Mordecai Andrews III

Mordecai Andrews III (1780-1821) is a forgotten figure today, nor was he famous in his own day. His mother, Elizabeth Gamiel Rutt (b. 1756), came from a large family of London Calvinistic Dissenters. As a young girl, she attended a female academy in Northampton, the sister school to a male academy run by John Collett Ryland (1723-92), the well-known Baptist minister and educator. A number of Rutts from London, both male and female, attended these schools in the 1760s and 1770s.[10] By 1778, Elizabeth Rutt had returned to London, living near Red Cow Lane in Mile End.[11] Shortly thereafter she married the Rev. Mordecai Andrews II (d. 1799), who had also attended Ryland’s academy in the early 1760s.[12]  Their union resulted in nine children, the eldest of which was Mordecai III, who later became a close friend of Crabb Robinson. In his letters to William Pattisson in 1798, Robinson places Andrews in connection with John Towill Rutt (1760-1841), a prominent London Unitarian whose wife was William Pattisson’s first cousin. Pattisson had introduced Robinson to J. T. Rutt in 1796, shortly after Robinson’s arrival in London (Sadler 1.20).[13]  This linking of Mordecai Andrews and Rutt is not surprising given the that Elizabeth Rutt Andrews was J. T. Rutt's sister.

Andrews first appears in the life wrtings of Henry Crabb Robinson in July 1798, in a letter to William Pattisson. Robinson writes: “At Royston I was seriously sorry at not seeing Mr Rutt more particularly on account of the assigned Cause—poor Mordecai is a worthy fellow And I hope to hear better News” (Corfield and Evans 156).  This same “poor Mordecai” appears later that year in another letter from Robinson to Pattisson, in which he writes, “I was not at Mr Rutts to day—Mordicai is better he speaks gratefully of your Letter & intends answering it” (Corfield and Evans 166). Several years later, in June 1811, Andrews makes his first appearance in Crabb Robinson's diary, attending, along with Robinson and some other individuals, a dinner party at the home of Charles and Mary Lamb. In this instance we learn that his surname is Andrews (Morley, Books 1.36) and that he later became “Sergeant Andrews” (Sadler 1.216). Later that year, on 18 November, Robinson writes a review of one of Coleridge’s lectures while visiting this same individual (Morley, Books 1.51).  Mordecai Andrews is present when Robinson becomes a member of the Middle Temple in May 1813; the two men breakfast together on 15 June 1815; they travel together to Paris in 1818, accompanied by a Miss Nash; and, in his final appearance in Robinson's diary, Andrews shares an uneventful coach ride from Bury to London with Robinson in October of 1821 (Sadler 1.217; 1.321; 1.377). For more on the Andrews and Rutts, see Whelan, “Henry Crabb Robinson and the Culture of Dissent.”