ABSTRACT
There are fewer reliable sources of first-hand material about Charles Wesley than there are about John. John was a small boy of four when Charles was born in 1707. Like John, Charles would have been affected by his birth order and by losses his parents had suffered. Charles would have been less vulnerable to the problems associated with being a ‘replacement child’ than John had been. Charles followed John to Oxford, to the same College, Christ Church. In the year that Charles matriculated, 1726, John was elected a Fellow of Lincoln College. The extent of John’s early influence over Charles was clearly shown in 1735 by Charles’s reluctant agreement when John persuaded him to become ordained, a prospect he said he dreaded, and his decision to go with him to Georgia. Charles’s apprehension about his brother’s power and authority continued. In February, 1736 during the voyage to Georgia, Charles wrote a letter to two women friends from the ‘Cotswold Set’.
