Dr A. Clarke seems to be exceedingly unwilling to admit that Bartholomew Wesley was guilty of an act so mean as that of giving information concerning King Charles. As to the meanness or merit of such an act, opinions will differ. We submit, however, that, in such a case, Bartholomew Wesley only did his duty. Probably he had been in the parliamentary army, and had fought for the emancipation of his country from the perfidious thraldom of the Stuart dynasty. He was now, by the authority of the parliamentary government, the appointed clergyman of the two parishes where he lived. Only twelve days before the attempt of Charles to escape to France from Charmouth, the Parliament had issued a proclamation, threatening those who concealed the king, or any of his party; and on the very day when it was arranged for the plan of escape to France to be carried out, that proclamation had been published two miles hence, in the adjacent town of Lyme. Let the reader bear all this in mind, and he will probably conclude that Dr A. Clarke’s earnest attempt to clear Bartholomew Wesley from the charge of giving information concerning the royal fugitive, was a labour of love not needed; and that the whole affair, instead of injuring the rector’s fair fame, is greatly to his credit. He performed a duty, a painful duty; and for that he deserves, not excuses, but thanks. Bartholomew Wesley, after being ejected from his church at Charmouth, still continued to reside in the same village, and obtained a livelihood by the practice of physic. He made no secret of the fact that it was his intention and wish to capture the king; and he jokingly told a gentleman that he was “confident that, if ever the king came back, he would be certain to love long prayers; for if he (Wesley) had not been at that time longer than ordinary at his devotion, he would have surely snapt him.”[9] His were days of strife, of change, of oppression, and of sorrow. He lived to a good old age, for he survived his son John, whose death, in 1678, greatly affected him. He preached when he could, and administered physic as far as he was able. A local historian writes concerning the persecuted dissenting Christians in the west: “They were rewarded with cruel mockings, bonds, and imprisonments; they wandered in deserts and in mountains; and in dens and caverns they hid themselves. In the solitudes of Pinney they offered up their prayers, in a dell between two high rocks, which have ever since been called the _Whitechapel_ Rocks; and in an old house at Lyme there was recently discovered an ingeniously concealed oak staircase, capable of admitting only one person at a time, which led to a small apartment that had been used as a chapel.” In such places, Bartholomew Wesley joined his fellow-Christians in the worship which they stealthily presented to Almighty God. He and they have long since passed to the place where “the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” ----- Footnote 9: