Samuel Greatheed, Newport Pagnell, to John Sutcliff, Olney, 6 December 1798.

Dear Brother,

  I transmit to you the Minutes of the Conference at [H?] in 1797, by desire of Mr Livius, who will be obliged to you for letting MrHorne have them as soon as you can, with directions to return them to Bedford by the earliest opportunity after he has read them.

  I think you may promise yourself much pleasure from the perusal. To see Good Men of various descriptions and from distant situations confessing and corresponding upon the foundation of their hope & the Source of their Comfort and communicating mutual advice and encouragement suited to their different Circumstances, affords some similitude of the Communion we hope fully to enjoy with them hereafter, when all Error being done away there shall be no hindrance to the completeness of our fellowship with Christ & all his people.

  The pleasure which these pious Correspondents express at what they have heard of the Missionary Society in England, and at all foreign Communications on the things of Christ, has led me to try at sketching such an Address from our Union as might afford them some Gratification. When I have got it into a little form I shall be glad to find an Opportunity of obtaining your Sentiments upon it, before proposing it to our next Committee Meeting.

  You have probably observed Brother Burder’s Advertisement of Village Tracts I have promised him some help, though my incessant application to the M.y Socys Business has prevented me as yet from taking my share. We shall be heartily glad of your Cooperation in the work; which is I think capable of being well adapted to do good.

  With this I send you Horne Tooke’s Book, which I am sorry that I forgot to do before, and can only plead in Excuse that my thoughts have been so much occupied upon one object as to exclude almost all others. I thank God that I have now got nearly through this business, before my strength was quite exhausted. My head was more afflicted by it than by any thing I have attempted. May the Lord render it useful to his Cause!

  I also return some of your books with many thanks. The others I beg leave to retain for the present. I expect, God willing, to be at Mr Hillyards next Lords day, and hope for the pleasure of seeing you before I come back. 

  Mrs G. joins in Xtian respects to Mrs S. with 

                   Yours affectionately in the lord             

                                                      S. Greatheed

6 Dec.r 98.

P.S. The Duff was in the Downs on Monday waiting for a wind. Matthew Wilks and Mr Fenn of Cornhill are gone with the Missionaries in her. Brookshank is gone to convey the Women & Children by land to Portsmouth from whence they are expected to sail almost immediately.  Br Haweis writes that [“]nothing can be [more] promising than the commencement of the voyage has been.”

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 94-96 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 37, fol. 54c, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. George Livius, Esq., of Bedford, was a member of Samuel Hillyard’s Independent congregation at the Old Meeting and a member of the committee of the Bedfordshire Union of Christians. Sutcliff preached at the 1797 meeting of the Union. See Universal British Directory, 2: 320; Evangelical Magazine 7 (1799): 216. Reference above to George Burder's Village Sermons; or ... Plain and Short Discourses on the Principal Doctrines of the Gospel; Intended for the Use of Families, Sunday Schools, or Companies Assembled for Religious Instruction in Country Villages (7 vols, 1798). Burder (1752-1832) was the Independent minister at Coventry, 1783-1803. Others mentioned above include Horne Tooke (1736-1812), an Anglican priest turned radical politician in the 1770s, was a founding member of the Constitutional Society in 1780, supporter of the French Revolution, and ardent advocate of political reform in Parliament in the 1780s and ’90s; Samuel Hillyard (1770-1839), minister at the Old Meeting at Bedford, 1790-1839, and one of the early leaders of the Bedford Sunday School Union and Bedfordshire Union of Christians; John Fenn, hosier at 78 Cornhill, London; Joseph Brooksbank (1762-1825), Independent minister at Haberdashers’ Hall, London, 1785-1825; and Thomas Haweis (1734-1820), Anglican evangelical who served as rector at All Saints, Aldwincle, Northamptonshire. There is also a reference to The Duff, a ship that was purchased by the London Missionary Society to transport missionaries overseas.