This was the state of things when Wesley “began the first Methodist society in England.” He was dissatisfied with his old Moravian friends, and well he might. He had been prominent in the formation of their society at Fetter Lane, on the 1st of May, 1738; but his hopes and aspirations concerning it were blighted; and hence he formed another society of his own. Moravian heresies had, in London at least, corrupted the Moravian bands; numbers were offended; these and others repaired to Wesley; Wesley took down their names, and met them every Thursday evening for spiritual advice and prayer; success followed; and the Methodist society was instituted. We must return to this subject in the next chapter. Wesley spent most of the year 1739 in Bristol and the immediate neighbourhood; but, at different times, he rendered important service in other places. At Blackheath, he preached to twelve or fourteen thousand people; and on Kennington Common to twenty thousand. In Moorfields, he had a congregation of ten thousand. In Gloucester he preached to seven thousand;[332] and in Bath, Bradford, and elsewhere, to great multitudes. He also preached, at least once, in the mansion of Lady Huntingdon, taking a bold text for such a fashionable audience: “The cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires of other things, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.” He also met with some adventures and incidents worth mentioning. In riding to Rose Green, his horse suddenly fell, and rolled over and over. A gentleman, at Bradford, who had wished him good luck in the name of the Lord, told him that his fellow collegians at Oxford always considered him “a little crack-brained.” In one instance, the pressgang came when he was in the middle of his sermon, and seized one of his hearers. While preaching in Turner’s Hall, London, the floor gave way, but fortunately the vault below was filled with hogsheads of tobacco, so that the crowded congregation only sunk a foot or two, and he proceeded without further interruption. At Oxford, he was grieved to find that none now visited the workhouse and the prison, and that the Methodist little school was about to be given up. At Stanley, on a little green, he preached for two hours amid the darkness of an October night. At Newport, he addressed “the most insensible, ill behaved people” he had seen in Wales; one old man cursing and swearing incessantly, and taking up a great stone to throw at him. The people of Wales generally he found as ignorant of gospel truth as the Cherokee Indians; and asks, “What spirit is he of, who had rather these poor creatures should perish for lack of knowledge than that they should be saved, even by the exhortations of Howel Harris, or an itinerant preacher?” Words these well worth pondering; for they are added proof, that Wesley, even as early as 1739, was not opposed to the employment of lay evangelists.