The attitude of the countess in her loyal support of the new evangelical movement brought her under the criticism that is always encountered by a zeal which is not understood by people generally. The Duchess of Buckingham wrote to her: "I thank your Ladyship for the information concerning the Methodist preachers; their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect towards their superiors, in perpetually endeavouring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that your Ladyship should relish any sentiments so at variance with high rank and good breeding." The Countess of Suffolk on one occasion was so incensed at a sermon of Whitfield in the Countess of Huntingdon's drawing room, that she rushed out of the house in a passion, under the impression that the discourse was a personal attack. The attitude of the clergy generally to the Methodist movement within the Church was one of indifference. The suffering among the wives of the inferior clergy, who were impoverished and suffered under the defeat of the endeavor to make their scanty resources meet the demands of household expenses, the lack of opportunity for educating their children, and their own loss of self-respect, must have made their lives more miserable in some ways than those of the wives of the potters, whose sphere of existence and needs were much more limited. One of the clergymen of this order plaintively sets forth his pecuniary distress as follows: "Oh, my Lord, how prettily and temperately may a wife and half a dozen children be maintained with almost £30 per annum! What an handsome shift will an ingenious and frugal divine make, to take by turns and wear a cassock and a pair of breeches another! What a primitive sight it will be to see a man of God with his shoes out at the toes, and his stockings out at heels, wandering about in an old russet coat and tatter'd gown for apprentices to point at and wags to break jest on! And what a notable figure will he make in the pulpit on Sundays who has sent his _Hooker_ and _Stillingfleet_, his _Pearson_ and _Saunderson_, his _Barrow_ and _Tillotson_, with many more fathers of the English Church, into limbo long since to keep his wife's pensive petticoat company, and her much lamented wedding ring!" Such a picture belongs rather to the latter part of the eighteenth century than to its beginning, for in its earlier days the Church was prolific of quiet scholars and antiquaries, in both parsonage and manse, living peaceful, comfortable, and cultured existences.