live in. Plagues and pestilences now and again desolated the whole land, and Norfolk and Norwich did not escape the ravages of diseases emphatically named the “Black Death.” Exaggerated accounts must have been given of the desolations caused by these various scourges, or else both city and county must have more than once lost the great part of their inhabitants. Blomefield is responsible for very dark pictures indeed; but his statements, right or wrong, have been endorsed by later compilers of local history. We are told, by one writer, for instance, that:— “In 1348, the plague, which had lately ravaged the greatest part of the known world, broke out in this city; wherein there died, according to the most credible accounts, within the space of twelve months, upwards of 57,000 persons, besides religious and beggars; and this will not appear very surprising, when we consider that in some places not one-fifth part of the people were left alive, and that Norwich was more populous at that time than it has ever been since. It then contained sixty churches, besides conventual ones, within the walls; and the large parishes of Heigham and Pockthorpe, and the large chapel of St. Mary Magdalene without them.”