a few miles distant.  These precautions were useless.  The removal of her sister and brothers, together with the occasion of their banishment, so much affected Elizabeth, that in fact it contributed to the result it was intended to prevent.  So foolish and vain are the thoughts of men when they attempt to arrest the operations of the Spirit of God.  Isolated and freed from control, the young converts were now left to obey the dictates of conscience without further opposition.  In their new home they were thrown more directly in contact with the Methodists, and especially formed acquaintance with Richard Burdsall, with whose class they at once connected themselves.

Richard Burdsall was one of those bold and distinctive characters, whose sterling piety and ardent zeal shining forth from under a rude exterior, gave such peculiar lustre to the age of early Methodism; and indicated an agency, specially raised by God, to break up the fallow ground and clear away the thorns, that the incorruptible seed of truth might find a soil congenial to its germination and growth.  His conversion, which occurred at the age of twenty, was accompanied by indubitable proofs of its reality; and instantly followed up by entire consecration to God.  The path of usefulness soon opened out before him; and in spite of ‘fightings without and fears within,’ he pursued it with undeviating integrity to the close of a protracted life.  His shrewdness and originality of thought, quaint and pointed method of expression, combined with such an intimate acquaintance with the word of God, that some said he had the scriptures at his fingers’ ends, and others nicknamed him ‘old chapter and verse;’ and above all, his known integrity and uncompromising zeal for the glory of God, amply compensated for the want of cultivation, and rendered him as a lay preacher so exceedingly popular and useful, that he was repeatedly solicited to enter a higher sphere, and devote himself to the work of the ministry.  He was twice appointed by Mr. Wesley to the York circuit, in which he was resident; and in six different instances, invited to take charge of independent congregations; but, although he so far yielded to the request of the former as to make the experiment for nine months, he voluntarily retired, under the conviction that he was called to occupy an humbler but not less useful sphere.  His labours, which were extended over a considerable part of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, were blessed by God to the salvation of thousands.  By day toiling at the vice or the anvil, and by night preaching the glad tidings of the Gospel, his life was spent,

  “’Twixt the mount and multitude
     Doing and receiving good”

until, within a fortnight of his death, at the advanced age of eighty-eight, he delivered his last discourse, and died shouting “Victory, Victory,” through the blood of the Lamb.