Bardsley, Samuel
1745 -1818; e.m. 1768
Born in Manchester and baptized there in July 1745, he worked there as an errand boy for a wine merchant before becoming an itinerant. 'Simple-hearted' and loving, he was highly regarded by John Wesley, who corresponded frequently with him, relied on him for advice and named him as one of theLegal Hundred. The Rev. David Lloyd (1752-1838) of Llanbister, author of Horae Theologicae (1823) and keen supporter of the CMS, was converted under his preaching. Because of the exigencies of the itinerancy, he was discouraged by both Wesley and John Pawson from marrying his sweetheart Mary ('Molly') Charlton of Manchester (whom Wesley buried in 1781 - 'an Israelite indeed'). He lived to be the senior preacher in the Connexion and died at Delph, Saddleworth, on 19 August 1818.
'A monument of filial affection to a widowed mother. - Sound Christian feeling; - a man essentially right in Christian doctrine; - steady in his attachments; - without splendour and gaity of colouring, yet like the humble unassuming daisy, meets with a benignant smile from gentle and simple, from rich and poor, from the learned and illiterate, from infancy up to the patriarch in years.'
Wesleyan Takings (1840), p.304
- Robert A. West, Sketches of Wesleyan Preachers (1849) pp. 193-97
- Gareth Lloyd, [catalogue of] The Personal Papers of Samuel Bardsley (Manchester, 2000)
See also
Entry written by: JAV
Category: Person
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