Eliza Gould, Southmolton, to Benjamin Flower, Bridge Street, Cambridge, Tuesday, 19 May 1795.                                           

Southmolton   May 19 1795

Dear Sir

   As my last paper has not yet come to hand, which I should have rec’d yesterday morning, I have been rather uneasy, lest you might have enclos’d in it an answer to mine, dated I think the 27th of March.  Your acknowledgement of it together with your promise sometime since of writing again, has given me some reason to suspect that the letter has been miscarried or intercepted.

   As you have heretofore found the newspaper a safe mode of conveyance, you might probably have adopted it now, & perhaps it has been supposed at this time, to undergo an examination—the paper has many times come irregularly to hand, which I did not notice thinking the cause might originate at any other post office than Molton tho I could not but wonder that one of the two papers always came—that which I send to Northmolton was irregularly received about a fortnight since.

   The person who keeps the post office here is strongly leagued with my adversaries, & would I doubt not, take any undue measure to gratify their invidious curiosity—this I have reason to suppose—the last letter which I wrote you, he took particular notice of, & remarkd on the size and height—as few of the Moltonians are strangers to the name of Mr Flower—he observed particularly to whom it was address’d—soon after this I wrote to Lord Fortescue, on the subject of his interference for which (in order to vindicate my conduct) I felt myself oblig’d to address him.  I formd no other than what I thought a reasonable wish, & desired he would candidly investigate the matter, & inform me, why he had taken those active (& I might have added tho I did not) arbitrary measures against me; but he has not condescended to return any answer, wisely considering for his own sake, & that of his adherents that to be explicit in this instance, would tend more fully to convict them & himself.  In consequence of my writing his Lordship a variety of conjectures have been form’d—& some surmise, that I was tempted to act in this manner, through the persuasion of my abettors, one of whom perhaps they consider you. However in regard to the suppression of the paper &c I shall suspend my judgment, untill I hear from you, & in order to act with more certainty, I shall put out of their power to retain this, having an opportunity of sending to Honiton to morrow, I shall desire a friend I have there, to put it in the office.  In order to elude any unwarrantable curiosity here, (& on the receipt of this you will better know whether I have a reason for acting this cautiously) I shall be glad when you favor me with an answer, if you will address Mr Feltham  Rich’d Northcote Esqr, Honiton, Devon—by your marking the Letter in the corner thus X, he will know it to be mine, & forward it accordingly—you might (not knowing the general character of the people here) wonder at my precaution.  I would not wrong them—but after the many mean actions they have had recourse to, (& very many have I detected) I find the necessity of being strictly on my guard.  I would have sent you the copy of my Letter to Lord Fortescue, but time will not permit—& I am really ashamed to send you a letter so replete with interlineations &c I have written in haste, & it did not occur to me that I ought to write you on this subject till the moment of my addressing you.

   I have been at Tiverton lately, it looks very gay, I think, & appears to me wonderfully improved; some streets especially.   I pass’d a day with your dear Friend & mine, Mrs Dennys her prisoner now no longer, yet I could not but recollect the state [of] uncertainty to which I was once reduced there. Mr Hogg was of the party.  Mrs D appeared in high good humour, & altogether I pass’d an agreeable day—they are making Ashley a pretty place, by raising the roof a story higher, & adding a wing to the building, she means I believe chiefly to reside there in the summer.  Duryard is advertised for sale—& I am told that Mr Dennys & Mr Hogg, mean to build a manufactory, on their own account somewhere near Bolham—the Dennys’s are all in deep mourning for old Mrs Gould, of Trencherloo (Mrs Barings mother). Miss Dennys is much altered for the better, she is grown fat & handsome, & has acquired that steadiness & pleasing manner, which agreeably surprized me.  Belfield is yet at home, & still under the direction of the old Lady of the Bedchamber, Mrs Betty, & more is the pity, for he is a beautiful boy, & of a charming disposition—tho a [illegible] child, thro her over indulgence, in the Road to [illegible] she acts the part of sub Governor (or I ought to said sub [illegible] his lessons, repetitions &c. & helps him to [illegible] as usual.  Denny has left Hackney & is with Mr Coleridge at Ottery, tho I hear he is soon to assist in the counting House, which is since the fire removed to Mr Hoggs—& the old one, converted into a play room for the children.  I was twice at Tidcombe, or I might say Liberty Hall, without speaking seditiously. What an Honor to Society & himself, is Mr Lardner, & how worthy the appellation of a truly good Man—would that more in this persecuting world were of this happy description.  Mrs Lardner looks & smiles good-nature, & her manner unaffected & engaging.  Tidcombe appears to me the center of peace & Happiness—they wish’d me to have staid some time there, & desired I would make it my Home when I visited that neighbourhood again.  I mean to go to Tiverton &c before I leave Devonshire.  Mr Q— spoke much of Mr Flower, for whom he expresd a sincere regard—he askd me when I would in his name say, that he hop’d you would peruse & reference carefully, before you inserted—for that he often was anxious for you—I believe those were merely words.  What do you think of our Irish plan, I believed I asked you in my last—my father wishes to settle in Dublin, he prefers it to any other part of Ireland, because there he has some connection. I shall go from hence at midsummer, have deferd it till that time thinking that the public affairs of Ireland might be in some degree adjusted. I shall write my friends in Tiverton & the neighborhood before I leave England—this I have promised to do.

   Mr Martn Dunsford & his brother are going to build a mill at Bampton, on Mr Heathfields plan—in order I hear to throw into some line of Trade, Mr George Dunsfords sons, & [illegible] of late Mr Besly—do you ever hear any thing of Mr Salter whether he is pleased with his change or not.  I have been trying to recollect whether I can think of anything respecting your Tiverton friends particularly interesting, or worth sending so far as Cambridge but nothing occurs—& I subscribe myself abruptly 

                                             Your sincere Friend

                                                         Eliza Gould

Wednesday Morng

*the post is in but no paper come           

Text: 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. 11-16.  On the back page of the letter Flower has written, “Gould May 29, 95,” which is the date he received the letter. 

Gould is referencing at times both Flower’s reputation as editor of the Cambridge and his former role as an employee of the Tiverton firm of Smale and Dennys from 1785 to 1791. The Dennyses were the family in whose home in Tiverton Flower lived when he worked for Dennys and for whom Eliza served as a governess, 1792-94, Nicholas Dennys (1752-1840) came to Exeter from London in 1772 to work in the woolen trade, eventually joining with William Smale to form the firm of Smale and Dennys. In 1778 Dennys married Lucy Lardner (1753-1849) of Wandsworth, Surrey, daughter of William Lardner, surgeon; she was the sister of the James Lardner mentioned in the above letter.  In 1778 the Dennyses purchased the Ashley estate, near Tiverton, where their five children were born: Nicholas (1781-1868); Lucy (b. 1782); Belfield (b. 1783); Frances (b. 1787); and Lardner (1791-1864) (Burke 201). Both Smale and Dennys were Dissenters, attending the Steps (Independent) Meeting House, where Flower worshiped during his time in Tiverton.  Ashley, the Dennys’s home, lay on the outskirts of Tiverton; it was once part of Ashley Park, a 1600-acre preserve dating back to the reign of Henry VIII. The house, unfortunately, collapsed in late 1794 (Thompson, Journal 361), which explains the recent building projects mentioned by Eliza. John Gabriel Stedman (1744-97) also attended the Steps Meeting. His Journal records numerous meetings with Dennys, Smale, and Flower, all of whom participated in local efforts for Parliamentary reform during the 1780s and early 1790s (see Dunsford 255-58; Thompson, Journal 298, 304, 307, 313, 333, 337, 386, and 397). In 1791 Dennys joined with Thomas Heathfield (a prominent mill-owner in Sheffield), Smale, and James Lardner to build a cotton mill in Tiverton (Thompson, Journal 336).  Smale died on 4 August 1792, not long after the opening of the Tiverton mill.  In 1798 Dennys joined with Heathfield, Richard Lardner, Henry Dunsford and several others in creating a new business called Heathfield, Dennys and Co.   Three years later Nicholas Dennys retired, the business now becoming Heathfield, Lardner and Company (Harding 1.202).  The fate of the proposed business venture between Dennys and Hogg, mentioned above, is unknown.  Nicholas Dennys was still listed in 1805 as a “manufacturer of woollen goods” in Tiverton (Holden’s [1805]: 2.276), but not long afterward he experienced severe financial setbacks. In February 1809, he and his family left Tiverton for Teignmouth to join James Lardner, who had already moved there.  Nicholas Dennys died at Teignmouth in 1840. Concerning the Dennys' children, Lucy Dennys would have been thirteen at the time of the above letter.  She married the Rev. Richard Lane in February 1800 at St. Peter’s Church, Tiverton (see Cambridge Intelligencer, 1 March 1800). Belfield Dennys was eleven years of age at the time of the above letter; he attended Blundell’s School in Tiverton from 22 October 1790 to 19 October 1792.  He re-entered on 15 May 1793, and completed his studies there on 29 August 1795 (Fisher, Register 32, 36). The eldest son, Nicholas, was fifteen at the time of the letter.  He too attended Blundell’s School in Tiverton from 14 February 1787 to 19 October 1792, after which he attended Newcombe’s Academy in Hackney, London, where George Coleridge (1764-1828), the elder brother of the poet and writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge, taught between 1784 and 1794 before returning to the family home in Ottery St. Mary as Chaplain Priest and Headmaster of the same grammar school at which his father had served. Apparently, Nicholas was now attending Coleridge's school at Ottery (Engell 33, 100).  Nicholas eventually settled in London, living first at Savage Gardens, Trinity Square, and later at Cambridge Terrace, Regent’s Park. See Fisher, Register 27; Burke 201.

Numerous other individuals from Tiverton and the surrounding area are mentioned in the above letter, all known to both Eliza and Flower. John Hogg was a Devon banker.  Formerly, he had been a Presbyterian (Unitarian) minister, first at Sidmouth (1759-71) and later at the Mint Meeting in Exeter (1772-89); he also served as a tutor at the Exeter Academy (Murch 402; Register of the Births).  Hogg edited Nathaniel Lardner’s posthumous work, The History of the Heretics of the Two First Centuries (1780). He appears on several occasions in Stedman’s Journal, but Stanbury Thompson sometimes confuses the elder Hogg with his son, Joseph, a merchant (see Thompson, Journal 306, 342).  

The Mrs. Gould mentioned above was the wife of William D.  Gould.   Their only son died without issue in 1788.  Their daughter, Margaret, married Charles Baring of Courtland, Exmouth.  Upon Mrs. Gould’s death in 1795, her grandson, William Baring, assumed the name of Gould and continued the family’s residence at Lew Trenchard, a large estate on the edge of Dartmoor (“Gould Family”).  Baring-Gould married Diana Amelia Sabine, and their grandson was the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1923), for many years rector of the parish of Lew Trenchard and author of the popular hymn, “Onward, Christian Soldiers”  (“Gould Family”).  Most likely Eliza was related to these Goulds.

James Lardner, Esq. lived at Tidcombe, located about a mile from Tiverton.  His brother, Richard, resided in Peter Street, Tiverton (UBD 4.619).  James Lardner left Tiverton for Teignmouth sometime in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Richard went bankrupt in 1809, but remained in Tiverton. William Quartley lived at Stallenge Thorn. He and his wife were considerably older than Eliza, and both had died by 1810, for an obituary notice in the Gentleman’s Magazine for that year relates that “At Wellington, universally and sincerely regretted by her relations and acquaintances, aged 83, Grace, relict of the late William Quartley, esq. of Stallenge Thorn, Devon” (2.661). Of their eleven children, Henry (1754-1838) matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1770, earning a B.A. in 1773 and an M.A. from Queen’s College in 1778, serving as a rector in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, and Northamptonshire until his death in 1838 (Foster 3.1167).  Henry’s son, William (1792-1859), after a brief career in the military, matriculated at St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge, in 1818, and, like his father, became a clergyman, serving as the Vicar of Keynsham, Somerset, 1825-48, and Rector of Washfield, Devon, 1857-59 (Venn 5.226).  

Martin Dunsford (1744-1807), author of Historical memoirs of the town and parish of Tiverton, in the County of Devon (1790), and his brother, George (d. 1822) were woolen merchants in Tiverton.  They came from a Devonshire family rich in the traditions of religious and political Dissent, primarily among the Particular Baptists. According to his obituary, George Dunsford suffered “many domestic afflictions and severe pecuniary losses in the latter years of his life, which greatly reduced his circumstances” and most likely that of his sons (“Dunsford” 245). Martin Dunsford did not escape the effects of the decline in woolen manufacturing either, becoming bankrupt in 1802 (Cambridge Intelligencer, 16 October 1802).

Francis Besly was a sergemaker and freeman of Tiverton (UBD 4.619). William Salter, of Tiverton was a “printer and perfumer” (UBD 4.620).   In 1795-96 he served as the Tiverton agent for Flower’s Intelligencer. Like Flower and his other Tiverton friends, Salter was also a political reformer (Thompson, Journal 332).