When resident at Tern Hall, Fletcher attended the parish church at Atcham, a small village about five miles from Shrewsbury. Here the Rev. Mr. Cartwright was the officiating minister,[12] and was accustomed to catechise in public the children of his parishioners. On one occasion, he invited the adults who needed instruction to appear in the ranks of the catechumens, and told them that to do so would be no disgrace to them. All, however, except Fletcher, either thought that to stand among the young people would disgrace them, or that further instruction in their case was not needed. The accomplished young scholar from Switzerland, the tutor of the two sons of their county member, had a lower opinion of his excellences than the village peasants had of theirs; for, leaving his seat with an air of unaffected modesty, he took his place among the children, and became a catechumen of the village pastor.[13] Footnote 12: Benson’s “Life of Fletcher,” 2nd edit., p. 366. Footnote 13: Gilpin’s note, in “Portrait of St. Paul.” At Atcham, Fletcher became acquainted with Mr. Vaughan, an excise officer, who gave to Wesley the following account of his deeply-revered friend:— “It was our ordinary custom, when the church service was over, to retire into the most lonely fields or meadows, where we frequently either kneeled down, or prostrated ourselves on the ground. At those happy seasons, I was a witness of such pleadings and wrestlings with God, such exercises of faith and love, as I have not known in any one ever since. The consolations, which we then received from God, induced us to appoint two or three nights in a week, when we duly met, after his pupils were asleep. We met also constantly on Sunday, between four and five in the morning. Sometimes I stepped into his study on other days. I rarely saw any book before him, besides the _Bible_ and the _Christian Pattern_.” “Our interviews for singing and conversation were seldom concluded without prayer, in which we were frequently joined by her who is now my wife (then a servant in the family), and by a poor widow in the village, who had known the power of God unto salvation, and who died some years ago, praising God with her latest breath. These were the only persons in the village whom he chose for his familiar friends; but he sometimes walked to Shrewsbury, to see Mrs. Glynne or Mr. Appleton. He also visited the poor in the neighbourhood who were sick; and, when no other person could be procured, performed even the meanest offices for them.” Besides the godly friends mentioned in this interesting statement, Fletcher had another acquaintance at Atcham, whom he visited to be instructed in singing. This gentleman supplied Wesley with what follows:—