This first book of Samuel Wesley’s was published by the eccentric John Dunton, who was born three years before Wesley, and therefore was now a young publisher, of not more than twenty-six years of age. His father was a clergyman, and he was intended for the same profession; but, being found too volatile, he was apprenticed to Thomas Parkhurst, the most eminent Presbyterian bookseller in the three kingdoms. Wesley was acquainted with Dunton before he went to Oxford. A year previous to his removal thither, he was present at Dunton’s wedding, and presented to the happy couple an epithalamium. The object of Dunton’s choice was Elizabeth, one of the daughters of Dr Samuel Annesley, and sister of her who six years afterwards became the wife of Wesley. Dunton commenced business near the Royal Exchange. His affairs prospered for the first three years, until the stagnation cast upon trade by the defeat of Monmouth in the west. In the same year that he published Wesley’s “Maggots,” he sustained some serious losses, and went to America to repair his fortune. Twelve months afterwards, he came back to his wife and to her father; but, on account of his pecuniary embarrassments, he was, for nearly a year, a sort of domestic prisoner, and, to avoid arrest, durst not cross the threshold of the house in which he lived. The only time, in the course of ten months, that he ventured to go out of doors, was on a Sunday to hear Dr Annesley, his father-in-law, preach. To prevent detection, he shaved off his beard, and put on a woman’s clothes. He got safe to the meeting-house, and sat down in the obscurest corner he could find. He was returning home, through Bishopsgate Street, with all the circumspection and care imaginable, when an unlucky rogue cried out, “I’ll be hanged if that be not a man in woman’s clothes!” Away Dunton ran as fast as his legs could carry him; a mob of twenty or thirty persons ran after him; but his intimate knowledge of the alleys in that part of the city, enabled him to dodge and get rid of his pursuers, and, in great trepidation he reached his house without arrest.[22] Dunton became wearied with this confinement, and made a trip to Holland, Flanders, and Germany, and returned to London in 1688. On the same day that the Prince of Orange entered the capital, Dunton re-opened his place of business. Here he printed six hundred books, and says, there were only seven of them which occasioned him repentance. In 1692 he became possessed of a considerable estate, by the decease of a cousin, and was elected a member of the Company of Stationers. At the age of thirty-eight he was bereaved of his first wife, whose decease he bitterly lamented; but, before the year was out, consoled himself by another marriage with Sarah, daughter of Mrs Nicholas of St Albans. This lady added neither to his comfort nor his fortune. He left her soon after they were married, and became financially embarrassed to the end of life. He died in obscurity two