"I believe it is God's will that I should marry", George Whitefield wrote to a friend in 1740.[50] But he was concerned: "I pray God that I may not have a wife till I can live as though I had none." That ambivalence—believing God willed a wife, yet wanting to live as if without one—brought Whitefield a disappointing love life and a largely unhappy marriage.[50]
On 14 November 1741 Whitefield married Elizabeth (née Gwynne), a widow previously known as Elizabeth James.[51] After their 1744–1748 stay in America, she never accompanied him on his travels. Whitefield reflected that "none in America could bear her". His wife believed that she had been "but a load and burden" to him.[52] In 1743 after four miscarriages, Elizabeth bore the couple's only child, a son. The baby died at four months old.[50] Twenty-five years later, Elizabeth died of a fever on 9 August 1768 and was buried in a vault at the Tottenham Court Road Chapel. At the end of the 19th century the Chapel needed restoration and all those interred there, except Augustus Toplady, were moved to Chingford Mount cemetery in north London; her grave is unmarked in its new location.[4][53]
Cornelius Winter, who for a time lived with the Whitefields, observed of Whitefield, "He was not happy in his wife." And, "He did not intentionally make his wife unhappy. He always preserved great decency and decorum in his conduct towards her. Her death set his mind much at liberty."[52][54] After Elizabeth's death, however, Whitfield said, “I feel the loss of my right hand daily.”[55]
