Eliza Flower at the Gurneys and later the Creaks, London, to Benjamin Flower at Harlow, undated [Thursday, 8 May 1806].

                                                                     Walworth Thursday

My dear Benjamin

   I came hither last evening after taking an early cup of tea in Cornhill & wonderful to tell I walked all the way without being at all tired.  I slept at Mr Hemmings, have breakfasted this morning at Mr Gurneys & am now waiting for the 10 oclock stage—I called at Conders soon after my arrival found him very ill & the Apothecary sent for—he will thank you to provide for the bill about which you wrote.  Miss Fuller is in Hertfordshire not expected in Town till the middle of next week so I shall write to Ponders End this even’gsaying that I shall be there on Saturday & if she is not there I can leave my millenary & meet you as conveniently as at Woodford. Mrs Creak will go with me this morning to no 12 Gracechurch Street & after that I shall to[o] on your friends—I will call in Cannon St & say when you will be in Town.

   Lord Melvilles Trial will finish next week & our Friends all say what a pity we do not go—I should very much like it.  Tickets are scarce & you should be early in your application.  Mrs J Gurney went yesterday with Lord Stanhopes Tickets but she had to wait several days.  I wish if you mean to go you would write to Lord King—& I would take a ride with you to town next week say Tuesday or Wednesday could sleep here & go with Mr Gurney in his coach & his Hair dresser would dress me without my having any difficulty & we could return home the next day.

Cornhill—

   I have called at Harris’s for a catalogue.  Mr Creak says if we go we shall bring away more than we carry that is of live stock.  I intend to call in Cannon street.  If you mean to go to Melvilles Trial pray make all the interest you can for Tickets but Mr Creak tells me that they are very difficult indeed to be met with had you not better write also to Lord Henry Petty. Lord Melville will come off they think with flying colours Trotter for whom an act of indemnity is passed having taken every thing upon himself—but I should much like to go if you can contrive it & I am sure you will if you can.

   I thank you for your kind & most affectionate letter—& am ashamed to send you such a scrawl in return but if your affection does not blind you to treat them with tenderness. I hope Eliza & Sarah continue well & that Bet will not clad them to[o] warmly.

I will give you a kiss extraordinary if you will not scold me for this “scrambling letter.”  Miss Hosegood is so ill that she must go into Devonshire directly she goes next week.

[The lower portion of the last page has been cut off.]

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. 317-19.The date can be ascertained from the references to Lord Melville’s trial, which began on 29 April 1806 and ran for the next fifteen days. Sarah Fuller, Flower's aunt, besides her residence in Lombard Street, also owned a home at Ponders End (see Aveling 69).   

Henry Dundas, Lord Melville (1742-1811), entered Parliament in 1774 and quickly assumed important positions in Lord North’s administration.  By the mid-1780s he had switched loyalties to Pitt, and soon became President of the Board of Control, exhibiting a keen interest in the promotion of the East India Company.  He remained in that capacity until 1801, when he resigned with Pitt over the issue of Catholic Emancipation.  At various times between 1784 and 1800, he served as Treasurer of the Navy, Secretary of War, and Home Secretary. He returned to office with Pitt in 1804 as Lord of the Admiralty, but he resigned in the spring of 1805 after being accused of mismanaging funds during his tenure as Treasurer of the Navy.  On 13 June 1805, the House of Commons failed to carry the vote of impeachment against Melville, passing a motion instead that he should face a criminal trial.  The House of Commons overturned that vote on 25 June, and a committee was consequently formed to draw up articles of impeachment.  He was formally charged the next day, and the articles of impeachment were presented to the House of Lords on 4 July 1805.  The trial did not commence, however, until 29 April 1806, lasting 15 days.  On 12 June 1806, the House of Lords acquitted Lord Melville on all counts. As a result of the humiliation of his impeachment, he never held public office again. Joseph Gurney and his son, William Brodie, were the shorthand transcribers for the trial, which explains Eliza’s reference to Mr. Gurney.  See The trial of Henry lord viscount Melville, before the right honorable the House of peers, in Westminster hall, in full Parliament, for high crimes and misdemeanors ... (1806); it was the last work printed by Joseph Gurney, and one of the last works sold by Martha Gurney.

[6]Charles, Earl Stanhope (1753-1816), entered Parliament in 1780 and supported the Whig coalition in their opposition to the war with America. He became a peer in 1786 and soon parted with Pitt over several domestic policies.  In 1789 he became chairman of the Revolution Society, and his support of the French Revolution estranged him permanently from Pitt.  Like Fox, he opposed the war with France as well as the suspension of habeas corpus.  His outspoken advocacy of non-interference with the affairs of the French government led many to consider him a Jacobin, at one point resulting in the ransacking and burning of his London home by rioters in June 1794.  Stanhope joined Fox and several other Whigs in seceding from Parliament in January 1796, not returning until February 1800.  He continued to support an end to the war with France, while devoting much of his latter years to scientific pursuits. 

[7]Peter King, seventh Lord King, Baron of Ockham, Surrey (1776-1833), may have met Flower at Cambridge while a student at Trinity College in the 1790s.  He made his maiden speech in Parliament on 12 February 1800.  Before 1806, his chief work in Parliament concerned the suspension of cash payments by the Bank of England and Ireland in 1797, to which King was adamantly opposed. In May 1804, King married Lady Hester Fortescue, daughter of Hugh, first Earl Fortescue, the same Fortescue of Castle Hill, Devon, who failed to intervene on Eliza’s behalf during her politic­al difficulties in South Molton in 1794-95 (see letter 3).

[8]John Harris, London bookseller, 21 Ludgate Street, 1802-43 (Nichols 8.482).

[9]John Henry Petty was the son of William Petty, the Marquess of Lansdowne (1737-1805).  The elder Petty had long been revered by reformers like Flower for his opposition to the restrictive policies of Pitt in the 1790s and the war with France, leading the charge, along with Fox, Grey, and the Duke of Bedford, for Parliamentary reform and the rights of Dissenters.   Flower had probably met the younger Petty in Cambridge, for he matriculated in 1798 at Trinity College, Cambridge, and took an M.A. in 1801 (CI 11 July 1801).  He was elected to Parliament for the University in February 1806, three months before the above letter.  See Venn 3.375.

[10]Alexander Trotter served as paymaster of the Navy under Melville from 1786-1800.  During that time he managed nearly £75000 of monies appropriated from Naval funds by Melville, £40000 of which was to be used by the firm of Messrs. Boyd and Co. to pay an installment on a loan, thereby preventing the failure of the company and what might have created a public crisis in the banking business.   The remaining monies were taken from Naval funds by Melville and treated as personal loans, with Trotter acting as Melville’s agent. No interest was ever paid on these loans.  All these actions, some of which were approved by Pitt, violated a 1785 act of Parliament and led to Melville’s impeachment.  The Indemnity Act allowed Trotter not to be held legally accountable for his part in the transactions.  When the Indemnity Act was first proposed in the summer of 1801, Flower commented: “Seldom or never, was there an instance, in which a nation has been so scandalously treated, on pretences so perfectly futile; but there appears to be no species of insult or oppression, but what the people will bear, and which we may justly add, they, for their stupidity, servility, and profligacy, do not deserve to bear!” (CI 4 July 1801).

[11]Probably Jane Hosegood, who joined the Baptist congregation at Tiverton on 5 November 1801, the same congregation where Eliza’s relations, Joseph and Mary Gould, as well as her aunt, Elizabeth Hayne, worshiped. See Tiverton.