The young lady, who became Mr Wesley’s wife, was Susanna Annesley, the daughter of Dr Annesley, one of the leading Nonconformist ministers of London. Dr Annesley was born at Haseley in Warwickshire, in the year 1620. His father was cousin of the Earl of Anglesea, and died when Samuel was but four years of age. His education devolved on his pious mother, who brought him up in the fear of God. From his early childhood his heart was set on preaching; and, to qualify himself for that sacred work, he began, when he was only five or six years old, seriously to read the Bible; and such was his ardour that he bound himself to read twenty chapters daily, a practice which he continued to the end of life. Though a child, he never varied from his purpose to become a preacher; nor was he discouraged by a dream, in which “he thought he was a minister, and was sent for by the Bishop of London to be burnt as a martyr.” At fifteen years of age, he went to Queen’s College, Oxford, and there took the degree of LL.D. When he was twenty-four he became chaplain of his Majesty’s ship _Globe_, under the command of the Earl of Warwick. Not liking a seafaring life, he left the navy, and settled at Cliff in Kent, in the place of a minister who had been sequestered for his scandalous living; but of whom the rude and ignorant parishioners were so extremely fond, that when Annesley, his successor, first went among them, they assailed him with spits, forks, and stones, threatening to take away his life. In a few years his labours had surprising success, and the people were greatly reformed. In July 1648, he was called to London to preach the fast sermon before the House of Commons, which, by imperial order, was printed. In 1652, he relinquished his living at Cliff, which was worth £400 a year, and became minister of the Church of St John the Apostle in London. Five years after he was made lecturer at St Paul’s, and, in 1658, became vicar and “soul-servant,” as he terms himself, of St Giles’s, Cripplegate. He now had two of the largest congregations in the city. The Cripplegate living was worth £700 per annum. With two thousand other ministers he was ejected by the Act of Uniformity, and had his fair share of subsequent persecution. One magistrate, while signing a warrant to apprehend him, dropped down dead. Samuel Annesley was a large-hearted man, and was extensively useful. He had the care of all the Nonconformist churches in the capital upon him; and was the chief instrument in the education and subsistence of several ministers, of whose useful labours the church would otherwise have been deprived.