ABSTRACT
John Wesley’s Connexion was often critically short of both preachers and money. Eighteenth-century preachers worked hard and travelled constantly between and within circuits, often enduring poor diets and accommodation, leading to ill-health. Many circuits, for example in Ireland, suffered extensive poverty. Like preachers such as Alexander McNab and Samuel Bradburn, Wride was often in financial trouble. Some, such as John Pawson and Joseph Benson, accumulated modest resources; others, like Jacob Rowell, Joseph Cownley, and Wride himself, died poor. All faced the challenge of frequent travel by horse or on foot, over poor roads and paths. All this led to slow and unreliable communications across the Connexion, and this in turn added to the difficulty of imposing common standards of practice in worship, with which Wride was obsessed. His career was marked by a series of confrontations with local Methodists in circuits such as York, Grimsby, Gainsborough, and above all Norwich, over issues such as the use of unauthorised hymns and hymnals. Only approved hymns, often written by Charles Wesley, were to be used, but Calvinist texts were sometimes popular locally. Though Wride was not only the only preacher who struggled to maintain discipline in such matters, his experiences were particularly painful, not least because Wesley’s support was not total.
