When Mr Wesley removed to Epworth he turned farmer, and took the management of his tithes into his own hands. The rector’s domestic necessities were increasing every year, and it was natural that he should wish to make his glebe as profitable as he could. To commence farming, however, was a serious mistake. First of all, Mr Wesley was without capital to begin; and to attempt to farm without capital, or to borrow capital and pay large interest for it, is not the way for a poor man’s prospects to be made better; and then, in the second place, the great and the good-hearted rector, notwithstanding his genius, his learning, and his diligence, seems to have had no aptitude for business, “He is not fit for worldly business,” wrote his brother-in-law, Samuel Annesley, who had employed him to transact some of his affairs in England, whilst he was absent in India; to which his wife, Susannah Wesley, answered:—“This I assent to, and must own I was mistaken when I thought him fit for business. My own experience hath since convinced me that he is one of those who, our Saviour saith, are not so wise in their generation as the children of this world.” The good man had no knowledge of the farming business; he had no money to begin it; and, to say the least, his ardent love of books, and his long-established literary habits, were not friendly to it. It was a great mistake for the learned and studious rector to turn farmer, and no wonder that such a step led to debt and serious embarrassment. Perhaps this is the most fitting place to introduce the letters following, all of which were written to Archbishop Sharpe:— EPWORTH, _Dec. 30, 1700_. “MY LORD,—I have lived on the thought of your Grace’s generous offer ever since I was at Bishopthorpe, and the hope I have of seeing some end, or at least mitigation, of my troubles, makes me pass through them with much more ease than I should otherwise have done. I can now make a shift to be dunned, with some patience; and to be affronted, because I want the virtue of riches, by those who scarce think there is any other virtue. “I must own, I was ashamed, when at Bishopthorpe, to confess that I was £300 in debt, when I have a living of which I have made £200 per annum, though I could hardly let it now for eightscore. “I doubt not but one reason of my being sunk so far is my not understanding worldly affairs, and my aversion to law, which my people have always known but too well. But, I think, I can give a tolerable account of my affairs, and satisfy any equal judge that a better husband than myself might have been in debt, though perhaps not so deeply, had he been in the same circumstances, and met with the same misfortunes.