Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Friday], 4 April 1806.

Sarum, April 4th 1806

   It seems now a long time since I conversed with my dearest Anne in this way.  However I would at any time relinguish an Epistle for an interview & am equally certain that you feel ye same kind of preference. On my return which thanks to Mr C–s enormous boat was very comfortable I found all my household well & so thro’ abounding mercy they continue  Alfred indeed has a cough, but his health appears otherwise perfectly good. The cold weather has made this a very general inconvenience.  A. makes more noise in coughing than some people but you observe Mr Reid says this is not the characteristic of a bad cough  he has I see introduced his fine sentiments for the consolation of the nervous – in ye Mage for this month.  I caution you against his speculations but I would have you especially take care of Dr Gall’s Craniology as you value yr brains that is if they are composed of the same kind of material with mine.  What an age of System & discovery!!!

   You recollect what the Evangelical Mag. said @ Dr Priestley’s advice to his nephew in the honourable mention he made of a certain book that opposed the idea of eternal punishment, & which he declared to be a means of his own peculiar consolation.  Well the Monthly Repository has taken it up with all the rage of Socinian resentment, but the fact itself is not denied – and this I conceive renders it amost indubitable. I mention this circumstance because I remember my Bror wished to know if they would endeavour to controvert it –

   I was very desirous of forwarding Mrs Claypole’s parcel to night but the Gown is not done tho’ Bobby declares he has spent his Good Friday in dying it  I think now I had better send it if I can by Mr C if he should favor us wth a visit on Wednesday  if that cannot be I will then forward it pr Coach – I have procured the footing there is enough I think for three Caps – as it was a remnant I got it for half a Crown & as nothing suitable appear’d for the inferior Cap I thought it best to send ye same for both. –

   I have had an uncommonly busy week since my return & nothing but bustle is before me for the ensuing – I have a new pupil of ye name of Sidford – 12 years old, high shouldered & rather outre – Miss Warwick’s House is let.  Radcliffe has taken it it is thought on very good terms for himself – Now if he would take day Scholars, A– might go very comfortably   Jenny left us on Tuesday in a very improved state of health, tho’ she too had a cold –

   My dear P– and Miss A unite  I was going to say in kind expressions of regard tho of course there must be so much diversity that you had better tack him on to me, when I subscribe myself your’s in the hopes of relative affection and superior friendship,

                     Maria Grace Saffery

The bit of footing I put in the letter as you requested  hope Bror wont drop it if he open the letter at Warminster

Text: Reeves Collection, Box 14.4.(g.), Bodleian Library, Oxford. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm | to be left at the | Red Lion, | Warminster | 4th Apr. 1806. Postmark: Salisbury. For an annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, p. 214.

Dr John Reid of Brunswick Square, London, published a report in the April issue of the Monthly Magazine (pp. 258-59), concerning an outbreak that winter of some particularly harsh strains of cough. In the same issue (pp. 197-203) appeared an account of the new theory of “cranioscopy” (a technique of measuring the bones of the skull) by Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1822), who posited that the mental faculties, as well as various character traits, were evident on the surface of the skull in twenty-six locations. John Reid was the brother of Mary Reid (1769-1839) of Leicester, a close friend of Elizabeth Coltman (1781-1838) of Leicester and Mary Steele (1753-1813) of Broughton as well as Mary Hays (1759-1843) of London. Mary Steele's poems of friendship to Coltman and Reid can be found in Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 3, pp. 152-54, 162.

The account of Priestley’s conversation with his nephew appeared in the February 1806 issue of the Evangelical Magazine, pp. 108-09. In a letter to the Editor, the correspondent recounted the story of Priestley’s praise, on his death bed, of Simpson’s Duration of Future Punishments, telling his nephew that the work “will be a source of satisfaction to you ... in the most trying circumstances, as it has been to me,” stressing to him that the work “contains my sentiments” upon the limited duration of all future punishments.  The writer asks, “Had he [Priestley] no basis more firm that this to rest upon in the prospect of eternity?” If not, “it is far from being a recommendation of his system,” calling Socinianism “a gloomy system” (pp. 108-09), a similar expression Priestley had used against Calvinism.

Thomas Claypole (1772-1825) served as the Baptist minister at Bratton from 1804-09. He began his ministry in the Particular Baptist church at Rushden, near Bedford. In 1809 he removed to Bloxham, Oxfordshire. His final ministry (1818-23) was at Yeovil, Somerset, where the famiy of Mary Steele’s mother, the Bullocks, resided. Eliza Gould, shortly before her marriage to Benjamin Flower (see a selection of their letters on this site), heard Claypole preach at the Old Meeting in Bedford (John Bunyan’s church) in December 1799. She wrote to Flower that Claypole “in his prayer told us that ‘our sins had perforated the clouds’ & so little did the sermon edify me that I resolved in the afternoon to hear Mr Burkitt” (the Independent minister in Bedford). Flower, an Arian by that time, though he had attented Robert Hall's ministry at St. Andrew's Street since 1703, responded from Cambridge, “Pray may I not call Mr Claypole, by your account of him, a thick or a wooden head? I am really provoked that ignorance and stupidity united attempt to instruct others, and that men of sense would admit persons of such a description into their pulpits.” Jane Attwater Blatch generally spoke well of Claypole in her diary, but Maria Grace Saffery is much closer to Eliza Gould, opining after his resignation in 1809 that “Mr Claypole’s resignation exceeds my hopes this fit of decision must have been like a spasmodic influence on the native constitutions of his mind.” For these letters by Eliza Gould, Benjamin Flower and Maria Grace Saffery, as well as Jane Attwater Blatch's diary, 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. 211-13.