Francis Augustus Cox, Clipston, to John Sutcliff, Olney, 20 February 1806.

My very dear Sir

         I am extremely sorry after having written you word of my coming Mar. 5 to put it off—but this I hope you will have the goodness to excuse as it is only for one week—I have received a letter from Cambridge inviting me to supply there the first & second Sabbaths in March. I intend therefore (God willing) to be with you on Wednesday the 12.th of March & you may depend upon it that no engagement shall alter this.

                           I rem.n

                                             Y.rs very affectionately

                                                               F A Cox

Clipstone

Feb. 20. 1806

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), p. 131 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 375, fol. 473a, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. On the back page is written in Sutcliff’s hand: “Rec. Feb. 21. 1806.” Francis Augustus Cox (1783-1853), after two years at Clipston (1804–1806), spent two years at St. Andrew’s Street in Cambridge as Robert Hall’s successor (this letter denotes the beginning of that connection). He would later pastor the Baptist church in Mare Street, Hackney, for more than forty years, and operate a boarding school there as well.