Scripting Emotion in the Sermons and Life of Samuel Wesley

Samuel Wesley (bap. 1662, d. 1735), the father of John and Charles Wesley, was an Anglican clergyman committed to spiritual and moral reform. He possessed an irascible temper, was imprisoned for debt, and was unable to provide sufficient dowries for his seven daughters to make respectable marriages. Samuel preached on the reformation of manners and firmly believed that fathers had to preserve household discipline to ensure the order of the household, society and state. Yet his personal circumstances rendered him a poor exemplar of domestic discipline and authority when his daughter, Metetabel (Hetty), eloped, became pregnant and was abandoned by her lover. This paper considers the gulf between Wesley’s preaching on morality and his treatment of Hetty. His sermons argued for forgiveness to ensure the reformation of the sinful, but he disowned his daughter. It explores the complex relationship between the ideals espoused in conduct literature and the realities of preachers (and their families) lives. To what extent were emotions such as love, disgust and sorrow governed by religious and social scripts? Or, were they determined by personal economic and familial circumstances? And what are the implications of this case study for women’s history scholarship?