In London the Evangelicals at first were very weak. The Methodists were well provided with buildings. Whitefield had his tabernacle at Moorfields and his chapel in Tottenham Court Road. Wesley had the Foundry and many chapels in other quarters of the city. But for long the Evangelicals had not a single church. Their leader was William Romaine, a grave, scholarly man, who, while in his first curacy, had brought out a revised edition of Calasio's Hebrew Lexicon, a work of enormous labour, which was subscribed for by all the crowned heads of Europe. On the strength of this he had come to London looking for honours and promotion, "a very, very vain young man" — so he described his condition — "who knew almost everything but himself, and met with many disappointments to his pride, till the Lord was pleased to let him see the plague of his own heart." Here in some way that is not recorded the Revival touched him, and he gave the best possible proof of his conversion by taking his stand openly with the despised Evangelicals, though he knew that this meant the renunciation of all his hopes of preferment. His only regular appointment at this time (1749) was an afternoon Lectureship at St. Dunstan's, the famous old church in Fleet Street, where Tyndale had proclaimed the doctrines of the Reformation. Here for nine years he preached without interruption; but in 1758 the vicar died, and Alexander Jacob, his successor, strongly disapproved of the lecturers doctrine. The churchwardens also had a grievance. "Great crowds of people," they declared, "not parishioners, have been accustomed to assemble about the church every Sunday afternoon more than an hour before the opening of the doors, when Mr. Romaine was expected to preach, and to fill the aisles and pews as soon as the doors were opened, preventing the parishioners getting to their seats, and this crowd for two years past has been continually increasing." So the vicar and wardens determined to make an attempt to silence him. On consulting the founder's will they discovered that the money had been left for Lectures to be given while the courts were sitting; so on the first Sunday of the Long Vacation they met Romaine at the door, and informed him that he could not preach. On the first Sunday in the Michaelmas term a fresh surprise awaited him: he found the pulpit door locked, the vicar sitting in the pulpit, and the beadle sitting on the stairs, and he was told that the time of his Lecture had been changed to seven in the evening. His friends then took the case before the King's Bench, asking for a mandamus to restore the Lecture to its usual hour, and to allow it to continue all the year round, but the court decided that the vicar had acted within his legal rights. The churchwardens then declined to light or warm the church, or to open the doors a minute before the hour of the service, and preacher and congregation had to wait in the street, till the wooden giants on the tower had beaten out the hour of seven, and then grope their way cautiously to their seats. This was the only Evangelical service in any of the city churches, and very solemn and impressive it must have been, the crowded congregation sitting or standing in perfect darkness, while Romaine preached by the light of a taper, which he held in his hand. This continued for several years, till at last the Bishop interfered, and compelled the churchwardens to make proper arrangements. For forty-six years Romaine held this lectureship, and St. Dunstan's became "the rallying-point for Evangelicalism in London; but though he was now acknowledged to be the leading preacher in the city — people came from the country "to see Garrick act and hear Romaine preach" — though his manner was very grave and decorous, and his character above reproach, yet for seventeen years he failed to obtain any other permanent appointment. For a short time he was morning preacher at St. George's, Hanover Square, then at St. Olave's, Southwark, then at St. Bartholomew-the-Great, but in each case the prejudice against his teaching and against the "ragged, unsavoury multitude" who flocked to hear him was so strong that he could not stay. To attract the poor to church was an unpardonable offence. Friends urged him to give up the struggle; he was offered important churches in America, but he would not go. "Here my Master fixed me," he said, "and here I must stay. I am alone in London, and, while He keeps me there, I dare not move." At last, when he was fifty-two (1764), his patience was rewarded. The parishioners of St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe with St. Anne, Blackfriars, had the right of electing their rector, and, though he declined to canvass, the choice fell upon him. Here he worked for the last thirty years of his life, holding his own Sunday services in the morning and afternoon, and still walking to St. Dunstan's for the evening lecture. Meanwhile his three best-known books — The Life of Faith (1763), The Walk of Faith (1771), and The Triumph of Faith (1795) — were influencing thoughtful men in all parts of the country; and this influence was due quite as much to his life as his words. "He lived," wrote his first biographer, "more with God than with men, and to know his real history, or the best part of it, it would be requisite to know what passed between God and his soul." He died in 1795, and was succeeded by his curate, William Goode, who held the living till his death in 1816.