George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

ABUNDANT LABOURS 203
be most happy to accept your kind offer of accompanying me to hear your
favourite preacher, and shall await your arrival. The Duchess of Queens-
berry insists on my patronising her on this occasion ; consequently she will
be an addition to our party.'
The list of Whitefield's noble hearers is increased by the
names of the Earl of Oxford, Lady Lisburne, and Lady
Hinchinbroke. With the exception of the last two ladies,
none of them accepted his teaching and lived according to it.
To gratify their taste for the highest oratory, or to please the
pious Countess who invited their attendance, was the motive
that brought them to so strange a place. l^
In the spring, Whitefield started for his old ground in
Gloucestershire, and found preaching there to be like preach-
ing in the Tabernacle. His friends in the county had been
roughly handled of late, yet he stood unmolested on a spot in
Dursley from which his friend Adams had been driven but
the Sunday before. On Hampton Common, from the top of
a knoll named, after the preacher who first honoured it as his
pulpit, ' Whitefield's tump,' he preached amid much solemnity
to a congregation of ten thousand ; and when he stood at
noon on old Mr. Cole's tump at Quarhouse, it was an ' alarm-
ing time,' and his soul enjoyed exceeding great liberty.
Perhaps the memory of departed worth helped to expand his
susceptible heart. His native city delighted in the sound of
his voice ; and not until one o'clock on the Monday morning,
after he bade them farewell, before starting for Wales, could
he lay his weary body down to rest. Sick and unrefreshed he
rose again at five, and, mounting horse, rode to meet a con-
gregation which had come at seven, ' hoping to feel the power
of a risen Lord.' He read prayers and preached ; then rode
on to Stroud, where he preached in a field with uncommon
freedom and power to twelve thousand people. At six in the
evening he preached to the same number on Hampton