“MY LORD,—I am not forgotten, neither by God nor by your lordship. My debts are about £300, which I have contracted by a series of misfortunes not unknown to your Grace. The falling of my parsonage barn before I had recovered the taking my living; the burning of a great part of my dwelling-house about two years since, and all my flax last winter; the fall of my income nearly one-half, by the low prices of grain; the almost entire failure of my flax this year, which used to be the better half of my revenue; together with my numerous family, and the taking this regiment from me, which I had obtained with so much expense and trouble,—have at last crushed me, though I struggled as long as I was able. Yet I hope to rise again, as I have always done when at the lowest; and I think I cannot be much lower now. “Do not be in haste to credit what they report of me, for really lies are the manufacture of the party; and they have raised so many against me, and spread them so wide, that I am sometimes tempted to print my case in my own vindication.” The party whom Wesley had opposed had prevented him obtaining a prebend, had wrested from him a regimental chaplaincy, had indirectly occasioned the death of his infant child, had loaded him with obloquy, and had cast him into prison. Surely this was punishment enough for the publication of his unlucky letter, and his two pamphlets in defence of it, and for the vote which he had given at the general election of 1705. But not so. Two months after writing the foregoing letter, be poured fresh sorrows into the ear of his friend, the archbishop. He writes:— “LINCOLN CASTLE, _Sept. 12, 1705_. “MY LORD,—It is happy for me that your Grace has entertained no ill opinion of me, and will not alter what you have entertained without reason. But it is still happier that I serve a Master who cannot be deceived, and who, I am sure, will never forsake me. A jail is a paradise in comparison of the life I led before I came hither. No man has worked truer for bread than I have done, and few have lived harder, or their families either. I am grown weary of vindicating myself; not, I thank God, that my spirits sink, or that I have not right on my side, but because I have almost a whole world against me; and therefore shall, in the main, leave my cause to the righteous Judge. “A few weeks ago, in the night, since I came hither, my enemies stabbed my cows, endeavouring thereby to starve my forlorn family in my absence; my cows being all dried by it, which was their chief subsistence; though I hope they had not the power to kill any of them outright. “After it was done, to divert the cry of the world against them, they spread a report that my own brawn (boar) did this mischief; though at first they said my cows ran against a scythe and wounded themselves.