One Family Under God. Anna M. Lawrence

narratives establish common stages that new converts would experience when joining Methodism in the eighteenth century. Their narratives follow a process of deconstructing the old codes of the birth families and joining a new family as a convert through their “new birth.” With slight variations, these narratives trace a common path to the new family: (1) a realization of difference, which can begin at an early age or in the teenage years; (2) recognition of an alternate religious life, resulting in conversion; (3) conflict and alienation from the ways of their birth family; (4) isolation within their birth family (becoming the lone, suffering saint); and (5) leaving their old family to join with the new family.

      Figure 3. Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, engraving by John Chester Buttre, ca. 1855–85. Courtesy of the Drew University Methodist Collection.

       Mary Bosanquet’s Narrative

      Mary Bosanquet Fletcher (1739–1815) wrote in her manuscript autobiography that she had felt, as a precocious four-year-old, that “god heard prayer.”³⁶ By the time she was five years old, she began to distinguish between sinful and good behavior and wondered about the fate of her soul.³⁷ From the beginning, Bosanquet felt different from other members of her family, who attended the Church of England but had little zeal.³⁸ In 1746, she discovered Methodism through her sister and their servant, and Bosanquet dramatically recalled the moment of recognizing the alternative to her natural family’s religious practices: “I well remember the very Spot we stood on, and the words She Spake, which tho we were but a few minutes together sunk so deeply into my heart they were never after Erase. My reflections were suited to a child not 7 years old. I thought if I became a Methodist I was sure to be saved and determined if Ever I could get at this people whatever it cost I would be one of them.”³⁹

      Later in her childhood, she set about to conform her life to evangelical norms. This behavior marked her as different from her three siblings, and her parents were often perplexed by her strangeness and disobedience.⁴⁰ She recalled her mother’s chastising words: “that girl is the most preverse creature that ever lived, I cant think what is come into her.”⁴¹ Bosanquet continued to frame her childhood journey as a rebellious and isolating process, separating her even from the sister who had introduced her to Methodism. Her elder sister never converted; instead she married in 1754, leaving Bosanquet without a religious ally in the family.

      Throughout her teenage years, Bosanquet sustained her evangelical ambitions. Her parents fired the Methodist servant and hid religious tracts from Bosanquet, who began to feel like a lone, suffering saint. In 1755, Bosanquet continued to glean evangelical ideas from family friends and literature, and she abstained from going to the theater, a frequent family activity. Her father attempted to dissuade her, remarking that she acted as if “all dress and company, nay, all agreeable liveliness, and the whole spirit of the world, is sinful.”⁴² The family was based on a large estate in Leytonstone, Essex, and they frequently traveled in a fashionable circuit of bucolic resorts and urban entertainments.⁴³ They had asked her to endure public entertainments quietly, “to do as they did and not bring reproach upon them in a Strange place. This seemed a very reasonable request—but alas, I could not comply; for the Spirit of the worlds was contrary that of Christ.”⁴⁴ She wrote that she was afraid of “snares,” which in Methodist code refers to both the public traps of entertainment and trifling diversions, as well as the more intimate traps of romantic love.

      Methodists often felt the tension between obedience to their blood family and the demands of the new family. This tension was particularly difficult, because Christianity promoted filial obedience as a central commandment yet also encouraged following individual conscience in spiritual matters. Bosanquet reflected on this central quandary between individual religious yearnings and filial obedience, when she wrote about conforming to the dress required of her class, despite her desires to dress more simply for religious reasons. “I plainly saw the throwing of dress would be to my relations a great trial—I loved my parents, and it hurt me to disoblige them—I sought for arguments to quench that little Spark of Light wich was kindling in my Soul. Conscious they could not see in me my Light—and knowing that obedience to parents was one of the first dutys—I did so far quench it that I put on again many of the things that I had thrown off.—my acquaintance took much notice of me, and I was so afraid of Losing their good opinion that I had no power to reprove Sin, or even to refrain from joining in Light or trifling conversation when in company.”⁴⁵ It is clear from Bosanquet’s narrative that there was much more at stake than outward conformity to familial culture. Bosanquet equated this small acquiescence to losing her religious sense of self.

      Bosanquet’s writings also confirm that evangelicals sought their new family as the final step into a new life. When she was with her old friends, it was harder for her to be religiously authentic. Thus, instead of partaking in the usual fashionable pursuits of her age, she searched for a religious life and family of like-minded souls. In 1758, Bosanquet found her new family when she began boarding in London with a company of single Methodist women, including Sarah Ryan and Sarah Crosby.⁴⁶ She wrote about the London Methodists: “The more I saw of that family the more I was convinced Christ had get his pure Church below … whenever I was from home this was the place of my residence and truly I found it to be a little Bethel.”⁴⁷ Taking these friends as her real family signified the point in the narrative where she experienced significant dissonance between her old family ways and the new family. The new family members prided themselves on simplicity, not finery and elaboration, and fiery religiosity over conformity. And these new friends were both from lower classes than the Bosanquets; Sarah Ryan and Sarah Crosby simply subsisted in their roles as housekeepers and secretaries for Methodist preachers.

      This decision must have vexed her parents, who saw her deepening entanglement with the evangelical world as a sort of madness. Clearly her parents viewed her London evangelical society as more Bedlam than Bethel; they blamed Methodism for her “strong nervous fever—they thought it all arose from some trouble of mind I would not own—and told me one day if I did not rouse my Self out of that Low state my head sho[u]ld be blistered and I should be shut up in a dark room.” They also threatened to place her in an insane asylum.⁴⁸

      Mary Bosanquet’s relationship to her parents became strained as she became more and more embedded in the culture and customs of her new Methodist family. Her parents worried that Bosanquet would be a bad influence on her brothers and convert them to Methodism.⁴⁹ When she came into a small, but adequate, inheritance of one hundred pounds per year at the age of twenty-one, she recognized this could support her new life. She already had plans in mind, then, when her father sat her down to discuss her future and told her, “there is a perticular promise I require of you, that is, will you never on any accation Either now or hearafter attempt to make your Brothers what you call Christian.” Her father clearly saw evangelicalism as a madness that could be contagious and hoped that his daughter would not infect her brothers. Bosanquet wrote that in her response, “I answered Looking to the Lord—‘I think Sir I dare not consent to that.’ He replyed then you fo[r]ce me to put [you] out of the house.”⁵⁰ In recalling this flagrant disobedience, Bosanquet emphasized that God’s ultimate authority superceded her parents’. Joining with Methodists allowed Bosanquet to challenge her father in ways that would not have been possible otherwise. In these conflicts between household and religious authority, Methodists felt that familial authority was secular and temporal, while divine authority was absolute. After many weeks of increasing familial tension, one day her mother ordered a coach to carry her daughter away from home.⁵¹

      It was important to Bosanquet, in constructing this autobiography, to write about the ways in which her religious rebellion was justified within an alternative culture and code. Bosanquet reported that on her first night as an “orphan” (though she was twenty-one), she lay awake in her new bed, and “I looked on my Self as lying under a deep reproach—and was ready to tremble at the thought of being thrust out from under the Othority and protection of My father’s roof. But I remembered that word he that loveth father or mother more then me is not worthy of me.”⁵²

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