WESLEY, SAMUEL (1662–1735), divine and poet, father of the great methodist leader, second son of John Wesley, was baptised on 17 Dec. 1662 at Winterborn-Whitchurch, Dorset. The family name was originally spelled Westley, and Samuel so wrote his name in 1694. His grandfather, Bartholomew Westley (1595?–1679?), was the third son of Sir Herbert Westley of Westleigh, Devonshire, by his wife Elizabeth de Wellesley of Dangan, co. Meath. He held the sequestered rectories of Charmouth (from 1640) and Catherston (from 1650), Dorset, from both of which he was ejected in 1662, subsequently practising as a physician; he married (1619) Anne, daughter of Sir Henry Colley of Carbury, co. Kildare, and granddaughter of Adam Loftus (1533?–1605) [q. v.], primate of Ireland; the story that on 23 Sept. 1651 he gave information intended to secure the capture of Charles II, who had lodged at Charmouth after the battle of Worcester, seems authentic, in spite of some difficulty about details (see authorities in Tyerman's Samuel Wesley, pp. 29 sq.; also Miraculum basilicon, 1664, p. 49, by A[braham] J[enings]). His father, John Wesly (his own spelling), Westley, or Wesley (1635?–1678) of New Inn Hall, Oxford (matriculated on 23 April 1651, B.A. on 23 Jan. 1654–5, M.A. on 4 July 1657), was appointed to the vicarage of Winterborn-Whitchurch in May 1658; the report of his interview in 1661 with Gilbert Ironside the elder [q. v.], his diocesan, shows him to have been an independent; he was imprisoned for not using the common prayer-book, ejected in 1662, and died at Preston, near Weymouth, in 1678. His engraved portrait is in the ‘Methodist Magazine’ (1840). He married a daughter of John White (1574–1648) [q. v.], and niece in some way of Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) [q. v.], the church historian; White married a sister of Cornelius Burges or Burgess [q. v.] Wesley's eldest son was Timothy (b. 1659); a younger son, Matthew Wesley, remained a nonconformist, became a London apothecary, and died on 10 June 1737, leaving a son, Matthew, in India; he provided for some of his brother Samuel's daughters.
Samuel Wesley, after passing through Dorchester grammar school, under Henry Dolling, was sent by the independents to be educated for their ministry under Theophilus Gale [q. v.] He reached London on 8 March 1678, shortly after Gale's death, and, after attending another grammar school, was placed (with an exhibition of 30l.) under Edward Veel or Veal [q. v.] at Stepney. Here he remained some two years, proceeding to the academy of Charles Morton (1627–1698) [q. v.] at Newington Green. Being ‘a dabbler in rhyme and faction,’ he was encouraged (but not by Morton) in writing ‘lampoons both on church and state,’ and ‘pasquils’ against Thomas Doolittle [q. v.], head of a rival (presbyterian) academy. Among his forty or fifty fellow students were Timothy Cruso [q. v.], Daniel Defoe [q. v.], and John Shower [q. v.] A ‘reverend and worthy person,’ his relative, who visited him at the academy, first gave him ‘arguments against the dissenting schism.’ John Owen (1616–1683) [q. v.], believing that degrees would soon be open to nonconformists, wished him to study at a university; he went on foot to visit Oxford, ultimately entering as a servitor at Exeter College in August 1683, matriculating on 18 Nov. 1684 (when his age is wrongly given as eighteen), and graduating B.A. on 19 June 1688. While at Oxford he published anonymously through John Dunton [q. v.] a volume of verse, dedicated to his old master, Dolling, and entitled ‘Maggots: or, Poems on Several Subjects, never before handled. By a Schollar’ (1685, 12mo; the frontispiece has
