Caroline Whitaker, Bratton, to Jane Attwater Blatch and Gay Thomas Attwater, Nunton [c. 1795].

   I have long been waiting for a more composed mind to answer my dr Sisters 2 last letters little thinking of the confusion that awaited us may we be still & know ye Lord reigneth He must do all his pleasure our Sins surely as a nation & as individuals have long called for vengeance the Lord seems to be pouring out in different ways the vials of his wrath – Lord what is man as a bubble before thy wrath  pitty our frailties humble our hearts & yet in mercy spare an ungrateful people who has long boasted of ye armies of Old England but now behold the struggling emaciated few escaping from a dreadful country where they had no business to go to fight for Pope & his employer.

   O my dr friend publick affairs appear indeed awful. The end is uncertain may ye Ld enable [us] to stand still and see his Salvation & may he yet in ye midst of difficulties stretch forth his arm of mercy. Happy those that are gone to rest ah Happy they when God is ye Lord, did you my dr Sister sit where I do & behold ye great devastation the mighty waters has caused and to hear the affecting calamitys of our neighbours is indeed piercing to a feeling mind.  Yet the goodness of ye Lord has so highly favored us   me the most forgetful ungrateful & most undeserving of all creatures  O for a thankful heart to love him more & serve him better.  Every hour brings some fresh account of sorrow  we can now go over the bridge wch [has] been impossible I think 40 hours & indeed now tremble to see carriages &c pass as the < > this side ye blind house are all down & ye pavement beat up Mr Timbrels house appears like ye desolations of ye flood & had you seen them wading over here in the cart we fearing the overturn, for they found their house to shake & part of it fall in that they was glad at last to make their escape any how O when the great & tremendous day of ye Ld come may we be prepared to meet our God safely to guide us to the port of rest, as dr good Mrs Timbrel often said here it is not our rest. Ah said she I am not elated with this house I want a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens purchased by my blessed saviour &c  happy Spirit fled before those fiery watry trials.

   Mr Ingersoll has just been here he says he suppose ten thousand pound wont repay the damage done in the whole town – poor Mr Eyles little all is swept away & in it a great deal of Mr Everets wood. Mr Collins his house bursted & Beer &c all gone  Spanders also & what is worse he was collector & had in house above £800 but can’t find but 4 pray that those tryals may be sanctified that ye present humiliation may end in sanctification and our neighbours brought to know ye Lord –

   How little do we know ye heart of man well may ye apostle speak of it as desperately &c[v] the other night on sabbath yesterday morng my Jane saw 2 men come out of Mr T–s garden with pieces of timber wch made us wish them to set watchers & they detected ye vilains approaching the premises – I hope 2 are known, & tho the law cannot make them suffer, the frowns of men I hope will make them fret.

   So many people calling every minute forbid me saying any thing I ought  think not these bustles take our mind fm you dr Miss Timbrel seems in the midst of hers tenderly to enter into ye sorrows & bid me not be so anxious about a particular deficiency in the beloved object of our cares for she herself near long in that way but when strength returned then all appeard as usual  this amidst all our cares yesterday yield a little gleam of hope for the chief object of our solicitude may ye Lord yet appear & cause his mercy to shine in supporting & yet restoring grace – our affectionate remembrance to the beloved darling of all our hearts & her dr Parents O that we could do or say any thing of any use command it but alas frail is human aid the mighty waters we cannot stay nor reverse the decrees of the most high Lord  enable us to fall into thy hands as clay into the Potters hand[vi] do with us for us & by us what is most for thy glory & our everlasting comfort so that we are prepared to meet our God and fitted ever to be with ye Ld

                     Adieu my dr Bror & Sisters

May I be permited to join you whose sin & sorrow enters not O may I be permited to welcome each near & dr to us to the happy scenes of bliss that for Jesus sake I trust await us all.

While speaking of dismals I must tell you one anecdote of a pleasing nature at Bath a little infant in one of the houses that fell swam out in ye puddle & was saved but a man swam into the flood for it  surely he must be called Moses.

I fear to direct this to my dr Sister at B., as I think she will suppose I am overcome that is hinted but with the surrounding providences the newspaper accounts last night of our armies &c greatly wrote on my mind.

Sorry to hear Mr < > continues poorly – could not have thought our dr Cousin Sarah could have gone [in] such weather but I think I have heard tis not <  >as well

Text: Reeves Collection, Box 19/2/g, Bodleian Library, Oxford.  For an annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 8, pp. 165-67 (incorrectly dated). This letter dates from c. 1795, not 1792 (as I thought previously in 2011), composed after the initial campaigns by the British against the French in Europe as part of the First Coalition. Food prices were high in 1795, tensions were high among the poor and working classes, and rumours and fears of a French invasion from without and radical revolution from within circulated widely at this time. Apparently, Bodenham had also just experienced a serious flood.