George-Whitefield-Field-Preacher

222 GEORGE WHITEFIELD
civility was the bursting open of his room door by several men
under pretence of a hue-and-cry. He then withdrew from the
inn to private lodgings ; but this was no protection against the
purpose of a little knot of fast young men, who had resolved,
probably in a bragging spirit, to put indignity upon him, if not
to injure him. One of them, a lieutenant of a man-of-war,
laid a wager of ten guineas that he would do the business for
the Methodist preacher, and went and assailed him with a
gold-headed stick as he lay in bed. Thinking he was some
Nicodemite, Whitefield had permitted the coward to come up
to his room. The cry of murder raised by Whitefield and his
landlady and her daughter at last made him afraid, and as he
retreated to the chamber door, the landlady helped him down-
stairs with a push. Then a second bully—no doubt the
whole band were outside listening to the scuffle—shouted out,
'Take courage, I am ready to help you,' and, rushing up-
stairs while his friend was escaping, took one of the women by
the heels and threw her so violently upon the stairs as almost
to break her back. By this time the neighbourhood was
alarmed, and thus the sport of the young ' gentlemen ' came
to an end. The house door was shut, and Whitefield went to
sleep meditating on the propriety with which we are taught in
the Litany to pray— ' From sudden death, good Lord, deliver
us!'
Preaching called Whitefield out next morning, and he went
to it, saying to his friends who counselled the prosecution of
the offenders, that he had better work to do, a restraint for
which he is to be commended. The assault increased his
popularity, curiosity drawing two thousand more to hear a
man who '
had like to have been murdered in his bed.'
There was undoubtedly some danger to be apprehended.
Once his voice arrested the attention of a band of workmen who
were passing near the field in which he preached, and thinking