Benjamin Flower, Cambridge, to Eliza Gould, Dodbrook, near Kingsbridge, Devonshire, Sunday, 20 October 1799.

                                                         Cambridge Oct. 20.  1799

   You perceive My Dearest Eliza, by the plainest prima facie evidence, that I have embraced the very first opportunity of attending to the hint in your letter of the 14th, of taking a larger sheet of paper.  I have not contented myself with a common Folio, but have begun what you in one of your letters to a friend call a “Patagonian sheet.” Well—I shall serve you as I at times have former friends.  I know not with what I shall fill my sheet, and yet I guess I shall not leave any trackless waste of paper, or cause you to complain of my not properly filling it.  Shall I confess to you, your request alluded to gave me pleasure.  I have lately written to you so many letters; you are so complete an epistolary writer, that I have had my fears that my poor brains would have grown threadbare, and that you would not have received that pleasure I so much wished you to receive.  I will now only add that you cannot receive greater pleasure in reading any letter of mine whether long or short, than I do in writing it.  I converse with you frankly, without the least study, tell you what comes uppermost—my heart speaks to you, if I may be allowed the phrase,—that consideration and that only stamps a value on what I write in your eyes, or shall I add in your heart.

   I wrote you a note on the evening of the 18th, on my road to Cambridge.  Yesterday there was no post to London.  To day, my quondam friend Hall[1] being just returned, I shall only attend public worship in the afternoon at Mr Gardners. I devote my Sabbath morning to you; and altho’ your last letter (Oct 17) just received, is not with respect to your health what I quite wished or expected, yet I have so much to be thankful for, that affection to you and Gratitude to my God, will be my most predominant sensations, while writing this lett­er—that is too poor too un[re]fined language—let me rather say during the remainder of my days—yea to Eternity!

   I will now, my Dearest Love, go back to the time when I wrote my last letter from Newgate, and give you a brief journal of the manner in which I have since employed myself.  Passing over the common visits of the 16th, I devoted the evening of that day to the memory of my departed young friend, and after meditating for an hour or two on that day three years, I employed the still and solemn hour of midnight in answering the affecting letter you read from Mrs Copland. I told her in the commencement—that the date of my letter, my past life—my imprisonment—more especially the latter part of it—my prospects—altogether raised such a variety of mingled sensations in my bosom, that I scarcely knew where to begin, and how to express myself. One half of my letter contained an account of the recent most interesting occurrence of my life, and, of consequence, some account of you.  I then told her, that no event no engagement of the tenderest affections could ever render me insensible to or even unmindful of the memory of my departed young friend. That I had frequently suffered my imagination to roam, on what he might have been, had Providence seen fit to spare him.   How very useful he would have been to me in business particularly during my confinement—the interest he would have taken in my happiness—the pleasure he would have experienced in my little family—the satisfaction you and I should both have had in finishing his mind, during the last period of his apprenticeship—but to stop what I knew would prove a fresh bleeding wound in the heart of his mother—I recalled to her mind that resignation to the will of God—that holy triumph expressed in her letter while her son lay in an adjoining apartment a breathless corpse, when she was rejoiced that God had accepted one of her children & taken him to himself.  I endeavoured to persuade her, that altho’ the spirits of the just, seeing all things in God, or as God sees them, could not be grieved even at our griefs, they might probably have their joy enhanced by our means.  If Joy was in heaven when one sinner repented, what must be the joy of a departed saint, on beholding in those dear to him on earth, improving in holiness, in conformity to the will of God—in a similarity to the dear relative first gone to heaven, and in daily preparation to follow him—but if I go on I shall write you almost the whole letter.  The outline is sufficient.

   The next morning—Thursday I began packing up, but happening to go into the Parlour about noon, you may judge of my surprise when Friend Kirby thus addressed me—“We are glad of your company as long as you are pleased to stay, but we thought you would have been off before, as your time expired at 12 last night.” Would you think it, Eliza, that Newgate (notwithstanding the good usage I had received), was so desirable a place, that I had nearly staid a whole day longer than I need have done.  So it was; in talking with Kirby a day or two before I blunder’d as to the day he mentioned.  Kirby added well—“You shall stay & dine with us, I have a niece coming who says she saw you come in, and she is resolved to see you go out.” I hurried my packing (my brother William’s servant assisted me) as fast as possible, finished about three—dined with Kirbys, and left Newgate about four.  Tom Flight caught me just before I went, and made me promise to spend the evening, and sleep at his house.  Kirby’s last proof of friendship was his very moderate charge for my apartment &c—Ten Guineas only.  I indeed grudged the fine, but he had nothing to [do] with it.   What a contrast is his moderation to that abominable extortion at the Kingsbench, where Johnson paid 150£—for a room for six months, (the same term as mine) and Wakefield 70£ for about six weeks!  Mr & Mrs K— both desired to be kindly remembered to you said they had your promise to come and see them on your return to London—that I might do as I would & leave you to come alone if I pleased!  Notwithstanding the place, I could not help on parting with the family feel as I usually do when parting from friends.

   I walked to Mr Creak’s, drank tea, wrote my paragraphs for my next day’s paper, was in due time for the Post, sat chatting till near nine, then walked to Holborn.  I never thought, altho’ it was a most dreadfully foggy rainy night, of a hackney coach, but contented myself with my great coat and a handkerchief about my neck.  At T. Flight’s I found a party of friends with whom I sat till 12 oclock.  T. F— gave your health in a bumper the very first toast, and we all enjoyed ourselves.  I slept well, but the morning appeared so dark, that I lay longer than I intended: but perceiving it to grow very little lighter, I arose, and found it was a quarter past seven.  The truth is, the room was close to a brick wall, and admitted but a scanty portion of light.  I now found the difference, and that I must not expect to have such a fine light apartment as I had taken for the past six months.  I walked to Walworth, where I had engaged to be about 8, altho’ I was half an hour after I found I was quite in time.  In addition to the family, Mr & Mrs John Gurney, little Maria, and Miss Hawes were present. We had a charming breakfast together, and only wanted your additional company.  Knowing I should have a variety of inquiries made about you, I put the two last letters I had received in my pocket.  I must tell you, we all united in the remark, that you always made the best of your case, and all expressed our fears of your exerting yourself too much by either talking, writing, or walking.  We read in your letter of the 15th.  “The accounts I can now send of my health, are good in the Superlative degree.”   Then said Mr J. G. comes the qualifying clauses, about fever & fatigue.  I remarked that you put me in mind of Cloth manufacturers.  Their mark used to be Fine Cloth: then made coarse cloth but put the same words.  They then put Superfine: that would not do—at last came Best Superfine.  Altho’ I admitted your case was good comparatively speaking, and carrying on the comparison Superlatively good, yet I wished it to be good in the best Superlative degree, that is that you could walk, ride, talk and write without fever & fatigue, and from your letter to day, I must add without “blisters” or any other plaisters.  God grant it may speedily be soon.  Sweet little Maria, took great notice of me, and we soon got quite intimate.  She appeared so good natured, and so pleased in my arms, that, as I said, “I could not yet discern any original sin in her.” I have indeed been fond of children of all sizes: but I had not tossed an infant in my arms for several months, and I will not say how it was, but I will add so it was, that I felt a sensation at my heart I never felt before, and when I resigned the innocent to the arms of her mother, I thought I must have retired from the room.

   About half past ten, the Walworth Coach being full, I set off on foot, but a Camberwell coach, soon overtook me and conveyed me to Gracechurch Street.  The day being fine, I just left my great Coat at Mr Creak’s, and there not being any Hackney stage ready to set off, I walked to Hackney, sat an hour and drank a glass of wine with my mother.  I found her very well for her years, very inquisitive about you, she entered into my views—and made me promise that one of your earliest visits on your return should be to her.

   I have a droll story to tell you bye & bye, about a plot that was laid by a relative of mine, to dissuade me truly from marrying!!!  It was to have been put in execution by my poor shattered, but worthy friend, Davidson, the afternoon he called.  I did not know of it till my Brother Richard afterwards wrote me about it, advising me to avoid any altercation, as it was not worth my while having any.  He thought the plot was not quite ripe, and wrote [illegible] me—but lo! and behold!—after my poor friend had been ten minutes in [illegible], he found himself a convert and—“Saul was among the Prophets!” be sure I laughed heartily on receiving the letter, and you will laugh still more than you now do, when I tell you the whole story.

   From my mother’s I went [a] few doors further, and sat half an hour, and took a basin of soup with my old friend Mrs Shepherd.  She in talking about you, said that I must mind and die about the same time as she does, for that her husband was determined to have you for his friend.  I have promised her a call when we see my mother.  I then walked (as I saw no stage) back to London, called on my brother in Cannon Street, packed up what things I wished to take, ordered the servant to take them in due time to the Inn [in] Gracechurch Street, and to come to me at Mr Creak’s when the coach called.  Then after dispatching two or three errands, I dined at Cornhill: about a quarter before 4, the servant came, I got into the coach, and slept half the way (then was no company very attractive) to Ware.  There we stopped a quarter of an hour, and I wrote you a note. Re-entering the coach, I slept almost the whole of the rest of the way, which you need not wonder at as I had walked upwards of 8 miles in the morning, a pretty good stretch for my legs after 6 months confinement.  At half past twelve I got to Cambridge[13] and met with a hearty welcome home.  We sat up chatting till Three, when I went to bed and slept till past 8.  Yesterday, as you may suppose, was a day of seeing, and being seen, of how d’ye do’s and we are glad to see you’s—of a fine parcel of inquiries about you.  In the evening I gave a supper to my servants of the printing office, but being a little fatigued I left them soon after ten, but sat up with Miss Jennings &c till half past eleven. 

   All my acquaintance at London and Cambridge were in fear for me, lest the foggy wet weather (yesterday was a dreadful frowning day, and I was out half of it), and so much walking and riding would almost lay me up with cold, fatigue &c  but thro’ mercy, I have been much better than I could have expected, and I am this morning as perfectly well, as at any period I ever remember in my whole life.  When, my Dearest friend, will your health be in such a best superlative degree!   Well—I hope you will, in order that you may let your tongue run as fast as poss­ible to me, get better lungs, and I assure you, I will set about trying every safe means to get better ears, that you may not too much exert your voice.  To morrow night I will begin, and will persevere for a month, with the simple matter of milk and honey prescribed by the Dutch girl in a crisis of Animal Magnetism.  My ears indeed, like many other things now assuming to some importance, have hitherto given me but little concern.

   You know not how I feel thro’ my inmost soul your affectionate language, but there is one proof of your affection which I fear you will not afford me.  You know what all your friends, them at Walworth in particular have urged respecting your exerting yourself beyond your strength.   When I read to Miss Jennings that part of your letter in which you say—“This is the third letter I have written since six oclock, & I have still another to write to night”—she said—“I am sure Miss Gould has injured her constitution by writing so much, and nothing will tend more to retard her recovery, especially in a complaint of the lungs than leaning and writing.”  I cannot persuade myself that writing four letters supposing them to be the length of that to me, in so short a space of time—will not injure you.  Let me therefore conjure you my Dearest Eliza, and I do it with tears in my eyes—let me entreat you by that affection you bear me, that you will in your next give me this one more additional proof of it—That you carefully watch and guard against any exertion that may tend to hurt you.  If you must write to your friends, and more especially if you must write three or four letters of an evening, I will not only give up my claim to long letters, but I will be content—yea I will be thankful if you write me a page or a half page only.  You know it is not my strong affection only—I reiterate the language of all your friends who have been in the habits of converse with you.  If you do not assure me of your settled, constant attention on this point, I shall indeed despair of your complete recovery.  I shall expect every other letter, after first informing me of your being better—of your complaint again returning—of your being obliged to consult one Physician after another.  Already has your journey which we all thought would have taken up little more than one week been prolonged to three.  I am sure your friends will excuse your writing at all, when I excuse your writing long letters to me.  Pray do my Love remove my uneasiness, and give rest to the heart of your most sincere & affecte

                                             B Flower

I am going to address a few friends to night in our parlour.  The subject I have fixed on is Romans 8th Chapter Verses 35-39th.

Text: Flower Correspondence, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; for an annotated edition of this letter and the complete correspondence of Eliza Gould and Benjamin Flower, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould, 1794-1808 (Aberystywth: National Library of Wales, 2008), pp. 159-65. 

Robert Hall, Flower’s pastor at the Baptist church in St. Andrew’s Street, Cambridge (see Introduction, xxiv), had just returned from a visit to Bristol and Wales, where he stayed with his friend, James Phillips, at that time the Independent minister at Haverford-West. On this trip, Hall preached a memorable sermon on infidelity for John Prior Estlin’s Unitarian congregation at Lewin’s Mead, Bristol. Hall preached the same sermon in Cambridge in November 1799, and in early 1800 published Modern Infidelity Considered with Respect to its Influence on Xociety: in a Sermon preached at the Baptist Meeting, Cambridge, a sermon that garnered considerable praise, not only from Dissenters, but from numerous church and state officials, the same individuals Flower considered guilty of persecuting reformers like himself.  Glowing reviews appeared in several leading periodicals, and references to the sermon found their way into Kett's Elements of General Knowledge, Dr. Parr's Spital Sermon, James Mackintosh’s Lectures, and William Belsham's History of Great Britain. “From that time Mr. Hall's reputation was placed upon an eminence,” Olinthus Gregory wrote in his Memoir of Hall (Works  of Robert Hall, vol. 6, p. 64).  Modern Infidelity went through thirteen editions by 1834.   It was this sermon more than anything else that  brought about the sharp division between Hall and Flower that was never mended the remainder of their lives. Flower attacked Hall’s “apostasy” in the Introduction to his The Proceedings of the House of Lords in the case of Benjamin Flower, printer of the Cambridge Intelligencer, for a supposed libel on the Bishop of Llandaff: with prefatory remarks, and animadversion on the writings of the Bishop of Llandaff, the Rev. R. Ramsden ... and the Rev. Robert Hall ... (Cambridge: Printed by and for B. Flower, and sold by Crosby and Letterman [etc.], 1800):

What must we think when we behold a man, the son of a protestant dissenting minister, (who, for purity of principles, holiness of life, and simplicity of heart, might vie with the primitive christians) educated for the ministry at one of our most respectable dissenting seminaries, under the tuition of that firm friend to the civil and religious rights of men the late Dr. Evans, with the farther advantage of finishing his studies at one of our Scotch Universities, returning to his former seminary, with academical honours, and admitted to the office of assistant tutor, afterwards [succeeding a most distinguished champion of freedom and nonconformity (the late Mr. Robinson of Cambridge) where, in the exercise of his ministry, he obtained that popularity so justly due to his principles, talents, and eloquence,-appearing repeatedly in print as the manly, the firm, the strenuous defender of the French revolution, and opposer of corrupt establishments in the church, and of abuses in the state!-When we see such a man suddenly changing his principles, preaching and writing with the same ardour against his former sentiments, and that without formally recanting what he had before written, or producing the least evidence to prove his former sentiments erroneous:-If, when beholding such a phenomenon, we have not some solid, settled principles deeply rooted in our souls, there may be great danger of our becoming the disciples of Pyrrho, relinquishing the search of truth altogether, conceiving it to be a beautiful speculation, similar to the philosopher’s stone, much sought after, but never to be found!   (Proceedings 50-51)

Flower’s despair over the increasing number of “apostate” reformers found its way into his editorials as well: “Not only ministers of the established Church, but those who dissent from it, have flagrantly apostatized from their principles, and are floating down the general tide, unable to vindicate their conduct though persevering in their criminal course.  Character and consistency of conduct, now appear to be little expected, and less regarded ...” (Cambridge Intelligencer, 18 October 1800).  For more on Robinson, Hall, Flower and Modern Infidelity, see Timothy Whelan, “’I have confessed myself a devil’”: Crabb Robinson’s Confrontation with Robert Hall, 1798-1800,” Charles Lamb Bulletin, N.S. 121 (2003), 2-25. 

Isaac Gardner (1755-1821) was the Independent minister at Downing Street, Cambridge, 1789-1803. John Kirby had been Flower's guard during his time in Newgate, living in quarters provided by Kirby.  Thomas Flight, father of Bannister and John Flight, operated a china warehouse at 2 Bread Street.  By 1800 his business was listed as “Flight & Barr, Worcester China Warehouse,” and had relocated to 1 Coventry Street, Haymarket (Lowndes [1787]: 60; Kent’s [1800]: 69). Thomas Flight was a deacon in the Baptist congregation at Maze Pond for twenty-seven years, a frequent messenger of the church to the Particular Baptist Fund, and a member of the Protestant Dissenting Deputies. He died on 30 January 1800, shortly after Flower’s release. In his will he left £200 to the church for the relief of the poor (see Maze Pond Church Book, vol. 2. ff.118, 190, 192, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford). Joseph Johnson (1738-1809), a former Particular Baptist turned Unitarian, was the leading Dissenting bookseller and publisher in London during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.  In 1797 he was sentenced to nine months imprisonment and fined £50 for selling Gilbert Wakefield’s A Reply to Some Parts of the Bishop of Llandaff’s Address to the People of Great Britain (1798), a pamphlet for which Wakefield (1756-1801) was also charged with libel and sentenced to two years in the Dorchester goal; his pecuniary difficulties were greatly relieved by a fund of £5000 procured by his friends.  He was released on 29 May 1801, but died of typhus fever not long after his return to Hackney.    

Others mentioned are close friends of Flower and Gould and most were attendants at the Baptist meeting in Maze Pond: Joseph and Rebecca Gurney, Eliza Gurney, John and Maria Hawes Gurney and their infant daughter, Maria (1798-1824), and Harriet Hawes. James Davidson and Son were ropemakers at 27 Fish Street Hill, London, and most Baptists, for Davidson subscribed, as did Flower’s family, to John Collett Ryland’s Contemplations in 1778 and was also known to Robert Hall.