Isaacs and Pattissons of Witham

The Isaacs and Pattissons of Witham, Essex, were two important families in HCR’s life. HCR’s aunt, Mary Robinson, married Thomas Isaac, a grocer in Witham, Essex. Among the Isaac’s children were two sons, Thomas (b. 1767), who eventually settled at Bath, and James (b. 1771), who lived all his life at Witham. Their daughter, Mary (b. 1765), married the eldest son of William Lincolne, HCR’s former pastor at the Presbyterian congregation at Bury St Edmunds.  In September 1793 Thomas Isaac, Jr., married the daughter of Jacob Pattisson of Witham. Her brother, William Pattisson (1775-1848), became one of HCR’s closest friends; thereafter HCR would pay frequent visits to the homes of both the Isaacs and the Pattisons, though, as the above passage suggests, the orthodoxy of both families was often at odds with HCR’s heterodoxy. For more on HCR and the Pattissons, see Clyde Binfield, So Down to Prayers: Studies in English Nonconformity 1780-1920 (London: J. M. Dent, 1977); Penelope J. Corfield and Chris Evans, eds, Youth and Revolution in the 1790s: Letters of William Pattisson, Thomas Amyot and Henry Crabb Robinson (Phoenix Mill, UK: Alan Sutton, 1996).