The week after, he spent in Oxfordshire. At High Wycombe he meant to preach, “but good Mr. James had procured a drummer to beat his drum at the window of the chapel,” and thus, instead of preaching, Wesley could only pray and sing by turns, during the time allotted for the service. The next week was occupied in a preaching tour in Northamptonshire; and the fortnight afterwards in meeting the classes in and around London. On November 17, he went on a flying visit to Norfolk; and, on the 23rd, preached in Lewisham church for the benefit of the Humane Society, which had been established only three years before, by Dr. Cogan and Dr. Hawes. Here, of course, he was the welcome guest of his old friend, Mr. Blackwell; and, during his visit, he dined with the celebrated Dr. Lowth, bishop of London, whose brother had married into Mr. Blackwell’s family. “His whole behaviour,” writes Wesley, “was worthy of a Christian bishop; easy, affable, and courteous; and, yet, all his conversation spoke the dignity which was suitable to his character.” There is one incident, however, which Wesley, in his modesty, has not related. On proceeding to dinner, the bishop refused to sit above Wesley at the table, saying with considerable emotion, “Mr. Wesley, may I be found at your feet in another world!” Wesley objected to take the seat of precedence, when the learned prelate obviated the difficulty, by requesting, as a favour, that Wesley would sit above him, because his hearing was defective, and he desired not to lose a sentence of Wesley’s conversation.[299] The remaining five weeks of the year 1777 were spent, partly in the three counties of Bedford, Huntingdon, and Hertford; partly at Bath, where he laid the foundation stone of a new chapel; and partly in London, where he parted with Fletcher on his way to Switzerland. He says: “We concluded the old year, and began the new, with prayer and thanksgiving. Four or five of the local preachers assisted me. I was agreeably surprised; their manner of praying being so artless and unlaboured, and yet rational and scriptural, both as to sense and expression.” Such was Wesley’s watchnight service at the expiration of 1777; no preaching, no exhortatory platitudes, but simply prayer and thanksgiving, offered by himself and a selection of his London local preachers. Wesley’s successors have not improved on this.