The reign of William, her husband, extended to the year 1702. During the thirteen years that William wore the crown, the Bank of England was founded; the East India Company was reorganised; and the plantations or settlements of America and the West Indies so steadily increased, that, before his death, they employed not less than five hundred sail of ships. Sir Godfrey Kneller and Sir Peter Lely were the chief portrait-painters of the day; Purcell was the chief musician; and Sir Isaac Newton was shedding a glory over his age and country by his sublime scientific discoveries. The higher kinds of literature were at a discount for want of court patronage. Dryden, fallen on what to him were evil days and evil tongues, and forced in his old age to write for bread, with less rest for his wearied head and hand than they had ever had before, now produced some of his most laborious and also some of his happiest works; and Lee, the dramatic poet, discharged from Bedlam, finished two more tragedies; but besides these, there were hardly any poets above the rank of Shadwell, Tate, and Brady. Among other writers belonging to the same period may be mentioned:—Bishop Stillingfleet, who had been known as an author thirty years before William’s accession to the throne; Cumberland, Bishop of Peterborough, an exceedingly learned writer, who, at the age of eighty-four, began to study, and mastered the Coptic language, was now in the full zenith of his fame; Bishop Bull was writing his “Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ,” for which he received the thanks of the whole body of the clergy in France; good old Richard Baxter, who had been filling the world with books for half a century, just lived to see the Revolution, and died in 1691; Dr Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, was plying his prolific pen, which, during his lifetime, produced one hundred and forty-five distinct publications; Robert South, immortalised by his masculine, if not spiritual sermons, was carrying on a controversy with Sherlock respecting the Trinity; and John Locke was publishing his “Essay Concerning the Human Understanding.” The population of England, in the reign of King William, was about seven millions. About ten thousand of these were clergymen, with an average income of £60 each per annum. The average wages of labouring people and out-door servants were five shillings and ninepence farthing per week; and the average income of cottagers and paupers fourpence farthing per day.[96] Such was the state of things when Samuel Wesley was flourishing among his two hundred peasant parishioners at South Ormsby, on £50 a year and a parsonage,—an income nearly equal to the average income of the ten thousand clergy living at that period. ----- Footnote 96: Knight’s _History of England_. -----