ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter pulls together some key features of Thomas Wride’s life and his achievement as an itinerant preacher in John Wesley’s Methodist Connexion in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His career illustrates the grip which Wesley held while he lived and notably the care with which he chose the circuits in which his preachers were stationed and the value of deploying teams of (typically) three preachers in each circuit. This flexible system enabled preachers such as Wride who had obvious character flaws to undertake effective mission and pastoral work. It shows how, as the Connexion expanded, it became increasingly dependent upon legalistic rules and procedures but how also, in parallel, it became harder to maintain uniformity of practice in areas such as hymn-singing, as lay Methodists challenged the authority of the preachers. Wride was at the forefront of those struggling to retain Connexional standards, but it was sometimes a losing battle. He never attained great office, probably made more enemies than friends, and seems to have died lonely and feeling marginalised. But he should not be dismissed as merely eccentric; we should acknowledge that he exhausted himself in the service of God and found little reward in this life.
