Marriage
In 1781, Fletcher returned from the Continent where he had been convalescing from a severe respiratory disorder. Upon his return he picked up a correspondence with a woman he had met nearly thirty years previous, Mary Bosanquet, who in the early 1770s had become the first woman preacher authorized by John Wesley to preach. Mr. Fletcher and Miss Bosanquet carried on a correspondence during the summer of 1781, finding they had both at one time considered the other as a suitable spouse. They were married at Batley Church in Yorkshire on 12 November 1781. Fletcher exchanged pulpits with the evangelical vicar of Bradford, John Crosse, in order to settle his wife's affairs in Yorkshire. They returned to Madeley together on 2 January 1782. Their marriage was to be short-lived, for Fletcher died less than four years later, on 14 August 1785. After his death, Mary Fletcher was allowed to continue living in the vicarage by the new vicar, Henry Burton, a pluralist clergyman who was also the incumbent of Atcham parish near Shrewsbury. Though John Wesley attempted to persuade Mrs. Fletcher to leave Madeley for a ministry with the Methodists in London, she refused, believing she was called to carry on her late husband's work in the parish. This she did for the next thirty years. She died in the parish and was buried in the same grave as her husband in December 1815.
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Famous quotes containing the word marriage:
“Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“Men commonly couple with their idea of marriage a slight degree at least of sensuality; but every lover, the world over, believes in its inconceivable purity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)