CHARLES (1708-1788), brother of the preceding, was born prematurely at Epworth, 18th December 1708. He entered Westminster school in 1716, was admitted a king's scholar in 1721, and entered Christ Church, Oxford, in 1726. He accompanied his brother John to Georgia in 1735 as secretary to the managing committee, having been ordained priest a few days before leaving England ; but on account of a strong feeling of opposition manifested against him in the religious communities of Frederica he left Georgia for England five months after landing. To a serious illness which happened to him in February 173S he attributed a moral change which he associated with conversion and a conscious sense of pardon. He seconded his brother in his evangelizing labours in England with unceasing diligence, and, although not possessing his brother's gifts of oratory and personal magnetism, contributed by his hymns an element of success to the movement of prime and permanent importance. He published no fewer than 4100 hymns of his own. composition, and left about 2000 in manuscript. Numerous editions both of the special and general collections of his hymns have been published. Both as regards the number of his compositions and their various excellences, he is entitled to the chief place among Methodist hymn writers (see HYMNS, id supra). He died 29th March 1788. His Sermons, with memoir, appeared in 1816 ; a Life, by Rev. Thomas Jackson, in 1841 ; and his Journal, with notes by Rev. Thomas Jackson, 1849.

Two sons of Charles Wesley attained eminence as musicians :-CHARLES (1757-1815), organist of St George's, Flanover Square, London, who in 1778 published Six Concertos for the Organ and Harp; and SAMUEL (1766-1837), organist of the Chapel Royal, noticed below.

See, in addition to the authorities already mentioned, the Lives by Hampson (1791), Coke and Moore (1792), Whitehead (1793-96), Southey (1820), Moore (1824), Watson (1831), Miss Wedgwood (1870), and Tyerman (exhaustive and complete) (1870); J. Dove, Biographical History of the Wesleys (1833); and G. J. Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family (1876).