Erskine felt it ‘unreasonable’ to seek to identify Whitefield with the seceding organisation, and found a way out of the difficulty by suggesting that he might preach at the invitation not of ‘our corrupt clergy’ but of ‘the people.’ Whitefield arrived at Dunfermline on 30 July 1741 on a visit to Ralph Erskine, who at once tackled him on the subject of his episcopal ordination. Writing (31 July) to his brother, he affirms that Whitefield told him ‘he would not have it that way again for a thousand worlds;’ as for refusing invitations to preach, he would ‘embrace’ the offer of ‘a jesuit priest or a Mahomedan,’ in order to testify against them. He met and conferred with the ‘associate presbytery’ on 5 Aug. It was on this occasion that he gave his famous answer, when besought to preach only for ‘the Lord's people,’ that ‘the devil's people’ were in more need of preaching. Finding that he was resolved to be strictly neutral on ecclesiastical politics, the associate presbyters disavowed him. Adam Gib [q. v.] published ‘A Warning’ (1742, 12mo) against ‘this foreigner,’ to prove that Whitefield's ‘whole doctrine is, and his success must be, diabolical.’ The ‘associate presbytery’ in its act of 23 Dec. 1743 enumerates ‘the kind reception’ given to Whitefield among the sins of Scotland. His popularity was very great: in thirteen weeks he visited some thirty towns and had huge open-air audiences. His detractors observed that ‘he was inflexible about the article of gathering money’ (Wakeley, Anecdotes, 1872, p. 231); they forgot to add that this was necessary for his benevolent schemes. In October he was the guest at Melville House, Fifeshire, of Alexander, fifth earl of Leven and fourth earl of Melville (d. 1754), the royal commissioner to the general assembly.
Leaving Edinburgh on 29 Oct. 1741, he rode to Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, the residence of a widow, Elizabeth James (born Burnell), a friend of Wesley, who calls her ‘a woman of candour and humanity’ (Wesley, Works, i. 321). Whitefield married her on 14 Nov. 1741 at St. Martin's, Caerphilly, parish of Eglwsilan, Glamorganshire. He had made up his mind to marry (19 Oct. 1740); but no previous courtship of Mrs. James is known. She was ten years his senior, and had neither fortune nor beauty (his own account), but was a ‘tender nurse’ and a woman of strong mind, proved more than once in trying circumstances; she ‘set about making cartridges’ when the Wilmington, bound for Georgia, seemed in danger of attack by a Dutch fleet (Works, ii. 68); and on another occasion, as Whitefield noted in her funeral sermon, bade her husband ‘play the man’ (Christian Miscellany, 1856, p. 218). Unhappiness in his married life has been inferred from the language of John Berridge [q. v.], who unworthily calls the wives of Wesley and Whitefield ‘a brace of ferrets’ (Gledstone, p. 500); and from the testimony of Cornelius Winter (1742–1807), who was an inmate (1767–9) in Whitefield's house during his wife's declining days, but who does not lay all the fault on the lady (Jay, Memoirs of Winter, 1809, p. 80). She died on 9 Aug. 1768, and eight months after her death Whitefield writes (11 March 1769), ‘I feel the loss of my right hand daily.’ They had one child, John, born at Hoxton on 4 Oct. 1743, baptised publicly at the Moorfields tabernacle, buried at Gloucester on 8 Feb. 1744 (Register of St. Mary de Crypt).
Within a week after his marriage Whitefield started on a missionary tour in the west. At Gloucester and Painswick he preached in parish churches, after long exclusion. From London he embarked for Scotland on 26 May 1742, reaching Edinburgh on 3 June. His second visit to Scotland stimulated the famous revival at Cambuslang, Lanarkshire, just begun by William m'Culloch (1692–1771), the parish clergyman. The penitents were seized with hysteria and convulsion (Robe, Faithful Narrative, 1742; reprinted 1840), phenomena denounced by seceders as renewing the excesses of the Camisards (Fisher, Review, 1742). Correspondence with Wesley was resumed in October, and the personal relations of the two leaders were henceforth cordial. Whitefield was back in London on 6 Nov. He presided at the first conference of Calvinistic methodists held at Watford, near Caerphilly (Hughes, Life of H. Harris, 1892, p. 223), on 5 Jan. 1743, preceding Wesley's conference by a year and a half. It consisted of four clergymen, including Daniel Rowlands [q. v.], and ten laymen, including Harris, Humphreys, and Cennick, the latter two having deserted Wesley for Whitefield. At the second conference (6 April) Whitefield was ‘chosen, if in England, to be always moderator,’ Harris to be moderator in his absence (Gospel Magazine, 1771, p. 69; Hughes, p. 240). At a later conference in the same year it was agreed ‘not to separate from the established church’ (Works, ii. 38). Five years afterwards Whitefield admits in a letter to Wesley (1 Sept. 1748) that he must leave to others the formation of ‘societies,’ and give himself to general preaching (ib. ii. 169).
