In August 1804, Flower borrowed £200 from Sarah Fuller, his wealthy cousin, for which he signed a note payable in twelve months with interest. In October 1804 (as letter 101 records), he borrowed another £300, of which no acknowledgment was given or asked for by his cousin.  For both these loans, he says, she made no effort to receive payment from him.  In August 1810, he borrowed £2000 from her to invest in some copper and lead mines.  In October of that year, he visited his cousin, her health steadily declining, to enquire about the status of the money he had borrowed.  She absolved him of the first £500, and he made out two notes for the other £2000 payable in twelve and twenty-four months.  He sent her the two notes for £1000 each on 21 October 1810, reminding her about discharging him from the original note of £200.  Unfortunately, Sarah Fuller died on 29 October 1810.  When Flower attended the funeral, Ebenezer Fuller Maitland, Miss Fuller’s executor, approached him about the loans from Miss Fuller. Maitland was the only son of Ebenezer Maitland, Sr., a prominent London Dissenter and a director of the Bank of England. The younger Maitland, soon to become M.P. for Wallingford, had married William Fuller’s granddaughter, whose mother had predeceased Mr. Fuller. After Sarah Fuller’s death, the younger Maitland became the sole executor of the Fuller estate, thereby gaining a fortune of some £600,000. He also stood to gain a huge sum upon the death of his own father, making him one of the wealthiest men in England.  Maitland soon wrote to Flower, asking for an accounting of his loans.  When Maitland visited Flower in Harlow to discuss repayment of the loans, Flower told him about the conversations and correspondence he had had with Miss Fuller concerning the loans.  The next week, however, Maitland informed Flower that he expected payment on the two notes of £1000 and the one note of £200 immediately (Maitland was at that time willing to forego the other note for £300).  Flower, shocked at Maitland’s demands, replied that he would send him a note for the £2000 he owed by bond through his bankers, Messrs. Chatteris and Co., payable when it came due.  Maitland then met later with Flower and suggested that he still owed the  £500 from the first two notes, but that he would waive that amount as a gift if Flower would make good on the £2000 immediately.  Flower left him as security a £1000 life insurance policy, but considered that the original terms of his agreement with Sarah Fuller (that the notes would not be due for one year and two years) still stood.  Maitland responded that he had intended to confer a favor on Flower, not receive one; if the notes were not paid immediately, he demanded, he would expect payment for the £500 as well, for he would be out the interest on the entire amount for two years otherwise. 

Flower did not consider Maitland’s offer a “favor,” and he was insulted by these demands.  He realized that the only reason Maitland offered to forego payment on the £500 was the expectation of receiving interest on the £2000 loan, and when Maitland realized those notes were not made out in that manner, he reneged on his original statement and demanded immediate payment of the £2000 or payment of the £2500 in the course of two years.  Flower wrote to Maitland on 7 June 1812, repeating once again his conversations with Sarah Fuller and his understanding of what passed between himself and Maitland in their meetings on this issue.  Maitland responded on 9 June and informed Flower that he would not enforce the immediate payment on the £2000 (which he couldn’t do anyway), but insisted on receiving immediate payment of the £500, the amount Flower considered to have been waived by Miss Fuller as a gift. 

Maitland was furious with Flower and vowed to take him to court, but Flower was convinced that the records would show that Sarah Fuller had indeed absolved him of the £500 originally borrowed.  To Flower, Maitland was driven solely by greed, “striving to deprive me of what our deceased relative positively ... gave me before her death” (Cautionary Hints 29).  Maitland continued to imply to others that Flower was refusing to pay his lawful debts, thus injuring his character.  Flower was forced to defend himself, and turned to John Wilks of Hoxton Square (Flower’s attorney in his libel suit against the Claytons in 1808).  Flower preferred arbitration rather than a trial, requesting that Ebenezer Maitland, Sr., serve as arbitrator.  The elder Maitland, however, rejected Flower’s request and concurred with his son, warning Flower that any threat to publish the proceedings would not stop the Maitlands from demanding that he pay his debts.  Flower responded to this injustice in his usual fashion:  “I have no hesitation as to the path of duty; and as I conceive my own character concerned, it is my determination” to publish the proceedings.  “You, Sir,” Flower writes to the younger Maitland,

must be completely ignorant of my character, if you for a moment imagine that any threat will deter me from doing what conscience dictates.  In such a case I fear no human being.  I have nothing but truth to support my assertions: much of my evidence will be drawn from your son’s letters: by these it will be fully demonstrated, that there would have been no difference between us, as to the settlement of the account, had I not hesitated to comply with an illegal demand, and which both parties knew could not be enforced.  If these considerations, with the reflections they naturally sugg­est, present nothing more than a “bugbear,” or should they prove a stimulus to oppressive proceedings, I fear all other considerations would be suggested in vain; and that the prospect of death, judgment and eternity would likewise be deemed only a “bugbear.” (Cautionary Hints 34)  

Maitland promptly dropped the first suit, only to file a new one, charging Flower with damages to Miss Fuller’s estate to the amount of £1000. Maitland proposed dropping the charges if Flower would pay the £200 he owed, a demand Flower refused; he agreed to pay only what he owed when it was due.  After consulting with his lawyers, Flower realized that the costs of a trial might be uncertain, and so he agreed to pay the £200 plus interest to Maitland.  He was not home in December 1812 when the £1000 note was presented, and Maitland sent him a letter informing him that he expected immediate payment or he would take him to court.  With great difficulty and inconvenience, Flower made arrangements for the payment of the money,

in order that the feverish thirst after money which so habitually preys on the soul of the honourable gentleman, might admit of some trifling allay, a very few days sooner than otherwise would have been the case.  All Mr. Maitland’s demands including interest to the day of payment, were in the course of a week from his last threat, discharged; and, not without hesit­ation on the part of my adversary, and difficulty on the part of my solicitor, I procured a legal discharge from all pecuniary demands. (Cautionary Hints 40)

He concludes, “Such is the treatment I have received from Mr. Ebenezer Fuller Maitland, M.P. for Wallingford, the husband of my cousin Mrs. Fuller Maitland.  To such treatment my readers, together with every one acquainted with the particulars, will find little difficulty in applying the most suitable and appropriate epithets which language can supply” (41). No matter what the world thinks of such money-grubbers, Flower considered them “fools.” Expressing sentiments similar to those Dickens would use to condemn Ebenezer Scrooge, Flower writes:

On what principles a christian, possessing more property than he can   rationally expend himself, or than he judges necessary for the real welfare of those he intends shall inherit it, can justify his habitually adding to that property, I know not.  Let every man who cannot answer the question—In saving money what end have I in view,—satisfactorily to God and to his conscience, read what divine inspiration has declared respecting the very great difficulty of a rich man, and the absolute impossibility of a covetous man entering into the kingdom of God; let him ponder the parable of the talents, and the account of the last judgment, and seriously conclude—That on the due improvement of his wealth, on the distribution of that part which in the fair, rational, and scriptural sense of the word, may be termed superfluous, depends his qualification for heaven.  Could these most important considerations penetrate the hearts of rich, strict professors of christianity, they would be constrained to alter their habitual conduct, or like another description of unhappy beings—believe and tremble! ... When we perceive the dispositions of many who share the largest of this world’s treasures, and the sad neglect or misimprovement of their talents, is it possible, in the hour of calm reflection, to envy such worldlings?  And when we further reflect on the adverse circumstances which many of the best of the human race are doomed to pass through, must not our conviction be complete of the important truths:—That the present life is only the first stage of our existence; that wealth, in itself considered, is in the eye of God, of the utmost insignificance:—that worldly prosperity may in the end prove one of the most awful judgments of heaven, and worldly adversity one of its choicest favours;—and that all temporal events are only to be considered of importance as they may tend to prepare us for eternity.  Let the man therefore who professes to conduct himself on the principles of reason, or rather, the man whose reason is rectified and improved by the principles of christianity, whose life is hid with Christ in God, dismiss all envy when looking up to others, and all anxiety when surveying himself.  Let him be careful in the path of duty and integrity to secure peace of conscience and the divine approbation. (Cautionary Hints 46-48)

Text: Benjamin Flower, Cautionary Hints to Testators, and Reflections ... suggested by the ... Conduct of E. F. Maitland, ... with a Correspondence between that ... Gentleman and B. F. [Benjamin Flower]...  (Harlow: B. Flower, 1813).