Anne Cator Steele, Haycombe, to William Steele III, Broughton, 25 August 1733.

Dear Spouse

   I reciev’d your letter but cannot now return any remarks on it for want of time only that I was very glad to hear you was all well. I am much in the same place & state as when I wrote last only under more trouble, we tho’t my mother had been dying all night Tuesday night but next day her right leg broke & have since run about two Gallons yet she has been a little revivd, but all about her have tho’t she has now been a dyeing ever since last night about nine oclock & how long or short her life may be in this work God only knows but tis a most deploreable disease & my sister is very little in bed (tho we have a nurse & sometimes other watchers) and I can’t tell how to leave her till there is a change some way or other if the servants are to come to the Devizes twice I desire you to send when both the times will be & we will meet them one of the times if possible for I should be glad to come home if I could, yet thro mercy I have been better than I expected only sometimes a pain in my head the rest are all in health and desire to remember due respects to all be pleased to remember my dear love to all the children and my love to Christian & John & Stephen & accept my most cordial affection your self  I remain your ever

                                                         dutyfull loving wife

                                                                     Anne Steele

Haycomb August 25 1733

Saturday about eight oclock

I was in hast by stooping too long this morning for I often breaks my rest tho I dont sit up

Text: Steele Collection, STE 2/2/2/iv, Angus Library Regent's Park College, Oxford. Address: for | Mr William Steele | in Broughton | to be left at the three | Lions in Sarum. For an annotated edition of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 8, p. 41.Anne Cator Steele’s mother would shortly die of the illness described in her letters.