Eliza Gould, the Gurneys, Walworth, to Benjamin Flower, Newgate, Monday, 23 September 1799.

My dear Benjamin

   When I scribbled to you last evening those few unconnected lines I had read your very excellent letter too hastily to make myself fully acquainted with its animating its interesting contents my packet made up.  I read and admired—admired and read again & unwearingly pursuing the delightful subject on which you had written   I found my spirits elated & my views brighten’d, my whole soul fill’d with gratitude to Heaven for its choice gift, your friendship and affection, poured out in silence the grateful tribute of praise.

   I find myself continually improving in every respect.  I had a very good night—& to day have ate a tolerable dinner—I will give you but a few lines more as I yet find that my attention if confined for a while to any thing like employment fatigues me—if I might I would endeavour to fill a sheet but you will take the will for the deed I know, & kindly give me credit untill I have the power to pay you.  I find my hand tremble after writing a line or two—my head is some how confused—you will perceive from the manner in which I write that all is not as it should be & indeed I have done my best both yesterday & to day.  I never exper­ienced so much bodily weakness in any illness in my life as in the present.  I told you my father could not write a letter that would bear your perusal epistolary composition is not his shining talent.  He converses well—at least my partiality tells me so—& his partiality & paternal affection has informd you of some particulars which he might as well have suffer’d you to have discovered   I am anxious to hear that your cold is better  the messenger who will bring you this has also some patent water gruel—which we beg you will take going to Bed—remembering to wrap yourself in warm cloathing—I meant to have said your Head.

   I must finish instantly or Betsey Gurney will again tell me that I put her pat­ience & philosophy to the Test—but let her say what she will—I am determined to add that I am your faithful & affectionate

                                             Eliza

Walworth

five o clock

I am glad you did not deprive Mrs Kirby of her game—my friends here are kind to me beyond my power to express they procure me every thing that will contribute to my recovery or my comfort  I hope you will pay them an early visit on your liberation—I now wish for some weather that I might have the pleasure of visiting you—adieu.

If you have any gruel left put it into a pan it will turn sour if kept in the Bottle.

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. 126-27.

Eliza's father, John Gould, was a tanner and for many years was a deacon and trustee in the Baptist meeting in Bampton, Devon, the village in which Eliza was born. John Gould came to Bampton in 1768, most likely from South Molton, where a number of Goulds lived, including at least one brother, George, a watchmaker. According to the Bampton Baptist Church Book, John Gould was baptized and joined the church in September 1768 (Records of the Baptist Church at Bampton, 1690-1911, Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, fol. 183).  He immediately took an active role in the affairs of the church, often serving as a messenger to church members who were facing discipline by the church. On 10 June 1773, Gould was set apart as a deacon (Records, fol. 194).  He would later become a trustee of the church as well as the congregation’s hymn leader (Records, fol. 213).  The church, organized in 1690, built a chapel in Luke Street in the 1720s; that chapel was destroyed by fire in the late 1850s, but rebuilt on the same spot.  The church is no longer in existence; the chapel still stands, however, but was converted into two residential apartments in the 1960s.  Four months after joining the church in Bampton, John Gould married Jane Spurway, a member of a prominent family in the church and community. Besides Eliza, the eldest child, the Goulds had four other children: two daughters, Grace and Mary, and two sons, Thomas and John, all of whom appear in the Flower Correspondence. Eliza received her early education in a school conducted by the local Baptist minister’s wife, Mrs. Symonds. Unfortunately, Mr. Gould’s bankruptcy and subsequent imprisonment in 1791, aggravated by his excommunication from the Baptist church in Bampton for misappropriating church funds, put an end to Eliza’s leisurely pursuit of the pleasures of the mind. Responsible now for supporting her mother and siblings, Eliza found employment in the home of Nicholas Dennys, the same Tiverton woolen manufacturer for whom Flower had worked from 1785 to 1791. By 1795, Eliza had worked diligently to pay back what her father owed and gain his freedom. Eliza's favorite sister was Mary, who would later live with her during most of her time in Cambridge and her first year in Harlow.

Mr. Gould's financial fraud concerning the Bampton congregation is recorded in some detail in the Church Book in early 1791:

From some very distressing things taking place in our affairs as a church the records have not been rigorously kept But after being served as a church for some years by that worthy Minister of the gospel The Revd Mr Wm Clark who faithfully preached and administered the ordinances to us from August 1st 1787 to Jany 12th 1791.  The grand reason of Mr Clarks leaving was on account of the shameful conduct of Mr John Gould who being a Deacon and acting Trustee it appeared had not acted an honest part in the discharge of his office—His own affairs either through neglectful or fraudulent conduct were become so bad that occasioned his creditors to break the statute against him and so he became a Bankrupt—During the time of Mr Gould[s] management of the Church affairs which was about 15 years it was supposed by an examination into the Books the Interest had sunk nearly £150 upon Mr Goulds failure and according to his own account he stood in debt to the church £16 and had pawned one of the £50 sale deeds for £30 and had borrowed £22 more and gave a note of hand as for the Churches use—This we judge to be the only reason of Mr Clarks leaving us which to our great grief he did and accepted a call from the Church at Exeter.   (Records, fol. 215)

On 20 February 1791, the Church Book further notes, “At a Church Meeting all the Members present took into consideration the conduct of our Br Gould and his wife and appearing upon examination that they had brought a great reproach and a publick scandall upon the profession they had made—by living on the property of others—and also had embezzled the property of the Church—it was thought right for the honour of the gospel to excommunicate them which was done by the consent of all in a very solemn manner” (Records, fol. 216). 

Mrs. Symonds’s husband, Noah Delahay Symonds, pastored the Baptist Church at Bampton from 1777 to 1781, between the ministries of Samuel Rowles (1768-76) and William Clarke (1787-91). Symonds trained for the ministry at Bristol Baptist College in the early to mid-1770s and was ordained at Bampton in 1777. During his tenure at the church, the Church Book (recorded in Symonds’s hand) reveals that he was frequently at odds with certain members of the congregation, once for allowing some Presbyterians (Unitarians) to worship in the church and take communion there. He was asked to leave the church in 1781 because his preaching was not “agreeable” (Records, fol. 203), which may suggest that he had adopted some heterodox positions, possibly the Arianism that Eliza Gould and her family would later profess.