We’re delighted to announce that we have received the generous gift of an original John Wesley letter of 10 January 1789 to Walter Churchey of Brecon.
The letter was formerly in the custody of Greenock Methodist Church, and was first brought to light over 70 years ago by Oliver Beckerlegge as ‘A New Wesley Letter’ in the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, vol. XXVII, part 4 (December 1949). Beckerlegge was a scholar and collector of early printed Bibles which are now in the collections of the University of Sheffield (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/special/beckerlegge).
Beckerlegge described the letter as addressed to Walter Churchey, a lawyer and Methodist with whom Wesley carried on a considerable correspondence between 1770 and his death. The ‘Great man’ discussed by Wesley in the letter is the poet William Cowper, who (as Bickerlegge noted) had recently achieved fame with ‘The Task’
Since arriving at the Centre, conservation work has been undertaken on the letter including its removal from an old frame, and acid-free treatment to prevent the ink from damaging the eighteenth-century paper.
Images of the letter are now digitally available for the first time at OCMCH Digital Collections: https://flic.kr/p/2jzCMtz
Westminster Oxford Research Network 