On his way to London, Wesley paid his first visit to the town of Leicester. He writes: “June 10, Whit-Sunday:—After dinner, a gentleman who came from Leicester, eight miles off,” [Markfield] “invited me thither. About eight I preached there, in a place near the walls, called the Butt-close. The people came running together from all parts, high and low, rich and poor; and their behaviour surprised me; they were so serious and attentive, not one offering any interruption.” Soon after this, a society was gathered, and was placed under the care of John Brandon, a dragoon, who subsequently became one of Wesley’s itinerant preachers; and an old thatched building, in Milstone Lane, which had been successively used as a tithe barn, a theatre, a riding school, and a coal depot, was now turned into a Methodist chapel. Wesley reached London, after a four months’ absence, on the 12th of June. A month later, he started for the Isle of Wight, where one of his preachers had been already labouring.[194] Calling at Portsmouth, he writes: “I was surprised to find so little fruit here, after so much preaching. That accursed itch of disputing had well-nigh destroyed all the seed which had been sown. And this ‘vain jangling’ they called ‘contending for the faith.’ I doubt the whole faith of these poor wretches is but an opinion.” The society here mentioned was not Wesley’s, but one belonging to the preachers of the Countess of Huntingdon. Immediately after this visit, however, a small class was formed by Wesley’s itinerants, one of the members of which was John Mason, an orphan child now approaching manhood, and who, in 1764, became an itinerant preacher, and died in peace in 1810. Leaving Portsmouth, Wesley, after a three hours’ voyage, landed at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight; which he says “as far exceeds the Isle of Anglesey, both in pleasantness and fruitfulness, as that exceeds the rocks of Scilly.” He rode straight to Newport, where he “found a little society in tolerable order.” He preached in the market-place to a large but noisy congregation. He walked to Carisbrook castle, and tells of the deep well, from which water was then drawn by an ass sixty years old.