William Steele, Yeovil, to Mary Steele, Broughton, 8 November 1775.

Yeovil Nov. 8th 1775

My Dear Polly

   Tho’ I have nothing very material to say, I must write a Line or two to inform you that thro’ Mercy we continue in good health, & that we hope to set out next Monday on our Journey homewards if no unexpected occurrences prevent.  I fear we shall not see Miss Scott, as she is not well enough to come hither & we cannot go thither as our time is so limited.  I expect to hear from her to morrow & perhaps M Winsor may go thither to do the business.  Mr Horsey has been here to day.

   Mrs Phillips &c were here yesterday to tea they enquir’d much for you we are to return the visit Friday. We expect Miss Barton &c this Afternoon. – Mrs Hayne who went to London to be with her Daughter during her recess, will no more return hither, an Acct of her Death came Yesterday, it must be a very distressing circumstance to the Daughter she was with as well as to her she went from I think Mrs Hayne had a chief place in your Esteem. May every alarming Instance of Mortality stir us up to prepare for that awful Event when time to us shall be no more.

   Nancy is very fond of going to School to M Winsor, has been there every day & got a Copy book & begun to make Letters.  We join in the warmest tenders of Love and Friendship to every one dear to us at our peaceful Cot & am My Dr Girl’s ever

                                 affectionate Far

                                             Wm Steele

I expect a Letter to morrow & hope shall hear Sister is a little better.

M Winsor’s Love as due

Nancy’s duty & Love as due to Aunt Tissy & Patty &c

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols.  (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, p. 269 (annotated version); STE 4/5/xlvii, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. From a photcopy. No address page.

Joseph Horsey (1737-1802) was from Yeovil and his family worshiped in the Baptist church there, along with the Bullocks. He moved to Portsea at an early age and joined the Baptist congregation at Meeting-house Alley. Around 1780 he became pastor of the church and remained there until his death in 1802. His daughter, Elizabeth (d. 1797), was the first wife of John Saffery, who replaced Henry Phillips as pastor of the Baptist meeting at Brown Street, Salisbury, in 1790, the church Jane Attwater attended. Saffery’s second wife was Maria Grace Andrews, whose sister, Anne, would marry Philip Whitaker, Jane Attwater’s nephew, in 1798. Horsey often preached at Broughton and Salisbury, and appears frequently in Jane Attwater’s diary.

The Mrs. Phillips mentioned above is not the first wife of the Revd Henry Phillips. After the death of his first wife, Revd Phillips pursued Mrs. Evans of Yeovil, the widow of the former Baptist minister at Yeovil, Peter Evans (brother of Hugh Evans of Bristol), who died in 1771. Mrs. Evans brought a substantial income to the marriage, enough to enable Phillips to open an academy for boys at Salisbury. A 1781 advertisement for the school in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal notes that Revd Phillips had recently married a ‘most agreeable lady with a handsome fortune’. Many years later, Mary Steele addressed a poem to Mrs. Phillips, then living at Muswell Hill, London. For the 1781 advertisement, see Seymour J. Price, ‘Dissenting Academies, 1662-1820’, Baptist Quarterly 6 (1932-33), p. 133.

Apparently, Mrs. Hayne’s daughter took over the school at Motcombe, with Sarah Froude continuing to teach there into the 1790s. Molly Winsor, like many other women connected with the Steele Circle, had apparently opened her own school at Yeovil. It was probably Winsor who requested that Mary Scott create a curriculum for her school in 1774.