JOHN WESLEY
John Wesley visited Cornwall 32 times between 1743 and 1789, and frequently came to Penzance, though his main work in the district was among the fishermen at St. Ives and the miners at St. Just. In their early visits he and his brother Charles met with furious opposition from the magistrate, Walter Borlase, whose resentment of travelling preachers working in his parishes was strengthened by his concern as a magistrate lest the Wesleys and their followers were disguised Jacobite spies. Extracts from the Journals of the Wesleys show the extent of this opposition:
John Wesley, 10 April 1744:
I was enquiring how Dr. Borlase, a person of unquestioned sense and caring, could speak evil of this way after he had seen a change in the most abandoned of his parishioners; but I was satisfied when Jonathan Reeves informed me that, on the doctor's asking, him who had been the better for his preaching, and his replying, "The man before you (John Daniel) for one, who never before knew any work of God upon his soul," the doctor answered "Get along: you are a parcel of mad, crazy-headed follows": and taking, him by the shoulders fairly thrust him to the door.
Charles Wesley, 24 July 1744:
I preached near to Penzance, to the little flock encompassed by ravening wolves. Their minister rages above measure against this new sect, who are spread throughout his four livings. His Reverend brethren follow his example. The grossest lies which are brought to them they swallow without examination, and retail the following Sunday. One of the Society went lately to the Worshipful and Reverend Dr. Borlase for justice against a rioter, who had broke open his house and stole his goods. The Doctor's answer was, "Thou conceited fellow, art thou too turned religious ? They may burn thy house if they will: thou shalt have no justice." With these words he drove him from the judgement-seat.
In fairness to Walter Borlase, it should be remembered that this was a time of Jacobite invasions and plots, and that to a diligent and alarmed magistrate the possibility of these strange itinerant preachers being Jacobite spies must have seemed real enough. In 1745 the Young Pretender was rumoured to be hiding at Boskenna in St. Buryan, which Borlase searched at the invitation of its owner, and in the previous year an astonished Wesley had been told that some Morvah men had reported seeing him in France in company, with the Pretender.
Later extracts from John Wesley's journal show how his visits to Penzance, at first tumultuous, gradually became peaceful:
12 July 1747: 1 rode to Newlyn ... to a rising ground near the seashore where was a smooth white sand to stand on. An immense multitude of people was gathered together . . . Before I had ended my prayer some poor wretches of Penzance began cursing and swearing and thrusting the people off the bank ... I was thrown into the midst of them, when one of Newlyn, a bitter opposer till then, turned about and swore, "None shall meddle with the man: I will lose my life first." Many others were of his mind, so I ... finished my sermon without interruption.
17 September 1760: I preached on the cliff near Penzance, where no one now gives an uncivil word.
Wesley's last visits to Penzance were in September 1787, when he arrived unexpectedly by sea from Guernsey and "we appeared to our friends here as men risen from the dead," and on 24 August 1789, four days before leaving Cornwall for the last time, when on a rainy afternoon he preached in the new preaching house, "Considerably the largest and, in many respects, far the best, in Cornwall."
Following Wesley's death in 1791, the process, begun in his lifetime, whereby his followers became a dissenting sect instead of a group within the Church of England, was taken to competion, with lasting results for the character and landscape of Cornwall. Perhaps the best tribute to his work in Penzance was that paid by Dr. Paris in 1816:
The Methodists in Western Cornwall are very numerous, and of a respectable description; and the change which they have effected in the morals of the miners, is really incredible, and the habits of sobriety and order which they have happily introduced, have tended as much to the mining interests, as to the quiet and comfort of the neighbourhood.

Source: The History of the Town & Borough of Penzance, by P.A.S. Pool.

William Boase, 1755-1813, became a Wesleyan and used to preach at Redruth after church hours in a building that had been a potato store. John Wesley sometimes stayed with William Boase, when he came to Redruth.