Wesleys Cornwall

In nearly a half-century of missionary work throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, brothers John and Charles Wesley found the southwestern county of Cornwall to be among their most serious theological and social challenges. Eighteenth-century Cornwall lacked population centers, and small towns and villages were isolated by inadequate roads. The adult population consisted mainly of miners, fisherman and smugglers--men more interested in the bulk of their pocketbooks than in the status of their souls. And the clergy of the Church of England overwhelmingly opposed the Wesleys and their itinerant preachers, encouraging Anglicans to disrupt the Wesleys' outdoor services and to attack and burn Methodist preaching houses. Although the Wesleys made some evangelical progress in Cornwall, the question remained upon John Wesley's death in 1791: did the mission to Cornwall succeed or fail? This book considers the mission with a close reading of the Wesleys writings, and covers the overall history of 18th-century British Methodism and its contribution to the religious and social history of the British Empire.

This book is about those preachers whom John Wesley called his Sons in the Gospel, their lives, their importance in the Methodist movement and their wider significance. It is about those who entered in Wesley's lifetime; they had begun their work by 1791. Because of their unity and dedication they had more effect than either of the Wesley brothers in the creation of the worldwide Methodist Church. This study analyses their lives and achievements. It provides new statistical information and brings to life the calling, travels, and everyday experience of individual preachers.

The face of John Wesley (1703–91), the Methodist leader, became one of the most familiar images in the English-speaking and transatlantic worlds through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After the dozen or so painted portraits made during his lifetime came numbers of posthumous portraits and moralising ‘scene paintings’, and hundreds of variations of prints. It was calculated that six million copies were produced of one print alone – an 1827 portrait by John Jackson R.A. as frontispiece for a hymn book. Illustrated by nearly one hundred images, many in colour, with a comprehensive appendix listing known Wesley images, this book offers a much-needed comprehensive and critical survey of one of the most influential religious and public figures of eighteenth-century Britain. Besides chapters on portraits from the life and after, scene paintings and prints, it explores aspects of Wesley’s (and Methodism’s) attitudes to art, and the personality cult which gathered around Wesley as Methodism expanded globally. It will be of interest to art historians as a treatment of an individual sitter and subject, as well as to scholars engaged in Wesley and Methodist studies. It is also significant for the field of material studies, given the spread and use of the image, on artefacts as well as on paper.

Steeped in legend and mystery, the dramatic coastline of North Cornwall is riddled with stories of hauntings throughout history. The eerie wilds of Bodmin Moor, the haunted historic castles and of course the spirited, rugged coastline all have terrifying tales to tell. Michael Williams has been at the heart of some incredible investigations, and shares here some of the most chilling accounts of hauntings. Including previously unpublished accounts of ghostly activity, this is a treasure trove of original material and re-examined cases. It unravels stories which will send a shiver down the spine of anyone interested in the rarely advertised scary side of North Cornwall.

List of members in v. 4-5, 7-10.