William Steadman, Bradford, to Thomas Raffles, Liverpool, 5 September 1816.

My very dear Sir

         In reply to your enquiry, I am free to say, That as far as I am able to judge an academy supported by your friends in Lancashire appears to me a very desireable object. Were it practicable an academy for young men in our denomination would be very useful on that side the mountains. We have not at present young men enough to supply the demands upon us; and if we had the distance and expence of travelling are very serious inconveniences. I am aware that your denomination is better supplied with Seminaries than ours, having two in the county of York, the smaller of which is nearly as large as ours: how far they may be adequate to the demands of Lancashire, or whether the expences of travelling &c may be surmounted is what I am unable to say. But admitting both, the distance is such as an amount of the consumption of the young mans time to form a formidable objection, and to render an academy on the spot very desireable    I sincerely wish you success in your attempt, and should you succeed in it, I pray God he make the seminary a blessing to the country.

                                             I am

                                                      My Dear Sir

                                                               Yours very sincerely

                                                                                 W Steadman

Sep.t 5.th 1816

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), p. 176 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 384, fol. 1909b, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. Thomas Raffles (1788-1863) was the Congregational minister at Great George Street in Liverpool, 1812-63. In 1816, with the assistance of George Hadfield, he was instrumental in the founding of Blackburn Academy for the purpose of training Independent ministers in the north of England. In 1843 the school, again with Raffles’s help, moved to Manchester and changed its name to Lancashire Independent College.