Anne Andrews, Isleworth, to Maria Grace Andrews, Salisbury, [Tuesday], 2 February 1796.

Tuesday Eveng  Feby 2nd  1796

   My dr Grace’s backwardness in writing, has not yet so far discouraged me but that I feel the truest pleasures in devoting an hour to her service:  I long as much as possible to make up for the want of her beloved society, and beguile the tedious Moments of absence:  Alas! it is at best but a poor compensation – I could wish to chuse some subject at this time whh might enliven my own Mind, and prove refreshing to yours; there is indeed a theme fully calculated to accomplish these desirable ends, but you well know that the cold and stupid Heart of Man is often wholly insensible to all its power and sweetness – however it is with me, I feel no liberty to converse on any other topic and therefore chuse it by a sort of pleasing necessity – At present my Ear is the Sense whh makes the heaviest complaint, I would gladly keep silence, might I but hear the language of Canaan; the animating words of Truth; the grateful accents of Praise & supplication – when I recall past enjoyments of this kind I languish for a return of them and say with the Poet –

Give me O Lord a place

Within thy blest abode,

Amongst the chosen of thy grace,

The Servants of my God.

but such regret and such desires as these constitute some of the most pleasing part of my experience, the dark side I do not wish to present to a Mind already too much oppress’d; no, my Beloved, I am too tender of your peace even to claim your sympathy.  I have been overwhelmed in deep Waters but there is no depth so great, but the Arm of Almighty Mercy can fathom.  I am beset with Snares, but I trust the same Advocate who pleaded so successfully for Peter is engaged on my behalf ’tis true I am ready at times to give up all for lost but again my hope revives, and I begin to say with the Psalmist “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all my Days and I will dwell in the House of the Lord for ever” – Ah my dear Sister how sweet will be the Haven of eternal rest after such a tempestuous Voyage, & what a mercy is it that however great the Storm we cannot sink with our heavenly Pilot on Board and have we no ground to hope he is – has he never interposed for us and rebuked the tumultuous Waves of trouble with a “Peace be still” let us not suffer the cruel suggestions of Unbelief to rob us of all our comfort, but rather adopt the determination of Job –  “Tho he slay me yet will I trust in him” – I long for a comfortable letter from you that I might have to rejoice on your behalf – I think I should be better able to contend with those troubles to which I am exposed, if I had assurance of your prosperity – remember my friend the exhortation of the Psalmist – “Wait on the Lord be of good courage & he shall strengthen thine Heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.”

   I send you an epistle from dr Mrs Ford whh I trust will animate your spirits; that beloved friend feels the tenderest solicitude on your account – she is aware of the danger to be apprehended from the influence of melancholy on a Mind too nicely susceptible and is fully sensible of the unhappy tendency it will have if yielded to in robbing you of your comfort, but indeed my love you must struggle against this dejection lest it should become altogether habitual – I am more than ever charm’d with the dignified sweetness, patient firmness, and prudent zeal of our Friend; she is at present exercised with many trials tho’ on the whole things are much better than they have been – it is with concern I add that she is three months advanced in pregnancy –

   Another Friend claims attention at this time I mean dr Mrs Sansom who last Saturday became the Mother of a fine little Girl  James was here on Monday to superintend some business whh is in hand for Messrs Dunkin & Brown – he told me that tho’ on the whole she had been better than usual she was very poorly when he left her – I shd rejoice to see her, but know not when that will be in my power –

   Kendall has been discharged some time & I thought we shd have had Sansom again but there have still been difficulties – & I really suspect he is half-hearted in the business:  I had a long chat with him Monday eveng when I was forced to acknowledge that I could not say much in a way of persuasion their present situation being so much more eligible as it respects their best interests –

   They have preaching at Keen’s Sabbath Day Aftn besides Tuesdays – Mr Giles has preach’d there once & as you may suppose gave great satisfaction.  I have not been within their Doors as Mr A–  is more jealous of that than anything else – I feel indeed no inclination to attend the preaching both because I could not like what I shd hear & because there is so much disorder &c: that it would not be likely to afford profit in any way – there is something far more trying than this whh you have no idea of – before my return to Isleworth a Minister had preach’d a few times at Mrs Ford’s and another or two had given them an occasional Sermon I believe all on Week Nights; since my return a Mr Bodington has preach’d and made proposals to come of moonlight evenings & preach here in the after parts of the day – tho’ he was formerly no great favorite of our friends she approves now of his Ministry very much – and there is reason to think there may be preaching there for some time – tho’ I do not form the most pleasing opinion of Mr B– from his particular attachment to Huntington the suspicions whh have I find been entertain’d of his favoring Antinomianism &c:  yet I cannot but feel my Mind exercised respecting attendance on it – not that I think I should be suffer’d to do it at any rate, as I suppose Mr A–  would much rather permit my return to Salisbury tho’ this I am persuaded he would at present submit to with great reluctance as the pleasure resulting from the novelty of my society &c: is not yet over – but the question is how far it is my duty to contend for this privilege and assert a right whh is without doubt indisputable.  There are many circumstances whh make greatly against me one is the extreme obscurity of the plan on whh it is conducted the Room being up Stairs, able I suppose to contain at no rate above 30 persons of whh the family taking in the Sparrows who occupy the Lower rooms make a very considerable part; a few from Brentford with some of the neighbours and two or three serious people in this place make a Congregation and I really believe the generality of the Inhabitants know nothing of the Matter.  Another thing is that a Mr Jackson is expected to take part with Mr Bodington; a Man well known here, but whose Character is strongly impeach’d whh tho’ it is to be hoped unjustly as to criminality, even his friends allow is deservedly so, in point of imprudence – indeed some of the folks here do not scruple to say they don’t like him. A third is, that the afternoon preachg is just at our Dinner Hour, the Eveng begins somewhere between five and six whh is equally unsuitable so that there is no point in whh it would not appear in a very unfavorable light to my Father:  I am much straiten’d and stand greatly in need of divine direction & strength intreat you will pray that these may be afforded –

     I know not whether it be right but I cannot help thinking that there was scarcely ever more manifest tokens of God’s dereliction than are display’d in this Neighbourhood – There is nothing but discord at Troy Town & it is expected to be shut up soon  Hounslow has had no supplies these two Sabbaths and will also be shut up in a short time no attempts for the establishment of a Gospel Church are crown’d with success:  the character of many Professors and what is worse of some Teachers is a disgrace to the Cause, the coldness of some & imprudent zeal of others who are sincere friends of truth are greatly prejudicial but I must forbear – Remember me very affectionately to the dr People & separately as tho’ named to Mr Smith in particular – You have neglected to mention Miss Attwater present kind remembrances to her – respects to Mrs A–

   Adieu my dearly beloved that the God of all grace may establish, strengthen, settle you, and fulfill in you all the good pleasure of His Will and the Work of faith with power is the constant desire & earnest prayer of  – Your very affectionate Friend & Sister

                                 Anne Andrews

Am truly pain’d to send you such trifling presents but you will I know accept the intention

If you have not already beg you will give my dark Gown to our Hannah, as proposed – If you can spare it will thank you to send me a few bits of lace to answer the purpose of Robins &c –

Pray send one word how our little Betsey does – suitable remembrances to Mr & Mrs Harding

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 117-20 (annotated version); Reeves Collection, Box 14.3.(f.), Bodleian Library, Oxford. Address: Miss Andrews. No postmark. For an annotated version of this letter, see The poetic lines at the beginning of the letter are from a hymn by the London Baptist minister, Dr Samuel Stennett, titled ‘The Pleasure of Social Worship’, which appeared as hymn CCCXLI in John Rippon’s A Selection of Hymns from the Best Authors, New Edition (London: Printed for the Editor, [c.1795]). Also note her use of the immensely important phrase for Nonconformity throughout the 17th and 18th centuries: “the language of Canaan.”

Timothy Whelan situates this letter within a larger Dissenting community of women writers (Mary Hays, Maria de Fleury, Maria Grace Andrews Saffery, and Eliza Gould Flower) and individuals from various congregations in which they were associated in “Mary Hays and Dissenting Culture, 1770-1810,” The Wordsworth Circle 50 (Summer 2019): 318-47, especially pp. 327-30.  A selection from that article is apropos for explaining the connections among some of the individuals mentioned above, individuals who can be found in other letters on this site. 

The “Dunkin” is John Dunkin, Sr. (1727-1809), a successful cornfactor like his son, John Dunkin, Jr. The elder Dunkin’s business partner at that time was Thomas Brown, and they conducted their business from warehouses along Shad Thames, the street and wharves adjacent to Gainsford Street.Given the reference to Mr. James in connection with the firm of Dunkin and Brown and the fact that he had “left” Mrs. Sansom prior to his arrival at Isleworth suggests that the Sansoms and Jameses also live in Southwark or at least were known to Hays’s family and friends living there. If so, then the “James” mentioned above is most likely John James, a cornfactor like the Dunkins who also lived in Gainsford Street (UBD 1 [part 2],  191), attended the Baptist chapel there along with Mary Hays and her family, hired John Eccles during the latter’s stay in Gainsford Street in the late 1770s, and whose daughter (along with Mary Dunkin, daughter of John Dunkin, Sr.) was a friend of Mary Hays . . . Anne Andrews’s letter reveals that the business interests of John Dunkin, Sr., and John James had reached Isleworth by 1796, most likely the result of their need as cornfactors to purchase meal from the mill operated by Mr. Andrews. The Sansoms also appear in the Hays-Eccles correspondence on three occasions (July 31, August 15, and August 19, 1779). Given their familiarity with the Hays family and their neighbors, the Ludgaters, another Baptist family living close by Mary Hays in Gainsford Street in whose home John Eccles had boarded during his courtship of Mary Hays, the Sansoms were most likely members of the Baptist chapel in Gainsford Street or one of the nearby Baptist congregations in Southwark.

   Besides these references to members of Hays’s family and church community in Southwark, Anne Andrews’s reference to a Mr. Giles provokes further connections with Mary Hays. John Dunkin, Jr., left the Baptist chapel in Gainsford Street, where he had been a deacon for many years, sometime in the mid-1780s and certainly by the early 1790s due to the Unitarian leanings of Michael Brown, minister at Gainsford Street since 1778. It appears Dunkin joined the congregation at nearby Dean Street, where William Button, his old classmate at John Collett Ryland’s Baptist academy in Northampton, had been ministering since 1775. Most likely Mrs. Hays, who had attended at Gainsford Street since the 1760s, joined with the Dunkins at Dean Street as well. Unfortunately, the church books for the Gainsford Street and Dean Street chapels are no longer extant, which complicates verifying such movements.  John Dunkin was also a Baptist lay minister, preaching in various locations around South London from the 1780s into the early years of the next century, most particularly in Walworth and Camberwell, where he lived between 1792 and 1804, first at the Paragon (where Mary Hays was visited by William Godwin) and later at Champion Hill. Dunkin’s father followed his son’s example in 1793 and, dismayed with the Unitarian proclivities of Michael Brown, began attending with his second wife, Mary Summerhays Dunkin (1740-1806), at the Independent meeting in nearby Jamaica Row, Rotherite, led by John Townsend (1757-1826), a former member of George Whitefield’s Tottenham Court Chapel (the same connection from which Michael Brown had originated) . . .

         At Dean Street, John Dunkin, Jr., would have known many of the church’s leading members. Of particular importance to this discussion is the successful banker and popular Baptist writer William Giles (1743-1825), who in the 1790s lived in the Apollo Buildings along what is now East Street, Walworth, just to the south of Dunkin’s spacious residence at the Paragon. Like the Dunkins (father and son), Giles was a prominent Baptist layman and most likely, like the two Dunkins, occasionally preached in small Baptist meetings in the greater London area, especially groups meeting in homes that had yet to organize into an official congregation, like Mrs. Keene’s home in Isleworth (Giles would easily have known of Henry Keene, his Walworth neighbor and fellow Baptist leader at Maze Pond). (pp. 329-31)

Mr. Keen had previously commenced a weekly prayer meeting in his house, an activity Thomas Scott had frowned upon and which Anne decided not to attend, as noted in one of her letters from 1794. Now, nearly two years later, he is adding a Sunday afternoon service in his house, an event sure to gain the disapprobation of the Scotts. The preaching at Keen’s appears to be primarily Methodist. The new preaching at Mrs. Ford’s, however, is being conducted by some men associated with William Huntington, a dissenting minister who had been for many years a phenomenon in London, establishing several chapels in the greater London area and becoming one of the most controversial nonconformist preachers of his day. The High Calvinist Huntington (1745-1813), a former coalheaver, was accused by the evangelical Calvinists of being an Antinomian. The ‘self-called’ preacher’s largest ministry in London was at the Providence Chapel (1782-1810) in Tichfield Street, where he preached to upwards of 3000 hearers, earning an exorbitant annual income that approached £2000. He would later build other chapels in the London area, ministering to all simultaneously. He was despised by the Particular Baptists and entered into pamphlet wars with Rowland Hill, Caleb Evans, John Ryland, Jr., and the Baptist poet and polemicist, Maria de Fleury. Though conversion by grace alone was a fundamental belief of all Calvinists, including antinomians, Huntington also contended that believers under the dispensation of grace were free from the requirements of the law. To de Fleury and other evangelical Calvinists, Huntington preached a gospel of “easy” grace which absolved the Christian of any obligation to obey God’s moral law, thereby granting the believer unlimited liberty in his or her behavior, a liberty evangelical Calvinists were convinced would inevitably lead to licentiousness. Nevertheless, Huntington’s antinomianism enticed large numbers of hearers away from London’s Particular Baptist and Independent congregations and into his Providence Chapel, as well as his other chapels in Monkwell Street and Horsleydown. For more on Huntington, see T. Wright, The Life of William Huntington, SS. (London: Farncombe, 1909); for Huntington and Maria de Fleury, see Timothy Whelan, “‘For the Hand of a Woman, has Levell'd the Blow": Maria de Fleury's Pamphlet War with William Huntington, 1787-1791,’” Women’s Studies 36 (2007), pp. 431-454.

These early attempts at forming some semblance of a nonconformist meeting, possibly Baptist, at Troy Town and Hounslow (both places not far from Isleworth) would not come to fruition. Troy Town, especially, was fraught with problems by 1795. As one historian wrote of Brentford and Troy Town, ‘many 18th-century travellers saw only the handsome shops, Market Place, the Butts, orchards and market gardens, and a few aristocratic houses at Old Brentford. Heavy traffic on the highway, however, churning up mud or creating dust, had already given much of Brentford a reputation for dirtiness. Most inhabitants lived in weatherboarded cottages, crammed into yards and alleys such as Spring Gardens and sometimes constituting districts such as Troy Town. Many cottages were ramshackle huts in 1765 and not liable for rates in 1786. From the Surrey side of the Thames they were an eyesore: hence the remarks that Brentford in 1765 was the “ugliest and filthiest place in England” and that in 1807 Kew Palace looked on to the worst part of Old Brentford. That was before industrial growth had added to Brentford's unsavoury character.’ See M. A. Hicks, ‘Ealing and Brentford’, in A History of the County of Middlesex, Volume 7, ed. T.F.T. Baker (London: Printed for the Institute of Historical Research, by Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 113-20.

The Mrs. Attwater mentioned above is Mary Drewitt Attwater (1746-1812) of Nunton, a small village next to Bodenham and about three miles from Salisbury. She was the widow of Gay Thomas Attwater, brother of Jane Attwater Blatch; Miss Attwater is most likely her eldest daughter, Sarah (1765-1830), who never married and remained with her mother in Nunton. All attended Brown Street in Salisbury.