Author: Fletcher, John
Biography:
FLETCHER, John (1729-85: ODNB)
John William Fletcher was born Jean Guillaume de la Fléchère in Nyon, Switzerland, the youngest of eight children of Suzanne Elizabeth (Crinsoz de Colombier) and Jacques de la Fléchère. He was educated at a boarding school in Geneva and went on to university there but left without a degree. In 1750 he left to go to school at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, to improve his English and prepare himself for a position as tutor in an upper-class family. From 1751 to 1760, when he accepted the living of Madely in Shropshire--a relatively impoverished parish that he took in preference to a richer one--he lived as part of the household of Thomas Hill, MP as tutor to Hill's two sons. The family divided its time between London and their country seat in Shropshire. In that time he took orders in the Church of England (1757) but also became deeply involved with the Methodist leaders John and Charles Wesley (qq.v.), and with the Countess of Huntingdon. Steadfastly resisting John Wesley's attempts to recruit him as an itinerant preacher, Fletcher grew into the roles of advocate and defender of Methodist principles in many tracts written on their behalf, and of peacemaker among the Methodists themselves. His contemporaries regarded him as saintly for his inspiring speech and personal austerity. In 1781 he proposed marriage to the prominent Methodist preacher Mary Bosanquet (1739-1815), confessing that he had admired her for 25 years. They were married on 12 Nov. 1781 and entered into a working partnership at Madeley; after his death from a fever on 14 Aug. 1785, she stayed on at the vicarage and continued to hold religious meetings five days a week--not at the church itself, where there was a new priest, but in an adjacent tithe barn. Her account of his death, dated 18 Aug. 1785, was published in Methodist periodicals and later as a separate pamphlet in both Britain and the US. She held her last meeting in Sept. 1815 and died of a respiratory illness on 9 Dec. The Fletchers are buried in a shared grave in the churchyard at Madeley. (ODNB [both John and Mary Fletcher] 22 Sept. 2021; CCEd 22 Sept. 2021) HJ
Other Names:
- Jean Guillaume de la Fléchère