The three friars were publicly stripped of their monkish robes and degraded.  Tranquilly they mounted the scaffold, the dregs of the populace assailing them with vile words.  But silence reigned at the moment of the execution.  As soon as life was extinct the flames were kindled beneath the bodies of the three victims.  The tragic and awful spectacle elicited bitter grief amongst the people on the one side, while cries of wild exultation were raised on the other.

* * * * *

JOHN WESLEY

Journal

John Wesley, who was born June 17, 1703, at Epworth, and who died in London March 2, 1791, was the son of a Lincolnshire rector.  His history covers practically the whole of the eighteenth century, of which he was one of the most typical personalities, as he was certainly the most strenuous figure.  His career was absolutely without parallel, for John Wesley, as an itinerating clergyman, and as the propagator of that mission of Methodism which he founded, travelled on his preaching tours for forty years, mostly on horseback.  He paid more turnpike fees than any man that ever bestrode a horse, and 8,000 miles constituted his annual record for many a year, during each of which he preached on the average 5,000 times.  John Wesley received a classical education at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, and all through his wonderful life of endurance and adventure, of devotion and consecration, remained a scholar and a gentleman.  His “Journal” is valuable for its pictures of the England of his day, as well as for his own simple and unpretending record of his experiences.  Wesley made religion his business and incorporated it into the national life.  Of him Mr. Augustine Birrell says:—­“No man lived nearer the centre than John Wesley.  Neither Clive nor Pitt, neither Mansfield nor Johnson.  You cannot cut him out of our national life.  No single figure influenced so many minds, no single voice touched so many hearts.  No other man did such a life’s work for England.”

The Holy Club

In November 1729, at which time I came to reside at Oxford, Mr. Morgan, my brother, myself, and one more, agreed to spend three or four evenings in a week together.  Our design was to read over the classics, which we had before read in private, on common nights, and on Sunday some book in divinity.  In the summer following, Mr. M. told me he had called at the gaol, to see a man who was condemned for killing his wife; and that, from the talk he had with one of the debtors, he verily believed it would do much good, if any one would be at the pains of now and then speaking with them.

This he so frequently repeated, that on August 24, 1730, my brother and I walked with him to the castle.  We were so well satisfied with our conversation there, that we agreed to go thither once or twice a week; which we had not done long, before he desired me to go with him to see a poor sick woman in the town.