ABSTRACT
In 1883, Mark Pattison, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, chaired a meeting in the city at which the speaker was Hugh Price Hughes, then a local Wesleyan Methodist minister. Hughes took it upon himself to remark upon the fact that ‘no adequate memorial of John Wesley existed in a university, of whose sons he was one of the greatest’. The Rector stirred. ‘Not one of the greatest’, he audibly remarked. The speaker heard this comment and repeated his observation, adding, ‘nothing has caused me greater astonishment since I came to Oxford, than the ignorance of the University with regard to the world-wide work and influence of Wesley. The founder of a Church which numbers twenty-five millions…’ ‘No, no, Mr Hughes’, interrupted the Rector; ‘twenty-five thousand, you mean, not twenty-five millions’. The audience waited in breathless silence while Hughes dived into his coat-pocket and produced a pocket-book from which he proceeded to verify his statement. Subsequently, a correspondence ensued in which Hughes argued that if a man who had had so palpable an effect on history as Wesley was not great, who was? It is not clear what rejoinder Pattison made.3
