Benjamin Flower at Cambridge to Eliza Flower at Mr. Gurney’s, Keene’s Row, Walworth, near London, 16 July 1801.             

St Eliza’s Day July 16—Thursday 2 oclock

   I awoke this morning at half past five, and till near seven lay thinking every minute of my Eliza, reckoning the days since we parted, that the balance was now turned, and that it was not so long as last Saturday, that I should meet her again; your letter however, will I fear make me begin a much longer reckoning.  The matter appears, as I suspected, that you would indeed be very much hurried.  I have turned over the circumstances in your letter, and would recommend you by all means to prolong your stay 2 or 3 days in London, in which case you will immediately give my Brother Richard a line.  As to my setting out on Wednesday, it would besides the usual inconvenience, be additionally so on account of the Assizes which do not begin till Tuesday Morn (as the Judge does not come till Monday evening, & goes to Church next morning) and seldom concludes till Wednesday Evening.  Wednesday it is probable will be equally a day of calling.  If I keep to my first plan, I should be at home on Tuesday evening.  Few if any persons who wish to see me will have left the Town at that time: but you cannot leave town before Saturday.  I know what a hurry you will be in, do not therefore my love attempt it.  Stay with your friends till Tuesday or Wednesday next, you will then get comfortably thro’.  If you meet with proper civility at Hackney you may then pay another visit.  As to any person hinting at “you being indifferent to home,” I think no one can be so very stupid as to forbear smiling at such nonsense. I need not say how I want you home, but as you are in London, consult your case, your health your comfort, and I will be reconciled to another week’s absence; hoping that my affair’s will be such in future that we need not be separated another fortnight during this short life.  If you do not leave London on Saturday, I will not hurry you to write by return of Post, but then I shall expect a longer letter than your last, for me to feast on, on my road to Waterbeach on Sunday morning. If I do not therefore hear from you by Return, I shall conclude you have taken that advice, which my Judgment at least, pronounces, (tho’ the heart cannot help occasionally dissenting) that you do not return to Cambridge next week.

   This morning’s Post brought me Five Advts [&] a [illegible] Post office order from a Yorkshire man whose paper [was] stopped, desiring to have it sent again.  I forgot to mention in its place yesterday, that mentioning to Randall about Ross of Carmarthen, he advised me by all means to employ legal measures: he took his direction, intended writing to him last night, and mentioning the day he should be at Bristol, when if nothing was heard from him he would farther proceed.  I shall get thro’ decently this week in cash matters, even if nothing further comes in to morrow.  

   On looking over my Day book I find I had not posted two articles of Pauls account amounting to Seven pounds 10s. I have this day sent him the account with some samples of paper he wrote for.  I have just now receiv’d a note from Jennings, who says “he has met two of the Trustees, who with him are resolved not to act with Mr Audly, but begging me not to think of declining.” They intend coming to Cambridge to morrow.

   What my Brother has told you concerning the Scarcity of wheat, compared with what you & I have been in the habit of hearing, and that from persons we supposed well informed, puzzles me.  I know not what to believe.  I shall be hard put to it for remarks to morrow.  No Eliza by me to give me a hint to encourage me, or to correct for me.  That unfounded fool the Emperor Alexander!  He appears to have given our ministers every thing they asked!  and to have yielded that point which his Predecessor never yet yielded, and which Old Kate, his grandmother, declared she never would. This is the man who was to act on her principles!  I shall say nothing about the negotiations to morrow, but my faith is not by any means equal to that of the Londoners.  Mary has had the head ach to day, & is now in one of her low moods.  She waits your farther directions about the women.

   You observe my Dearest Love by my date, that this day two years you paid me my first visit in Newgate: yes—at the same hour in which you was conversing with me there, have I been conversing with you at a distance. What an introduction was that day to a new volume of our lives, if I may speak a little profess­ionally.  What a number of pages have we since turned over, and how different from all which preceeded them.  The sensations of this day have been of a mingled kind, but we must summon up gratitude to our God to reign and triumph over the rest. We have enjoyed a rich portion of that species of happiness we both had imagined in Theory, but which we both had resigned, I believe I may say, all thoughts of experiencing.  That God who has been so good to us in exceeding our expectations & even wishes, surely demands our encreasing trust and confidence, and we will look forward with confidence.  I cannot indeed hide my Soul from my Eliza any more when she is absent than when present.  The loss of her Company tho’ only for a few days, gives every room in my house a cloudy appearance, and the question what my soul will be in the event of the last separation will intrude itself: but let me practise or try to practise at least what I enforce to others. Reason and Religion demand this: it is a privilege equally with a duty.  How long will it be e’re my own dearest Eliza returns to her home, to the heart of her Ben—Only 10 days at farthest.  How long will the interval be in even the longest separation.  Not so long as even ten days compared with Eternity. We can make the comparison in the former case, that life be as long as possible, the comparison is easy; but in the latter we cannot know when we have said the separation is momentary but the reunion will be eternal; we can go together.  Oh what a religion is Christianity. It is our rich portion my love, we will live on it & we will die on it.

   I am almost sorry my paper will not let me indulge farther on this subject.  Farewell my Dr Love for the present.  With kind remembrance [illegible] are & to all Friends   I remain

                                             your  B. Flower

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould, 1794-1808 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2008),  pp. 241-45 (a more annotated text than that which appears on this site). The above letter was written on a portion of another letter that someone (probably Flower) had torn off.  The original letter fragment, written by Flower to an unknown correspondent (undated), concerned the activities of John Audley and the fledgling Dissenting congregation at Waterbeach and reads as follows:

… there was since an alteration in the case at Waterbeach and he did not by any means consider what he then said as binding, and that he told Mr Jennings so about a fortnight since.” Here was a little difference concerning what he then said to Jennings but I soon put an end to the trifling alteration by asking Mr Audley what he would be responsible for?  After a few silly remarks not worth repeating, he said for Ten Pounds, perhaps more if he approved of the whole of the plan.  Upon which I thus said, as I had joined him in the trust hoping he (who could purchase all the Trust­ees, except Mr Hollick) would bear his share of responsibility, or at least fulfil the promise of raising Twenty Pounds-I certainly would not act any longer.  A sparsing sentence or two took place on both sides and we parted.  Jennings declared to me he would not act with Audley, but he wished to see the other Trustees, hoping they would all be of a mind.  Audley call’d on me this morning. Audley leaves Cambridge on Saturday (so he says) for two months.  I suppose he will be puzzled how to act ...

Rev. Jennings may have been a relation of Thomas Jennings of Waterbeach, the individual named in the above letter and the fragment. Both men may also have been relations of Mrs. Jennings. Thomas Jennings was instrumental, along with Flower and Audley, in forming the Dissenting congregation in Waterbeach, which opened a chapel there in March 1803 (CI 12 May 1798, 2 November 1799, 12 March 1803, 3 April 1803). Also mentioned is either William Hollick or Ebenezer Hollick, Jr. 

Between 1800 and 1804, Flower was a frequent lay preacher for the small Dissenting congreg­ations at Waterbeach and Fulbourn. He frequently preached in other locations around Cambridge, including St. Ives and Safron Walden (see letters 53, 68, and 85); in his house in Bridge-street, which was licensed for “for religious worship of persons professing the Protestant religion” on 20 April 1800 (letter 47); for Robert Aspland on the Isle of Wight; at Henham, Essex; and once in the Gurneys’s home in London. See Church Book: St. Andrew’s Street 148; Smith 10; “Statistical View” 504.

Another reference is to John Ross (1729?-1807) of Carmarthen, Wales, who printed numerous Welsh books during his lifetime, including three editions of the Welsh Bible known as “Peter Williams’s Bible.”