William Steele, Broughton, to Mary Steele, Yeovil, [Saturday] 27 August 1774.

Broughton 27th Aug. 1774

   I rec’d My Dear Polly’s affectionate Letter with the most pleasing satisfaction as the knowledge of her Welfare always contributes greatly to my felicity.  The Harmony that subsists among us I esteem as one of the most indulgent blessings of Providence tho’ in absence the Consequence of it is a more feeling sense of separation, but then – “the joys of meeting pays the pangs of absence.”  The good State of health we are all now favor’d with (except your Aunt) ought to excite more gratitude to our best Benefactor than I fear it does.

   Our Journey to Pershore &c is again on the Carpet and we propose if your Aunt’s illness does not increase & nothing occur to prevent it, to set out next Monday Sennight. I have engag’d Mr & Mrs Rawlings to be here & be Housekeepers during our Absence, it will not do to stay longer if we go this year because the days will be shorter & the Roads get worse & indeed about Mickmas I cannot be absent so well as before, we hope if providence favor to be at home in little more than three Weeks from the time we set out.  As to your coming home I don’t know what to direct about it, your Aunt wou’d be much best pleas’d to have you with her, but then it wou’d be bringing you from your Unkle sooner than you intended, & I suppose he would not be pleas’d with it, you may talk with him about it & let me know your Sentiments & his by next post and I will write to you again the following & then determine.

   I wrote to your Uncle the 24th on the Subject of his seeming dislike to the Baptists at Yeovil & the uneasiness about Sam’s Seat & his passionate behavior to Mr Taylor.  I have endeavour’d in the mildest way to show the impropriety of his acting in such a manner & hope he will take it as intended, a friendly Effort to calm the agitations of his mind & a sincere desire to promote his peace & happiness.  It is probable he will communicate the Letter to you, if he does, let me know his remarks on it.

   Thursday last your Aunt seem’d better than usual yesterday bad again & to day is better upon the whole we think she is as well as when you left her. – Our best respects await Miss Scott, whom (I am glad to hear) is with you.  We all join in the warmest tenders of Love to my Dear Girl & Lucy & due Compt to Uncle &c and am

         My Dear Daurs ever affect Far

                                 Wm Steele

The following is added in what appears to the hand of Mary’s half-sister, Anne. The verses below, however, are in each of the girls’s hands; at the time Anne was 5½; Martha had just had a birthday the day before and was now 4.

We hope our dear Sister will accept of our Love to her and give our Love to Lucy and Uncle Bullock and accept of the trifling Rhymes underneath from her loving tho’ very idle Sisters

                                 Anne Steele

                                 M. Steele

It often comes into my fancy

That you think of your dear little Nancy

I’m sure I often think of you

So make hast home adieu adieu.

I want to see my Tissey

To love you hard and kiss ye

And am I tell you what

Your little idle Patt

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols.  (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, pp. 250-51 (annotated version); STE 4/5/xxxvi, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Postmark: Salisbury. Address: Miss Steele / at Mr Geo: Bullock’s / Yeovil / Somerset.  Once again, William Steele closes a letter with some lines composed by Mary Steele's two young sisters, Anne and Martha.

References above include a Line taken from Act 2, Scene 1, of Nicholas Rowe’s tragedy, Tamerlane (London: J. and R. Tonson, 1744), p. 17; Nathaniel Rawlings, Baptist minister at Broughton; the Baptist church at Yeovil was formed in 1668. After the death of Peter Evans, John Gillard, who signed the 1772 Feathers Tavern Petition to Parliament to end the Test Acts, became pastor. Gillard may not have been as orthodox as Mr. Bullock would have preferred. One of the more significant events in the history of the Yeovil Baptist Church occurred in 1813 when John Rowe, a member who had completed his studies at Bristol Baptist Academy, became the first British Baptist to begin missionary work in Jamaica (see Yeovil Baptist Church: Celebration of the 250th Anniversary [Yeovil, 1938]).