PREFACE

The only considerable and competent work that has ever been done, so far as I am aware, upon the subject dealt with in the following pages, is contained in some papers which appeared in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine more than forty years ago, by the late Rev. John Wesley Thomas, the distinguished translator of Dante, and in some contributions to the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society in recent years by the late Mr. Charles Lawrence Ford, B.A. I have consulted these, but it is only fair to myself to say that more than nine-tenths of the references given in the book are the result of my own reading.

About a fourth of the matter contained in this volume has appeared in the pages of the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, the Methodist Recorder, and the Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society. I make grateful acknowledgements to the Editors of these publications.

HENRY BETT.

Lincoln, 1912.