Maria Grace Andrews, Salisbury, to John Saffery, London, [Thursday], 5 February 1795.

Rev:d & Dear Sir

   Privileged as I am by Friendship, to feel a peculiar Interest in what concerns you: I rejoice in the mercy, which enables me to confess myself a debtor to Sympathy on your Acct.  Very reasonable indeed, was the relief afforded us by your letters.  The first found us the Subjects of much Anxiety. The second I had almost said dissipated our fears, but alas there is always something in our foolish hearts, which draws back from a cheerful confidence in God, at least it is so with mine in an eminent degree.  Not that I find in ye present instance, any inclination to despondency, either as to the nature, or design, of your absence.  No, I trust your return will soon convince us of the vanity of all our fears, and the poverty of even our highest Expectations. The wonderful support experienced by our beloved Mrs Saffery demands our grateful admiration; indeed to reflect on her, in so delicate, and critical, a state of health, exposed to ye fatigue of a Journey, render’d gloomy by Peril; and protracted to such a tedious length, was really tremendous. If we had not also remember’d her Omnipotent Guardian, miserable beyond the energy of language to express, are they who depend on human foresight, or rest upon created strength.

   Things abroad are I believe in the same state as when you left S—m[1]  Mrs Penny’s[ii] amended health, is ye most pleasing intelligence I have to convey: to you Sir & dr Mrs S  this will I know give true pleasure there are a Multitude of Claimants on my Paper who demand to have their Names set down succeeded by messages of love &c &c.  For convenience sake I must mention a few in order, of ye number then are Mr & Mrs Marsh, Smith, Penny, Roberts, our poor Hannah, &c &c[iii] 

   My beloved Companion & myself, are permitted to dwell beneath your Roof at Night without molestation in the day we are greatly exposed to invasion & obliged to act a good deal on the defensive.  Your little domestic immediately on your departure assumed a grave & rather disconsolate deportment. Thus Sir agreeably to yr System manifesting a superior degree of refinement she has since relapsed into her former vivacity & condescends to be familiar. 

   Yesterday Anne received a letter from Mrs Scott by which means we had the satisfaction of hearing more of you.  Also of your interview with Mrs Houghton  it grows dark & you will gladly be releas’d from this trifling  I will trouble you with particular remembrances from us to Mr & Mrs Shoveller & best love to Mrs Saffery.  I am dr sir with the truest Respect, & Affection

                                 Your very unworthy Friend

                                             Maria Grace Andrews

Salisbury Mr Saffery’s fireside

Febry 5th 95

Anne has fulfill’d Mrs Saffery’s commissions  Mrs Dew is tolerably well – hope the safe arival of yr Box has inform’d you yt we had the precaution to have it screw’d down tho’ ye letter came too late to pursue your directions.  Shall be in daily expectation of a letter from Mrs S–

Text: Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, box I.A.13.(b.), Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Address: Revd Mr Saffery | Mr Shoveller’s |No 19 Upper Newman Street | Oxford Street | London | Febry 5th 95. Postmark: Salisbury 6 [February] 1795. For a complete annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 89-90. 

The Penny family featured prominently among West Country dissenting families (largely Baptist), with branches in Bristol, Salisbury, Portsmouth, and London during the latter part of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries. William Penny operated the Parade Tavern and Brewery in Milford Street, Salisbury. He and his family appear often in this correspondence (see the account of his son’s death in letters 169 and 175), and, like the Horseys of Portsmouth, enjoyed a close friendship with the Safferys. The Penny’s were also connected with the Attwaters through the marriage of Philemon Attwater of Nunton to Eliza Penny of Salisbury. Another relation, John Penny, was ‘an eminently pious and devoted man and a sound divine’ who served as minister to the Baptist congregation in White’s Alley, Portsmouth, 1803-16. See P. Ridoutt, The Early Baptist History of Portsmouth (Landport: G. Chamberlain, 1888), p. 62.