Eliza Flower at Cambridge to William Hollick at Whittlesford, near Cambridge, Thursday, 16 October 1801.

Sir,

   After the very satisfactory conversation which I had with you respecting Mr Lowell’s preaching for the Benevolent Society, I was both surprised and hurt, at receiving a letter from Mr Aldn Ind informing me that on your “communicating to your friends the conversation which had passed, they were unanimously of opinion that the matter had better be declined for the present.” Who those Gentlemen are who think thus, and thus dictate to Mr Lowell, Mr Gardner, and the Committee of the Society  I do not enquire, tho I will take the liberty of adding, that in this affair I am not under the necessity of consulting any Gentleman belonging to Mr Hall’s church and congregation except the Deacons.

   As Secretary to the Benevolent Society I feel it my duty to comply with the wishes of the Committee, who at their last meeting resolved, “that Mr Lowell be requested to preach a sermon for the benefit of the Institution.”  Mr Gardner also desired me to signify his wishes on the subject, & Mr Ray has expressed his perfect approbation and is surprised that any objection should have been stated on the occasion.

   Although Mr Aldn Ind has been made the channel to convey the decisions of certain persons (to me unknown) who are denominated your friends, yet they have not condescended to give me one reason for their thus obtruding their advice to the injury of a truly benevolent Institution.  They will doubtless have the prayers of the sick, and the aged poor, many of whom having outlived their friends and their faculties, are to my knowledge now pining in Hovels, and Garrets, on the miserable pittance of parish allowance on 1s/6p or at the most 4s pr week.

   Let those Gentlemen who would hinder the current of Benevolence, take to themselves all the comfort derivable from these Words “Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these my Brethren you did it not unto me.”  Neither you nor I Sir can possibly envy them their feelings.

                                 I remain

                                       Sir

                                         Most respectfully yours

                                 (sign’d)         Eliza Flower

Octr 16 Friday evening

P.S. 

   I should have replied immediately, had I not gone out to communicate to my friends, & to the friends of the Institution, the pleasure I had derived in finding that you had no objection to Mr Lowell’s following his benevolent intention of preaching at Mr Gardner’s on the sabbath evening.  Judge you of my surprise and disappointment, on my return, to find my hopes, and the hopes of many other friends to the Institution, blasted!

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. 246-48 (a more annotated text than that which appears on this site). 

Samuel Lowell (1759-1823) was the pastor of the Independent meeting at Bridge Street, Bristol; The Cambridge Benevolent Society was founded by Eliza Flower, in conjunction with Alderman Edward Ind (1764-1821?), one of Cambridge’s leading citizens at this time, in September 1801, after which she served as its first secretary. As one contemporary writer noted, “by her persevering efforts, [Eliza Flower] so greatly extended its usefulness, as to obtain for it the support of all parties, Churchmen and Dissenters. Its funds consists of donations and subscriptions, and the collection at a sermon annually preached for it; sometimes in a church, and at others in a meeting-house” (“Statistical View” 373); Robert Hall’s sermon, Reflections on War, was first preached at St. Andrew’s Street on Tuesday, 1 June 1802, for the benefit of the Benevolent Society; Lucas Ray[e] was a Cambridge plumber and glazier who became a deacon at St. Andrew’s Street in December 1790, a position he maintained until his death in 1816; Isaac Gardner was the Independent minister at Downing Street, Cambridge.