Signed by John Wesley for Charles Bland

Minutes of Several Conversations between the The [sic] Reverend Messieurs John and Charles Wesley, and Others.
London: [s.n.], 1770. (BRA2033)

At the sixth Conference of Methodist ministers at London in 1749 it was resolved that all preachers who were being admitted in “full connexion” were to be presented with a copy of the Minutes inscribed “So long as you freely consent and earnestly endeavor to walk by these Rules, we shall rejoice to acknowledge you as a fellow laborer.” At the Leeds conference in 1789, John Wesley signed a nearly identical presentation inscription in this copy of the 1770 edition of the “Large Minutes” for a newly admitted minister, Charles Bland (d. 1804), the second Methodist preacher in the Oxfordshire Circuit.

This rare example of a presentation copy of the Minutes signed by Wesley was discovered by Page Thomas, longtime member of the Bridwell Library staff, and was published in Methodist History 38, no. 1 (1999), pp. 63-65.