Madeley is a market town in the county of Salop. It is beautifully situated in a winding glen, through which the river Severn flows. In 1800, fifteen years after Fletcher’s death, it contained, according to the parliamentary returns, 291 houses, and 4,758 inhabitants. The church is dedicated to St. Michael; and the parish includes Coalbrook Dale and Madeley Wood, noted for their coal mines and their iron-works. Colliers and iron-workers at Madeley, in the days of Fletcher, were quite as ignorant and brutal as they were elsewhere. His mission was a trying one; and its burdensomeness was not lessened by the fact that there was not a single clergyman in the county of Salop who approved of his Methodist doctrines, or sympathized with his Methodist endeavours. Further, he was without parochial experience. He had preached for the Wesleys and for the Countess of Huntingdon; and, on a few rare occasions, he had been permitted to occupy the pulpits of the Established Church; but, notwithstanding the temporary assistance he had rendered to his Madeley predecessor, he had never held a curacy. In parish work he was a novice; but he was not dismayed. A few months before his induction, he had been with Berridge, who, with the exception of Mr. Hicks at Wrestlingworth, was as much without clerical sympathy and help in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Huntingdonshire, as Fletcher himself was now in Salop. Berridge had seen marvellous results of his denounced ministry, and why should not Fletcher see the same? Hence, on January 6, 1761, he wrote as follows to the Countess of Huntingdon:— “I had a secret expectation to be the instrument of a work in this part of our Church; and I did not despair of being soon a _little Berridge_. Thus warmed with sparks of my own kindling, I looked out to see the rocks broken, and the waters flowing out; but, to the great disappointment of my hopes, I am now forced to look within, and see the need I have of being broken myself. If my being stationed in this howling wilderness is to answer no public end as to the Gospel of Christ, I will not give up the hope that it may answer a private end as to myself, in humbling me under a sense of unprofitableness.