What was the result? Wesley’s letter was published anonymously, but as it contained a biographical sketch of the early history of the writer, there was no difficulty in detecting the author. Accordingly there appeared, almost immediately, a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-four pages, with the following title:—“A Defence of the Dissenters’ Education in their Private Academies, in an answer to Mr W——y’s disingenuous and unskilful Reflections upon ’em; in a Letter to a Noble Lord.—London, 1703.” This was by Mr Palmer. Mr Palmer’s defence is full of bitterness. He speaks of Wesley’s “impotent malice,” “trifling stories,” and “unchristian and ungentlemanly insinuations.” He says that Wesley’s accusation, that Mr Morton’s pupils vindicated the murder of Charles I., is “scandalous and false;” that “the Dissenters universally abhor the king-killing doctrines;” and that they “have not opposed any king, nor defended any tyrant.” He also denies that the Dissenters were “undutiful to the Church and injurious to the Universities;” for “Dr Owen himself required Wesley to go to the University.” He alleges that Wesley, in his letter, has “acted unbecoming a scholar, a gentleman, and a Christian;” that he “has betrayed the private conversations of his best friends, and insulted the works of great and excellent scholars,” and yet Palmer admits that Wesley’s “charges might be true, at least in part;” but thinks the things “were excusable, considering the provocations the Dissenters received at that period.” He says, Wesley “endeavoured, by artful and false insinuations, to expose Dissenters to contempt;” speaks of his letter as “perfidious;” and states that he had received “many favours from Dissenters even since he conformed to the Church of England, and that, till the appearance of his invidious letter, the whole Dissenting party expressed for him, on all occasions, universal esteem.” He says, Wesley’s works “are saved from contempt only by the adorable name of Jesus which they bear, and the lovely memory of that bright saint, the Queen; both of which names, the best poets think, are injured by his trifling management.” Much of this is not only abusive, but false. Mr Palmer’s defence was written at the request of the nobleman to whom it is addressed; and, besides rude reproaches, contains an account of the academy in which he himself had been trained for the Christian ministry. Dr Kerr, his tutor, was “a great and polite scholar, a curious critic, a penetrating philosopher, a deep and rational divine, and an accurate historian.” He never “heard him make one unhandsome reflection on the Church of England; and he never offered to impose controverted points upon his pupils. No man living could perform academical readings better; and his pupils, in proportion to their number, were equal in learning and virtue to those of any University in Europe.”