Benjamin Flower, Newgate, to Eliza Gould, Mr. Gurney’s, Keene’s Row, Walworth, Tuesday, 17 September 1799.

                                                         Newgate Sep. 17.  1799

                                                         Tuesday morng 11 o’clock

   Although I waited long, very long, for your Letter of Yesterday, My Dear Eliza, yet the moment I had run through it, I found myself so happy, that I forgot all my anxiety, and my heart beat with the most lively sensations of Grat­it­ude to God, and with the tenderest and most sincere affection to you.  I hope, before I finish this Letter, I shall receive the note promised me this morning, with the cheering account that your health and spirits are fast recovering. 

   My Brother and Sister from Hertford came as I expected about eleven yesterday Morning.  They directly inquired after you, and I informed them of your illness.  They proposed going to Walworth to see you, but after a little convers­ation, we all thought it best to wait till an answer was received to the note I had sent you.  My Brother soon went out about some business.  My Sister conversed about you; I offered to read her some of your letters, which she was very willing I should.  We got through, tho’ with several interruptions, those to Mr & Mrs Gurney.  She appeared much entertained and interested, and passed those incomiums  on the writer, which however were only common, as I have heard the same from every one to whom I have read them.

   Almost the whole of the day was taken up with company.  Miss Vowell, brought me a Volume of Dr Byrom’s poems.  If it will afford you any entertainment, (you may select some very entertaining and original pieces) I will send it you.  Two Ladies from Cambridgeshire—Mr Parnell, son of Sir John Parnell the late Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland, a gentleman with an excellent head, and, what is still better, an excellent heart, and two other University acquaintance. They are to breakfast with me to morrow:—An honest methodist parson, separated from the old Connection of Wesley’s—Old Dr Warner. Mr Joyce, brother to Joyce who lives with Lord Stanhope. He brought me a Letter from Liverpool, fraught with expressions of respect, and requesting my acceptance of a Draught for 89£.17s—as a token of esteem from a few friends to the cause for which I was confined, residing at the above Town. Old Warner wishing to meet my brother came to dinner, and in his droll manner, exclaimed “I did not know whether a jail bird had victuals enough, so I thought I had better bring some,” pulling out of his handkerchief, a good large piece of cold pig, and out of his pocket a bottle of rum.  My Brother and Sister as usual, had provided plenty, having brought with them, a large Pigeon pie, and an equally large Pear Pie. Our Table resembled the old English Hospitable Board.  My visitors tried to divert me,—settled a very clever plan—in which we were all concerned.  The Doctor is going into Wiltshire, but said he would mind and be back as soon as you returned from Devonshire, meet us at Hertford, and marry us without loss of time.  But notwithstanding, such a profitable morning, such good cheer, and friendly company, I was wandering after the expected, anxiously expected note from you.  I felt lead, or something very like it, on my heart; and I every now and then made apologies for leaving the room, pretended to get fresh plates &c &c, but it was only to walk up and down the stairs, and give a little vent to my feelings.

   It was six o’clock before I received your letter.  My fears were all dissipated, and my Brother, (who with my Sister were gone) returning with some message, witnessed my revived Spirits, when relating the principal part of the Contents of your Letter.  I employed my evening, in the necessary arrangement of the miscellaneous part of my paper for the present week, retired to rest, and slept well.

   Whatever pleasure I may expect at our next interview, and it will indeed be more exquisite than I have ever yet experienced, I earnestly intreat, you will in the most implicit manner, follow the advice given you, and not attempt to stir out, but at the time and in the manner, you are assured, it may be without the least injury to your health.  You must recollect, every cold you have lately had, has somewhat affected your lungs.  My Brother, who did not at all wonder at your illness, when he was informed of your being at the sessions at the Old Bailey last Friday, will tell you his mind on the Subject, for I can assure you he, with my Sister, appear much interested in our mutual happiness.  He has just called, and informs me, he, with my Sister, are about to give you a call.  You will therefore see them before you receive this.

   Had you not intended to remind me of “blots, blunders and scratches,” (and need enough) you would not have rested the matter on the plain prima facie evidence of your letter, which is against your assertion.  That letter you inform me was written on your pillows.  All I can say of it is, that altho’ it is not so perfectly correct as your Letters from the Desk, I wish nine out of ten of my letters which I write in health, and with the most care, were not more incorrect.  I wonder what sort of a letter I should write on my pillows!  I believe you and all this world beside, would be puzzled to make common sense of a single line of it.

   Your affectionate language, and pious, consolatory admonitions, so impress my heart, that I dare not attempt to describe what I now feel—I can only repeat the professions I have made and repeated.  They have I assure [you] been the genuine and warm dictates of a heart which with the greatest truth when I first addressed you, I declared was yours.  I will only add—That I hope my life, that every action of it will prove the Sincerity of my late and my present declaration.

                     Your most grateful and affectionate

                                 B Flower

I must have a little sympathy with you in everything.  I have a cold, with hoarseness upon me.  As I know not how it came, so I know not how it intends to go, but shall let it take its course.

P.S.  Miss Gurney will accept my best acknowledgments.  I hope to thank her, in this place, at Walworth, and at Cambridge.  I shall depend on a line, every morning, by the first post, from you, if awake, if not from your friend—from our friends.

12 oclock—Have this moment received your note.  Take care & do not talk, if it hurts yr lungs.   I expect to hear of you presently by my brother.  Shall depend on a note to morrow morng.

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. 110-113. 

Given Flower’s close relationships with so many London stationers, it is not surprising that Eliza Vowell, another Particular Baptist, would be among his friends.  John Vowell, Sr., along with his son, John, Jr., his son’s wife, Sarah, and their daughter, Eliza, were all stationers, first at Watling Street and then at 133 Leadenhall Street, 1745-1813. Vowell turned the business over to his son in 1773, but remained active in the Court of Stationers until his death in 1801 at the age of 94.   John Vowell, Jr., was deceased by 1792, for Sarah Vowell operated the firm alone from 1792-1800; William Weare eventually joined her, taking over the business in 1808.  By 1805 Vowell and Weare had become the primary stationers to the East India Company. The Vowells, like so many individuals in the Flower Correspondence, were Baptists, attending the church at Carter Lane, Southwark, under John Rippon, one of the leading Baptist ministers of his day.  Eliza’s father subscribed to the Bristol Education Society, the fund-raising arm of Bristol Baptist College, in 1774 (Account 25).  Miss Vowell joined Carter Lane on 7 April 1799 (Horsley-down and Carter Lane Church Book, 1719-1808, Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, n.p.).  A letter from her to the Rev. Samuel Pearce (1766-99), pastor of the Baptist church at Cannon Street in Birmingham, dated 20 April 1799, demonstrates her active involvement in Baptist affairs and the family business.  She was sending Pearce materials from Ebenezer Maitland, for many years a member of the Protestant Diss­enting Deputies. She recounts a recent conversation with Andrew Fuller (Baptist minister at Kettering and Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society), and then tells Pearce that on his next visit to London “no one in London shall give you a heartier welcome than Mother & self if you will favor us so abundantly as to grant us any of yr Company” (Pearce Family Letters, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford; click here to read the entire letter which resides on this site).  Unfortunately, Pearce’s health was deteriorating, and he would die later that year.  In 1800-01, Eliza Vowell subscribed to the Baptist Missionary Society; her mother joined her in 1804-05 (see BMS Periodical Accounts, vol. 2, p. 207; vol. 3, p. 136).  

John Warner (1736-1800) was a classical scholar and graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, from which he received a D.D. in 1773.  For many years he preached in his own chapel in Long Acre Street, London.  He was also rector at Hockcliffe and Chalgrave, Bedfordshire, as well as Stourton, Wiltshire.  He went to Paris in 1790 as chaplain to the English ambassador and became sympathetic to the ideas of the French Revolution.  In 1797 Alexander Kilham (1762-98) and several other Methodist preachers separated from the larger Methodist movement (the “Old Connexion”) and formed the Methodist New Connexion.  About 5000 joined the first year, all from the north of England, comprising some 66 societies, with Kilham appointed the first secretary. Warner joined the Kilhamites, for his political sympathies at that time were closely linked with Kilham’s. Flower was sympathetic to Kilham’s ecclesiastical politics, which were similar to those of traditional Dissenters, noting in his obituary for Kilham that he was “an active person in opposition to the old arbitrary system” (Cambridge Intelligencer, 29 December 1798). 

Joshua Joyce (1756-1816) was the younger brother of Jeremiah Joyce (1763-1816), a well-known Unitarian minister, teacher, and radical reformer.  After the death of his father in 1778, Joshua provided the means for Jeremiah to study at the newly formed Hackney College under the Rev. Hugh Worthington.  After completing his studies, Jeremiah tutored the sons of Earl Stanhope, living in the Earl’s household from 1790 to 1800.  He quickly adopted the views of the radical reformers, joining the Society for Constitutional Information and the London Corresponding Society.  On 4 May 1794, he was arrested at Stanhope’s home in Kent for “treasonable practices” and sent to the Tower in London, along with John Thelwall, Thomas Hardy, Horne Tooke, and several others. Joshua Joyce, along with Earl Stanhope and many other reformers, worked zealously for the freedom of his brother and the others who were charged with treason. Flower was friend to both Joyces, publishing editions of several of Jeremiah Joyce’s works as well as the latter’s edition of Thomas Fysshe Palmer’s A narrative of the sufferings of T. F. Palmer and W. Skirving, during a Voyage to New South Wales, 1794, on Board the Surprise Transport (1797).