Locksmith Fetter Lane: Where Methodism Quietly Broke Away

By the late 1730s, a prayer society meeting on Fetter Lane had become genuinely influential. It drew John and Charles Wesley into its care, for several formative years. That arrangement held steady until a German missionary named Philip Christian Molther arrived in London in October 1739, initially planning only a brief stay before his own onward journey to Pennsylvania. Delays kept him in the city far longer than expected, and he used the time teaching a doctrine he called stillness, a conviction that believers should wait quietly rather than actively pursuing religious practices before receiving what he considered genuine faith.

John Wesley found this teaching impossible to accept. Through 1740, tension between his own approach and Molther's grew steadily, playing out directly within the Fetter Lane Society's own meetings. Wesley eventually confronted the group outright, attempting to redirect their gatherings himself. He was rebuffed. On the 16th of July 1740, he was formally excluded from the Fetter Lane chapel entirely.

Three Days To A Movement Of His Own

Wesley didn't simply walk away quietly. He withdrew from the Society formally on the 20th of July, reportedly calling out to the room, whoever belongs to the Lord, come with me, before a portion of the congregation followed him out. Just three days later, on the 23rd of July, he transferred his own following to a separate venue entirely, forming what became known as the Foundery Society, deliberately set up in direct opposition to the group still meeting at Fetter Lane. Historians now count this moment among Methodism's own founding points, the juncture where Wesley's movement began separating properly from its Moravian roots. We're concerned with something considerably less doctrinal. A lock on Fetter Lane gets fixed properly, whatever theological disagreement once split a room on this exact street.