Thomas Harmer, Wattisfield, near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, to Josiah Thompson, London, 7 March 1774.

To the Revd Mr Thompson, London.

Revd & Dr Sr

          With this I return your M.S. and am very much obligd to you for the Pleasure & Instruction it has afforded me. I have as you desired ventured to make two or three alterations or additions, in the Counties of Norfolk & Suffolk, & in them only have I taken that Liberty. 

          I showed the Book to a young Minister of this County who was here last week, & who took much pleasure in finding out his Fellow Pupils in their several stations. He, or rather a Relation of his, complained a little that the Names of the Ministers that concurred in the late Application to Parliament are not placed in Alphabetical Order, which rendered his Search less easy.

          This young Minister was also a little hurt at finding Mr Belsham’s Name among the Students at Daventry. He says he is now a Sub-Tutor in that Academy, & was so at the time when these enquiries are supposed to have been made, 1772, 1773. He was, I think he said, first Classical Tutor, & since Mathematical.

          There are very considerable differences, in the Names of divers places, I find, from the vulgar Orthography: whether this is owing to the Neglect of those that gave you the Lists, or the Refinements of Criticism, I will not pretend to decide. It would be improper, in a peculiar manner, for me to take any notice of these matters, since the Orthography of the Village in which I myself live is so much unsettled, having found it written six or seven different ways in books & inscriptions. I will not therefore point out any thing of this sort, excepting one which may serve as a specimen of what I mean. In Middlesex I find there are two Congregations said to be at Branford, which, I suppose, is the town I have hitherto allways seen written Brentford. As these papers are with great Propriety, designed to answer the purposes of a kind of Record, perhaps you will think this circumstance not alltogether unworthy of Attention.

          There are some other things which appear to me rather in the light of oversights, with which however your Correspondents are the people that are chargeable. Thus I find in Worcestershire, among the Ministers that concurred in the Application to Parliament John or Noah Jones & Risden Darracott. Mr Darracott’s name is struck out. If that was proper I should imagine Mr Jones’s also should have been expunged, since they seem both to stand on the same footing, being both mentioned in Staffordshire, as related to Walsall.

          I hope you will receive this safe, & that the M.S. will receive no hurt in it’s Return to you. I expect to send it by a Youth belonging to this Assembly this afternoon; but if I should be disappointed as to that I will send it by another method the end of this week, lest you should be disappointed as to the sending it the time you proposed into Shropshire.

          My Son desires his Compliments, & with great Thanks for this Favour, I am 

                                             Revd & Dr Sr

                                                               Yr affectionate Brother

                                                               & faithfull humble Servt

                                                                                                   Thomas Harmer

Watisfield, (near Bury St Edmds)

Suffolk, March. 7. 1774.

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 17-19 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 370, fol. 57, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Thompson’s chief work, “The State of the Dissenting Interest in the several Counties of England and Wales . . . The First Part, c. 1774,” was never published (the manuscript is now at Dr. Williams’s Library, London). In this work, Thompson acquired information on over 600 Dissenting congregations in England and Wales at the time of the application to Parliament in 1772 for the relief of Dissenting ministers. As the above letter reveals, Harmer had just reviewed Thompson’s MS., most likely in preparation for Harmer’s own work on the history of Dissenters in Norfolk and Suffolk. Others mentioned here are Thomas Belsham, Noah Jones, and Richard Darracott.