Eliza Flower at Mr. Joseph Gurney’s, Keene’s Row, Walworth, to Benjamin Flower, Bridge Street, Cambridge, undated [postmarked Wednesday, 15 July 1801].

   I have been prevented by the extreme wetness of the morning from going to Town and of course from receiving my dear Benjamin’s letter untill late.  I sent a note for it by the Walworth coachman and it is this moment brought me. I need not tell you my love of the delightful sensations its contents (so very affectionate and interesting) occasioned me because experience has convinced you of the congen­­iality of our feelings.

   I came hither yesterday about 4 oclock Harriet accompanied me she has been very ill indeed but is now so much better & wonderful to relate.  I slept at Doct Hawes’s on Monday night—I called thence on the morning of my coming to Town & left word at the door that I was going to Mrs Goodalls.  Harriet sent to me soon after to call & sit with her as she was in bed & could not come to me & who should let me in but her father—this naturally led me into the parlour where I did not intend to go & whilst I was up stairs Mrs Hawes came in & was very kind & civil & invited me to stay dinner.  Harriet pressed it & I stayed & they then requested me to sleep there which I did.  I yesterday called on Mrs Pearson did not see him she was just setting off for Nottingham  Mrs Fellows[1] being brought to bed of her eleventh son  the[n] called at Mr Lindseys they are gone into the Country  from thence went to North Street Red Lion Square[2] the paper they say has not been left there but directed to a lady in Great Millman Street with whom Torrie[3] lived about 2 years—she told me he had lodged with her then but being a dissipated young man she would not keep him any longer—& that he was now in chambers at Grays Inn—about a fortnight ago the postman who had a letter for him called to enquire as I had done & he told her there were many letters & papers laying for him in the dead letter Box and that by enquiring at the porters lodge in Grays Inn I could no doubt hear something of him as he came to Town for 3 years & a friend of hers saw in at the window of his chambers one day last week   this is all I can learn respecting him—from this place I called at Flights William [Flower] was in the country house  Flight was out  the former pressed me very much to return home with him.

   I should have gone to Town to day but for the weather & have seen your Mother in the afternoon—but this I intend doing to morrrow—my dearest love must not give himself one moment of uneasiness about “his little old girl” she is more collected than when she wrote last & no circumstance however cross will much move her whilst she has the love & protection of her Benjamin.  I shall [call] at Davidsons and your Brother Will’s at the latter I am determined not to stay 10 minutes—if you could come up to Hertford for me in the middle of the next week instead of the beginning I would stay here a day or two longer having so many places yet to [visit] that I fear I shall not be able to do.  I am very anxious to get home to my dearest love again and if I stay the whole of the next week through it will be such a long long while—the Cambridge assizes are on next Monday instead of Monday sennight and that is another reason for wishing you to defer your journey until the middle of the week say set out next Wednesday & return to Cambridge on Thursday can you not provide for the men in that way.  I am rather in a strait how to act—if I stay longer from home than I at first determined perhaps your Hertford friends or your mother if she knows it may be enclined to think me indifferent to home—& on the other hand your leaving Cambridge at the assize time might be thought a wrong step—indeed I do not know whether it would be advisable that you should leave home at so busy a season as I recollect we had many country people to call on us at the last assizes.

   From what passed at your Brother’s in my hearing they expect to be very full as I saw a letter which your brother received from a Gen’t requesting that a bed might be provided for him [by] your sister tho he could not be accommod­ated there as she expected one of the Mr Fordhams to sleep there who had an interest in some cause which was to be tried.  I know I am expected at Hertford the latter end of the week & have no doubt but they will provide accordingly for us both as I told them you would be there on Monday but yet I should not wonder if our being there at the assize time inconvenienced them.

   & now my dear Ben after the above observations you will be able to advize me on what plan to pursue & I must beg to hear from you by next post.  I will endeavour to drop you a line to morrow—this is a most unworthy scrawl—indeed I have written the whole in the course of half an Hour.  Burt of Plymouth Dock[5] is now at dinner below & Mrs Keene & Mrs Dore[6]—Wickenden was expected, is coming in the eveng—Burt I find is a friend of Halls—I have just taken dinner enough to satisfy my hunger but had I sat longer at table could not have written to you   it is now nearly the time for the post going out—all parties are sanguine in their hopes of peace don’t express your doubts on the subject on Friday as every body believes it will be the result of the pending negotiation[7]  it is now fully ascertained that there is a scarcity of grain in the country your brother told me that no corn was now to be purchased but came through the port of London—he says every farmer in the country have all their stocks of grain & that is the reason why so many merchants are obliged to go to Mark Lane[8] because they cannot get corn at Home  all friends send love  pray my dearest let me have a line or say what will be better a long letter in return directed to me at Walworth   my kind love to Mary.

                                 I am my own Bens affectionately

                                                            E Flower

cannot stay to read—fear I am too late

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. 235-39. 

Sarah Fellowes (d. 1832) was the daughter of Michael Pearson, the eminent London physician and friend of the Flowers (see letter 25). Her husband, John Fellowes (1765-1823), came from a prominent Unitarian family in Nottingham.  He earned a substantial income in the silk trade, aided by his ownership of a large hosiery mill in the Marsh.  In 1808 he founded the banking firm of Fellowes, Hart and Co., which later became a part of Lloyds Bank of London. A member of the Unitarian congregation at High Pavement, Fellowes was a leading political reformer in Nottingham during the early and mid-1790s and was actively involved in the Parliamentary election of 1796.  His politics not only brought him into contact with Flower (most likely through the medium of the Cambridge Intelligencer). Fellowes chaired the anti-Pitt meeting for Nottingham on 12 April 1797, offering stern criticisms of the Two Bills, Pitt, the war against France, and other matters of political reform (Cambridge Intelligencer, 22 April 1797).  In 1800 he purchased and rebuilt a large home on High Pavement, not far from the Unitarian chapel; among his numerous children were Charles, later Sir Charles Fellows, the eminent nineteenth-century explorer.  Mrs. Fellowes made much ado about her family’s churchgoing.  As John Crosby Warren comments, “I have been told, following the practice of many people of position in those days, [that Mrs. Fellowes would] pass on Sundays from her house on the High Pavement ... to the Chapel (which was then situated behind some houses on the South side of that street), followed by her children, two and two, and then by her coachmen and footman and women servants in the same manner, and while she and her children took their place in their pew on the ground floor, her domestics sat in the gallery above, and woe betide those who were absent without her permission” (The High Pavement Chapel, Nottingham.  A Biographical Catalogue of Portraits . . .  [Nottingham, 1932], 26-27).

Isaiah Birt (1758-1837), after completing his studies at the Baptist Academy at Bristol (where he commenced his friendship with Robert Hall), pastored the Baptist church at Plymouth Dock, 1784-1813. During the early 1790s, Birt, like Hall, Flower, and many other Dissenters, was an active supporter of the French Revolution and an opponent of the war with France, especially Pitt’s policies that seemed to infringe on the constitutional rights of Britons.  His aggressive church planting in neighboring villages created enough clerical hostility that Birt was forced to defend himself in his Vindication of the Baptists, in three letters, addressed to a friend in Saltash (1793).   In 1813 he removed to the Baptist congregation at Cannon Street in Birmingham, where he served until 1827, at which time he retired to Hackney.  His son, John (1787-1862), studied for the ministry under Dore at Maze Pond.

Joseph Wickenden joined Maze Pond on 4 August 1799, having formerly been a member of the Baptist church at Portsmouth.  By 20 January 1800 he was signing the minutes at Maze Pond.  On 7 July 1800 he was elected a deacon, an office he held until 17 October 1813.  Wickenden eventually withdrew from the church on 20 September 1830.  He and his business partner, John Fenn, were linendrapers at 78 Cornhill.  They subscribed to the Baptist Missionary Society in 1800 and in 1804 (BMS Periodical Accounts, vol. 2, p. 204; vol. 3, pp. 132, 137).  Wickenden also served as an associate member of the Particular Baptist Fund in 1804-05.  See Maze Pond  Church Book, vol. 2. fols. 20, 184, 189, and 194, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford; UBD 1.ii.142. 

Mary Winch Keene joined the Baptist church at Maze Pond on 3 November 1765, and remained a member until her death in 1813 (Maze Pond 2.f.183).  She was the widow of Henry Keene (1726?-97), a coal merchant in Blackman Street, Southwark, who served over 32 years as a deacon at Maze Pond; he was also active in matters of political and religious reform during the 1780s and ’90s (see “Keene,” Appendix 7). It seems probable that the street on which the Gurney’s lived, Keene’s Row, was named after him.  Mrs. Dore was the former Elizabeth Winch (most likely Mrs. Keene’s relation); she joined Maze Pond on 7 August 1796, the same day as William B. Gurney and his future wife, Ann Benham (Maze Pond Church Book, vol. 2, fol. 17, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford).