Joseph Horsey

Joseph Horsey (1737-1802) was from Yeovil and his family worshiped in the Baptist church there, along with the Bullocks, relations of Mary Steele. He moved to Portsea at an early age and joined the Baptist congregation at Meeting-house Alley under the Rev. John Lacy. ‘Portsea’ is the name of the island situated between Langstone Harbour and Portsmouth Harbour, to which Portsmouth, Hampshire, belongs. Portsea is still a distinct section of Portsmouth, the only island city in the United Kingdom. Horsey operated his own business for several years, but in 1773 decided to become a Baptist minister. Upon the death of Rev. Lacy, Horsey was chosen pastor of the church, but not all the members were in agreement, resulting in a group leaving in 1782 and forming a new meeting in White’s-row, Portsmouth.  Thomas Dunscombe, future husband of Mary Steele, delivered the ordination sermon for Horsey in May 1782, along with Caleb Evans of Bristol and William Clarke of Unicorn-yard, Southwark.  He remained there until his death in 1802. His daughter, Elizabeth (1762-1798), 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. Horsey often preached at Broughton and Salisbury, and appears frequently in Jane Attwater’s diary. He later moved to Portsmouth, where he was baptized and joined the Baptist meeting in Meeting-house Alley John Saffery was a member of Horsey’s church and married his daughter, Elizabeth, prior to his becoming the minister at Salisbury in 1790, after the death of Rev. Henry Philips, a relation by marriage to Horsey. Maria Grace Andrews and her sister Anne visited regularly in the Horsey home in the mid-1790s, as correspondence below reveals. They were friends with Esther Horsey, who appears frequently in their correspondence. According to John Shoveller’s Memoirs of the late Rev. Joseph Horsey, of Portsea (Portsea: printed and sold by James Horsey, 1803), only two daughters were borne by Horsey’s third wife, Esther Wickenden, after their marriage in 1773. One daughter, Sarah, married her cousin, James Horsey (1773-1816) of Crewkerne, in 1795. The other daughter also married her cousin, Joseph Horsey of Portsea, also in the 1790s. Esther is most likely the sister of James and and sister-in-law of Sarah Horsey. The Wickendens were staunch members of Horsey’s church in Portsmouth, and a Joseph Wickenden, Mrs Horsey’s nephew, left Portsmouth for London in the summer of 1799, joining the Baptist meeting at Maze Pond on 4 August 1799. On 7 July 1800 he was elected a deacon, an office he held until 17 October 1813. He and his business partner, John Fenn, were linendrapers at 78 Cornhill, both men known to Richard Ryland (see below) and Benjamin and Eliza Flower in Cambridge. John Horsey of Crewkerne was the son of James Horsey of the same place, the latter the brother of Joseph Horsey of Portsea. Both James and his son John were deacons for many years in the Baptist church at Crewkerne. Another relation, Thomas Horsey (1782-1865) was a chemist in Taunton and also a staunch Baptist. He married Ann Horsey, the daughter of Richard Horsey of Wellington; later he and his son-in-law would found the Baptist church at Silver Street, Taunton, in 1814, of which Richard Horsey would be the initial pastor. See ‘Memorial of the Late Thomas Horsey, Esq., of Taunton’, Baptist Magazine 58 (1866), 174-9.For more on Joseph Wickenden, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794-1808 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2008),  225, 237, 265, and 363. For more on James Horsey, Jr., see his obituary in The Baptist Magazine 9 (1817), 104-6; see also UBD (1791), vol. 4, p. 558.