Gilbert Wakefield, [Hackney], to unidentified correspondent, 12 January 1791.  

Hackney Jan 12.th 1791.

My dear Sir

         Your Pacquet & Letter were very grateful to me.  Be so good as to thank M.r [Underhill?] for his Present by M.r Hibbert; & tell him that nothing that reminds me of him can be but most acceptable to me.  I must trouble you also to thank D.r Edwards very kindly for his Memorial, w.h I think I shall read with one of my Classes; &, tho’ a little out of Date, be so good as to desire his Acceptance of my 2.nd Silva [Silva Critica: Sive In Auctores Sacros Profanosque Commentarius Philologus Pars Secunda (1790)], w.h you will oblige me much by getting from Merrill for him.  I expect much Pleasure & Information from his Notes, tho’ I was sorry to see any English among them, because it diminishes their Use to Foreigners.  I see at only glancing on the Notes many Books w.h I have never been able to procure.

         Dyer, I hope, will go to M.r Estlins.  He only craves a little time to correct & prepare his Book.  Like a Blunderer, he directed his L. [Letter] to the wrong place, so that we have not yet got M.r Estlin’s Answer.  This said friend of ours is really an eccellent [sic] fellow: I admire  him much: I have taken great pains to persuade him to go to Bristol: for, I am sure no Place of the Kind will ever be found half so eligible for him. – If Dyer sh.d not go, I shall be at loss to recommend such a person as you seem to wish; but I hope for no opportunity of doing this. – When I have read D.r Edwards Paper I shall not be backward at giving my full opinion. – Well, you must excuse brevity, tho’, if time w.d permit, I sh.d not want Invitation to tell you more at large with that real Affection & Esteem  I am   your’s ever

                                                                                 Gilbert Wakefield

I can make Nothing at all of Dyer.  He says that he can’t determine till he sees you: then I tell him he ought to see you immediately; & give a decisive answer to M.r Estlin at any Rate because he has another Person, it seems, whom he will take in this Case: for a Letter is come

Text: NLW 13566C – Letters by and about Ministers: 1775-1895, fol. 3, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. Though the letter speaks of Geoge Dyer’s proposed work with J. P. Estlin, minister at the Presbyterian [Unitarian] meeting in Lewin's Mead, Bristol, Wakefield's correspondent is someone associated with the Unitarians in Liverpool.  John Edwards (1768-1808) (mentioned above) was the minister at the Gateacre Unitarian chapel frm 1787 to 1791. He had previously studied at Daventry Academy in the 1780s. He succeeded Joseph Priestley at the New Meeting in Birmingham in 1791 and published a number of controversial pamphlets. The work mentioned above is most likely Edwards’s Letters to the British Nation (1791) concerning the riots in Birmingham aimed at Priestley and the Dissenters.