The Metropolis drew towards it several learned men in this capacity, and Newington Green became “the favourite seat of the Dissenting Muses.” There the learned Theophilus Gale, and the less known but erudite and able Charles Morton, educated a number of young men. Edward Veal had a school at Stepney, and Samuel Wesley, after having been a pupil of Veal’s, became a student under Morton. Violent opposition to the Established Church is said to have been fostered under Veal’s roof, and this young man, who possessed a lively poetical talent, answered invectives against Dissent by invectives against the Church, until, from some cause which has been differently explained, he abandoned Nonconformity, and one August morning in 1683, with forty-five shillings in his pocket, walked all the way to Oxford, and entered himself as a servitor of Exeter College. Samuel Wesley, in a letter published in the year 1703, reflected upon the Dissenting academies, and afterwards defended what he said in a reply to Mr. Palmer. Much bitterness appeared in Wesley’s pamphlet, and he was accused of ingratitude for assailing institutions, to one of which he had been indebted for a gratuitous education. Palmer vindicated the academies from the charge brought against them; but, by a curious coincidence, he like Wesley gave up all connection with Dissent, and obtained the living of Maldon, in Essex. [Sidenote: 1688–1702.] Thomas Doolittle, of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and Thomas Vincent, of Christ Church, Oxford, united in conducting, until within a short time before his death in 1708, an academy at Islington. Thither Philip Henry sent his son Matthew, and immediately after his arrival the young man wrote to his sisters, informing them that in his tutor’s meeting-house “there are several galleries. It is all pewed, and a brave pulpit a great height above the people,” adding, in the same letter: “I perceive that Mr. Doolittle is very studious and diligent, and that Mrs. Doolittle and her daughter are very fine and gallant.” During Matthew Henry’s stay at Islington he pursued a course of reading which bore upon the Christian ministry, but when he left that place he studied law for a time at Gray’s Inn, although it does not appear that he ever thought of entering the legal profession. The fact is, that the elder educated Nonconformists of that day valued all kinds of learning, and were anxious that their children, especially if designed for the ministry, should traverse the widest curriculum of study. Further, it may be mentioned that Ralph Button, fellow and tutor of Merton, Oxford, who died in 1680, conducted another academy at Islington.