Anne Cator Steele, Haycombe, to William Steele III, Broughton, 17 August 1733.

Dear Husband

   My Mother is yet alive but is so extreemly swel’d & so weak & helpless that we can’t expect she should continue long yet thro mercy she bears her affliction with a great deal of patience. I have always talk’d of meeting the waggon this day tonit at the Devizes but what change there may be before that I don’t know or what to say about coming home I desire you to send word if the waggon or carriage will come down the Friday following & if it be the carriage where our things can conveniently be carried home on it for cousin Richard & Jenny talks of going with me, & if they two light folks may ride Robin but tis yet all an uncertainty, the rest of this family are all thro mercy in health, and so am I. Blessed be God I long very much to hear how you & the family & daughters do, I don’t think tis best for Mr Attw— to give himself the trouble of taking another journey as yet tho Mother, Brother and two youngest  sisters seem extraordinary willing of it, but the eldest stands off but her mother thinks her mind may change, I shall be able to give a better account, if it please God to spare my life & bring me again to my much desir’d habitation, where I hope we shall have mutual satisfaction in our conversation in the mean time we can only let our requests be made known to God the family here sends love & servis as due please to give my paternal love to all the children, my love to the Servants and accept the tenderest affection from your ever loving

                                 & obedient Wife

                                                         Anne Steele

Haycomb  August 17 1733

PS  Saturday morning, sometimes my mother is easie & we are ready to think tis possible she may live some weeks (which was the case last evening after I had writ) and then I seems to determine to come if possible next week & when she is very bad then I think it cannot be, she has had a very restless bad night, you may be sure to expect me as soon as ever I can with conveniency come and in the mean time remain yours

                                                                     A S

Text: Steele Collection, STE 2/2/2/iii, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford.  No address page. For an annotated edition of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 8, pp. 40-41. References abve are to Richard Gay (1717-36) and his sister, Jane ("Jenny") (d. 1763), of Haycombe, Anne Cator Steele’s nephew and niece; and most likely Thomas Attwater (1691-1767) of Bodenham, who in 1735 would marry Anna Gay (1710-84) of Haycombe, another niece of Anne Cator Steele who would later the mother of Jane Attwater Blatch (1753-1843).