Joseph Hughes, Battersea, to Thomas Raffles, Liverpool, 7 May 1827.

My Dear Sir,

         Notwithstanding the bereaving dispensation with which it has pleased God to visit me, I propose accompanying Mr Brandram to Liverpool next week. But I wish to see you previously. Be so good as to furnish Mr Clayton with your Town Address – or it will suffice for me to know that you will be at the Tract Annivery.

                           I am   My Dear Sir   Your’s Affecy

                                                                                 J Hughes

Battersea

May 7 1827

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), p. 207 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 378, fol. 1015a, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Hughes is referring to the recent death of his eldest son, Joseph Hughes, Jr., who committed suicide by drowning himself in the River Avon near Pershore. Andrew Brandram (1791-1850) was the Anglican secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1822-50. The "Clayton" mentioned above could be John Clayton, Sr. (1754-1843), minister at the King’s Weigh House, London, 1779-1828; John Clayton, Jr. (1780-1865), the former’s son, who served as a Congregational minister at the Poultry Chapel in London, 1818-1848; or George Clayton (1783-1862), another son of the elder Clayton, who ministered to the Congregational church at York Street, Walworth, 1804-1854.