"On Sunday, February 4, Mr. Whitefield, at the desire of the Friendly Society, came from Spitalfields Church to St. Margaret's, of Westminster. He would have gone into the minister's seat, but could not, there being no one to unlock the door. He then went into the vestry, and stayed there during prayers. The usual preacher before the Society[175] was out of town, otherwise they would have acquainted him with their desire of Mr. Whitefield preaching, which they doubt not but he would have complied with. That he had desired another to preach, they knew not, when they asked Mr. Whitefield to do it; but when he was come, in compliance with their frequently repeated desire, they did insist upon his preaching." [175] In another letter, it is stated that "the usual preacher before the Society" was the Rev. Mr. Morgan. Query: Was this Charles Morgan the Oxford Methodist? Mr. Bennett adds, that all the rest of Mr. Venn's letter, relating to the affront offered to the Reader of Prayers, the Rev. Mr. Durant; the "_overbearing importunity_" brought to bear upon the Rev. J. Majendie, the gentleman who had promised to preach for the absent lecturer; the assumed waiting of Whitefield in a neighbouring house; the employment of the sexton in Whitefield's interest; the taking of the pulpit by "force;" and the sentry of lusty fellows on the pulpit stairs, were not facts, but fiction, created by the writer's "own ingenuity, purely to heighten and embellish his story." Much more was printed respecting the St. Margaret's fracas; but the case, in brief, was this: The Rev. Mr. Morgan, the Lecturer, having to be out of town, asked the Rev. J. Majendie to supply his place on February 4, at St. Margaret's, and Mr. Majendie readily consented to do so. Meanwhile, the officers of the Friendly Society, ascertaining that their "usual lecturer" would be from home, and very improperly taking it for granted that he had provided no one to occupy the pulpit for him, rashly went to Whitefield, and obtained from him a promise to preach in Mr. Morgan's stead. When Whitefield found that Mr. Majendie was present, as Mr. Morgan's properly engaged substitute, he wished to retire, and would have done so, if, to use Mr. Bennett's own expression, the officers of the Society had not "_insisted upon his preaching_." This is all that can be said about this disreputable brawling in St. Margaret's. Mr. Morgan and Mr. Majendie were blameless. Mr. Bennett and his friends were highly culpable in setting aside the arrangement made by their absent Lecturer; and Whitefield, when he had ascertained that Mr. Majendie had come to preach, would have acted a more courteous and less ignoble part, if, instead of taking Mr. Morgan's pulpit, he had at once retired to the Moravian Meeting House in Fetter Lane.