Note 72 — REV. BENJAMIN INGHAM, THE YORKSHIRE EVANGELIST.
Reading edition
The English bishops would have acted more justly and generously if they had helped Wesley out of their own fat incomes, instead of finding fault with his trifling expenses. On March 4, 1737, Wesley says, “I writ the trustees for Georgia an account of our year’s expenses, from March 1, 1736, to March 1, 1737; which, deducting extraordinary expenses, such as repairing the parsonage house, and journeys to Frederica, amounted, for Mr. Delamotte and me, to £44 4s. 4d.” Can it be correct that the bishops found fault with Wesley costing the trustees £22 2s. 2d. per year? It may be asked what Wesley received from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts? The answer is £50; “which, indeed,” says he, “was in a manner forced upon me, contrary both to expectation and desire” (Wesley’s Unpublished Journal). Seven months later, on November 10, 1737, he writes, in the same Journal, “Colonel Henderson arrived, by whom I received a benefaction of £10 sterling, after having been for several months without one shilling in the house, but not without peace, health, and contentment.” This was the man at whose extravagance the bishops grumbled, and concerning whom even Ingham felt some anxiety. The Georgian trustees had no misgivings.