Rowland Hill, [London], to John Rippon [London], undated [c. 1791].

   I thank you for you kind offer of assistance on Tuesday next but as I find I am at liberty to stop a day or two longer than I expected you will do me a much greater favor if you give me a sermon on that day sennight the 12th instant as I shall not have returned from Glostershire [sic] til the latter end of that week

   I do not lament the side you and I took at the Committee of the book society[iii]   I find matters have given universal disgust as we supposd woud be the case.   I am ashamd to see my name as chairman on that business   I shall be there on Wednesday morn tho I must afterwards leave town I am affraid we shall have warm work.  Mr Taylor[iv] by the rules of the society is actually ineligible well we must get thro the mistakes of others as well as we can

                           Yrs Sincerely

                                       R Hill

Sat Eve

By favor of Mrs Applegath

Text: MAM. PLP. 53.49.13, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Rowland Hill (1744-1823) was a popular evangelical minister at the Surrey Chapel, London, 1783-1823; Dan Taylor was a General Baptist minister at Mile End, London; Mrs. Applegath is most likely the Ann Lepard Applegath, mother of August Applegath, and a member of the Baptist meeting in Carter Lane. A Book Society was founded in London (primarily by dissenters) in 1750 for promoting religious knowledge among the poor. Among the ministers who preached annual sermons for the Society were Samuel Stennett (1755), Samuel Medley (1789), and John Rippon (1796 and 1803).  Baptists who served as stewards included John and Joseph Flight, Robert Keene, John Collett Ryland, James Davidson, Bannister Flight, Benjamin Tomkins, Samuel Beddome, Joseph Gutteridge, Henry Keene, William Lepard, John Pelly Lepard, John Hemming, Boswell Beddome, Henry Smithers, Joseph Wickenden, John Cowell, John Foster, Samuel Medley, Jr., and Benjamin Lepard.  For more on the Book Society, see John Rippon, A Discourse on the Origin and Progress of the Society for Promoting Religious Knowledge among the Poor (London, [1803?].