Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Friday, 13 May 1808.

My very dear Friend & Sister,

   All my feelings are at variance as indeed is commonly the case when I am writing to you. Haste & importunate engagements dictating brevity, & producing insipidity & awkwardness, at least, while my health but poorly occupied with half ye impertinences @ me, languishes for more lavish & interesting communications  you will however thank me for telling you of our welfare, wh the God of providence is so graciously allowing me to impart as wd a family  we are all well, even little John with his hooping cough as I yet suppose it is. Ryland as usual, only suffering much inconvenience by the warm weather poor Lucy on the bed, within half an hour of a certain interview in Brown St – yet I think all will be well.  You must imagine that in this affair all the steps hither to take, have been decidedly her own, & with her mental, & moral imbecilities, the fact is truly astonishing such an effort without any motive unworthy the profession, required in her more than an ordinary measure of grace and God forbid any such motive should have impelled her to this act.

   I must leave off to attend on ye business of the Eveng.  Salter & Lucy are gone –  Nine oclock  just returned from a very interesting prayer-meeting.  Lucy said more than I expected & was I believe pretty cordially received one thing struck me forcibly a good man who was enraptured with Horton’s experience made some remarks on Lucy expressive of discontent because her experience was not more strongly stated  Mr Jones & Butler gave in a very sweet experience.  Seven are proposed for baptism & I think it probable there will be two or three more.  Our united love to our dear Marion  tell her I am admirably well and waiting with affecte desire for good tidings of Bratton Farm as to its solubrity  adieu   I am called to prayer believe that I am in very right sense

               Entirely Your’s

                     Maria Grace Saffery

Friday Eveng  May 13 1808

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 264-65 (annotated version); Reeves Collection, Box 14.4.(i.), Bodleian. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm | Westbury | Wilts. No postmark. Rev. Claypole would remain for another year at the Bratton church before he would resign.