James Hinton, Oxford, to John Fawcett, Hebden Bridge, Halifax, 21 September 1804.

Oxford Sep 21. 1804

Dear Sir

          I have been duly favoured with both your letters; & I remark with sincere pleasure the ardent & anxious zeal which you manifest, to serve the cause of God & truth – The esteem which your works had excited, your letters have confirmed – 

         I hope I have not, on my part, incurred the charge of neglect, in the “important business” on which you write. On receiving your first letter, I resolved to take 3 or 4 days for consideration & prayer – I did so – At the end of 3 or 4 days (I believe) I received a letter from my friend and late Tutor Mr Hall, who entered more largely on the subject & certainly removed some of my objections to the proposal I had received. I now thought it right to lay the matter before a few of my friends whom I am in the habit of consulting, both in Oxford and in the neighborhood & the result I wrote to Mr Hall in a week after I received his application & begged him to transmit it immediately to the Society. You probably know, ere now, what the result is. I thought the matter too important to decide at once, & where any hesitation rests, on such a business, the answer ought not perhaps, to be more speedy than mine has been.

          My Love to my people, & their pleas with me, would not alone prevail, but when disinterested men are clearly & unanimously of opinion that public good (tis their expression) demands a continuation of my labours in Oxford, I am obliged, tho with a more cordial wish to serve the interests of your rising Society, to listen to the decisions of one who will I doubt not, provide you with a more able Tutor; for which blessing [paper torn] for every one, personal, domestic, & [paper torn] on your own behalf, accept the wishes & be assured of the prayers of                         

                                              Dear Sir

                                                               yr oblig’d frd & Bror

                                                                                 Jas Hinton

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 122-23 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 378, fol. 953, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. On the address page is written in John Fawcett’s hand, “This letter to be returned to J. F.” James Hinton (1761-1823) was the Baptist minister at Oxford, 1787-1823. In this letter Hinton is declining the presidency of the Northern Education Society’s new academy at Bradford, which had been first offered to Joseph Kinghorn at Norwich, who had also declined. The position was eventually filled by William Steadman. John Fawcett had written to Robert Hall, enlisting the latter’s aid in procuring a president after Kinghorn had rejected the offer; apparently Hall had considered Hinton a viable choice to head the new academy. Fawcett had written Hinton twice about the proposed presidency, to which Hinton finally responded. See Mary Langdon, A Brief Memoir of the Rev. Thomas Langdon, Baptist Minister, of Leeds (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1837) 46-47.