John Wesley

📍The Old Rectory, 1 Rectory Lane, Epworth, Doncaster DN9 1HU, England

“I was born John Wesley on the 17th of June 1703 in Epworth, Lincolnshire, the fifteenth of nineteen children of Samuel Wesley, the rector of Epworth, and Susanna Wesley. My mother educated all nineteen children at home with systematic rigour including Latin, Greek, and scripture. The Epworth rectory caught fire when I was five and I was rescued from an upper window at the last moment — my mother called me a brand plucked from the burning and I carried the sense of special providence throughout my life. I founded the Methodist movement within Anglicanism, rode two hundred and fifty thousand miles on horseback, and preached forty thousand sermons. The Epworth childhood — the enormous family, the formidable mother, the fire — was the beginning of everything.”

Sources: Rack, H. Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (1989), Epworth Press; Wesley, J. The Journal of John Wesley (1827)