William Steele, Broughton, to Mary Steele, Yeovil, [Saturday] 8 October 1774.

Broughton Oct: 8th 1774

My Dear

   I duly rec’d yours of the 3rd Inst. and am very sorry to hear of the Death of Dr Daniel, who when I saw him the Evening before I left Yeovil seem’d to be in good health & as likely to live several years as any person at his time of Life, but Health and Strength are but weak defences when Death makes his Advances & the strongest fortifications of human Nature must fall when undermined by her insidious Attendants, how much then is it incumbent on us to be on our watch that we be not taken unawares & unprepar’d for the awful Summons; a well grounded hope of an Interest in the Redeemer is (notwithstanding the unwarranted & unjustifiable Assertions of such a flaming Bigot as H) an Anchor of the Soul both sure & steadfast & a scriptural dependence for a Christian in his last most trying Moments.  If he hold forth the Wednesday as you say I wish you would go from home lest you should be terrify’d by the insolence of the mob and I wish your Uncle would civilly tell him not to preach there again for I think his Doctrine is not fit to be attended to.

   I don’t now what to say to the proposal of M Winsor’s Niece coming with you to Broton, I would willingly do any thing to oblige her, but I am afraid it will not answer her niece’s Fars expectation as to being of greater advantage to her than going to School, neither do I think her going to meeting with us wou’d be agreeable to him & it wou’d not be proper in my Opinion for a Girl of that age to go elsewhere without proper Company, and the winter being just at hand it will be a dull place & perhaps disagreeable to one us’d to live in a town, would it not then be much better for her to come in the Spring when the Country will be more agreeable & My Winsor may perhaps find time to come with her, on the whole I leave it to you to do as you think best.

   And now my Dr I must ask you a Question: pray when do you think to come home? We begin to want your Company. I am willing to spare you to your Uncle as much as is reasonable but surely your Visit is nearly long enough, let me then in your next hear some thing about it.

   Mr & Mrs Aldersey dined with us Yesterday on their return from Andover their Daur came hither with them & they have left her for 2 or 3 days when we are to convey her back to Andover to Mrs Willis’s School, she is a very agreeable Girl about ten years old.  Your two noisy Sisters are highly delighted with her.  Your Aunt’s Sufferings still continue, she is some days better than others, yesterday she was very bad & is this day better.

   We join in parental blessings to my Dr Girl & hope for your return home in a little time.  Our friendly tenders as due to all, I am

                     Yr affectionate Far

                                 Wm Steele

The little Girls send their Love & duty as they express it to Tissy & wish she wou’d come home & their Love to her Lucy & Uncle Bullock

We think the Journey has been very serviceable to yr Mama, her health seems quite establish’d, We are all thro’ Mercy well except yr poor Aunt.

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols.  (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, pp. 256-57 (annotated version); STE 4/5/xliii, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. From a photocopy. No address page. 

The ‘Mr. H’ mentioned above is probably a dissenting preacher but unidentified. It appears that Mary was contemplating serving as a tutor to Molly Winsor’s niece, the only time any thing of this nature appears in her correspondence. Winsor, a childhood friend of Mary Steele from Yeovil, was probably a dissenter and a Baptist. Apparently, other members of her family were not Baptists, and may have been Anglicans.