1743 December 3 Towgood to Stennett

Micaiah Towgood, Exeter, to Joseph Stennett, London, 3 December 1743.

Rev.d Sir

         The unhappy Sufferers whose Case this printed Letter represents, being Objects truely worthy Comiseration; we beg leave, at their desire, to recomend [sic] them to your Compassion; & to request your good Offices in recomending them to such as may be disposed to contribute to their Relief.[3]

[Signed]           Jo: Walrond

                                    John Lavington

                                    James Green

                                    Jos. Hallett.

                                    Edrd Jones

                                    Mic. Towgood

Text: Eng. MS. 344, f. 73, John Rylands University Library of Manchester. The accompanying letter representing the “unhappy Sufferers” is missing. Most likely they were aging Particular Baptist ministers experiencing pecuniary distress and had applied to Stennett and the Particular Baptist Fund in London for assistance. What is interesting is the fact that all the ministers who signed the above letter were Presbyterians, both Arians and Calvinists. John Walrond, after a stint as minister at the Presbyterian chapel in Ottery St. Mary, served as minister of the Bow Meeting (Presbyterian) in Exeter from 1729 until his death in 1755. At Bow, he joined his friend, John Lavington (1690?-1759), who had been a minister there since 1715. Lavington, a close friend and correspondent of the Baptist poet and hymn writer, Anne Steele (1717-78) of Broughton, would remain at Bow until his death in 1759. It was primarily Lavington, along with Walrond (then at Ottery) and some other Dissenting ministers in Exeter and Devon, who led the orthodox ministers in their attack against James Peirce and Joseph Hallett II, forcing the latter two out of their positions at the James Meeting in 1719 because of their Unitarian beliefs (see letter 22). Joseph Hallett III (1691/2-1744), son of Joseph Hallett II (d. 1722), was trained in his father’s academy in Exeter and ordained in 1715. When his father lost his position at the James Meeting, the younger Hallett went with his father as his assistant at the new Mint Meeting, later serving as minister there from 1722 until his death in April 1744, about five months after the date of the above letter. James Green was a minister at the James Meeting in Exeter from 1724 to 1749. See Jerom Murch, A History of the Presbyterian and General Baptist Churches in the West of England (London: Hunter, 1835), 386-404, 412.