Goes to Nantwich--Starts a School--Is appointed a Tutor in the
Warrington Academy--Life at Warrington.
Priestley left Needham Market in 1758. He had been there three years,
and he was in his twenty-fifth year when he entered upon his work at
Nantwich. Of this place he had always the happiest recollections. The
meeting-house, as we learn from Partridge's _Historical Account of
Nantwich_, 1774, was a good, decent building, "to which appertains a
convenient house for the minister." Whether he actually occupied this
house is uncertain. One account states that he boarded with Mr John
Eddowes, a grocer, and sometimes showed his agility and sprightliness by
leaping over the counter. Eddowes was described by Priestley as a very
sociable and sensible man, and as he was fond of music his guest was--
"Induced to learn to play a little on the English flute, as the
easiest instrument;" and, he continues, "though I was never a
proficient in it, my playing contributed more or less to my amusement
many years of my life."
And he adds,--
"I would recommend the knowledge and practice of music to all studious
persons; and it will be better for them if, like myself, they should
have no very fine ear or exquisite taste, as by this means they will
be more easily pleased and be less apt to be offended when the
performances they hear are but indifferent."
At Nantwich he found the people good-natured and friendly, and happily
free from those controversies which had been the topics of almost every
conversation in Suffolk. He had indeed little mind for them himself. His
congregation never exceeded sixty persons, and a great proportion of
them were travelling Scotchmen, men, he says, of very good sense, and,
what he thought extraordinary, not one of them at all Calvinistical. As
there were few children in the congregation there was little scope for
exertion with respect to his duty in catechising.
As the duties of his office left him ample opportunity to turn the
active powers of his mind to account, he again attempted to establish a
school, and this time with a success far beyond his anticipations.
"My school," he states, "consisted of about thirty boys, and I had a
separate room for about half a dozen young ladies. Thus I was employed
from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon, without any
interval except one hour for dinner, and I never gave a holiday on any
consideration, the red-letter days, as they are called, excepted. I
had, therefore, but little leisure for reading or for improving myself
in any way, except what necessarily arose from my employment."
Priestley, in truth, was an excellent teacher, and with the success
which his efforts brought him there passed away the last traces of the
aversion with which he had entered on that calling. He made it his study
to regulate his business as a schoolmaster in the best manner, and he
was able to say with truth that in no school was more business done, or
with more satisfaction, either to the master or the scholars, than in
this school of his.
He was no longer haunted, as at Needham, with the fear of debt, and he
was able to add to his stock of books and to gratify his wish to possess
some philosophical instruments, such as a small air-pump and an
electrical machine, which he taught his pupils to use and to keep in
order, and by entertaining their parents and friends with experiments he
added greatly to the reputation of his school. At that time, however, he
had no leisure to make any original observations.
Such leisure as he had he gave to literature, recomposing his
_Observations on the Character and Reasoning of the Apostle Paul_, which
he began at Needham, and compiling an English grammar for the use of his
school, on a new plan. This work, which was printed in 1761, had a
considerable reputation in its day. David Hume acknowledged to Griffith,
the bookseller, that he was made sensible of the Gallicisms and
peculiarities of his style on reading it.
Priestley remained three years at Nantwich. His success there as a
teacher induced the trustees of the newly-founded academy at Warrington
to reconsider the desirability of engaging him as tutor in the Classical
Languages and in what used to be called Polite Literature. His name had
already been mentioned in connection with the Warrington Academy by his
friend, Clark of Daventry, at the time of its establishment and whilst
he was at Needham.
"But," says Priestley, "Mr (afterwards Dr) Aikin, whose qualifications
were superior to mine, was justly preferred to me." On the death, on
March 5, 1761, of Dr John Taylor of Norwich, the learned author of _A
Hebrew Concordance_ and other theological works, and a well-known
classical scholar, the head of the academy and its tutor of divinity, Dr
Aikin was appointed to succeed him, and Priestley was invited to take Dr
Aikin's place.
"This," says Priestley, "I accepted, though my school promised to be
more gainful to me. But my employment at Warrington would be more
liberal and less painful. But, as I told the persons who brought me
the invitation, I should have preferred the office of teaching the
Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, for which I had at that time a
great predilection."
Priestley's removal to Warrington, in September 1761, was one of the
turning-points in his career, and no single circumstance in it exercised
a greater influence on his life and fortunes. "The Warrington Academy
for the education of young men of every religious denomination for the
Christian ministry, or as laymen," and the men who formed its tutors,
played a notable part in the history of Nonconformity in England. In
Taylor of Norwich; in Aikin, the father of the well-known physician and
lecturer on Natural History, and of Anna Lætitia, better known as Mrs
Barbauld, the poetess; in John Reinhold Forster, the naturalist, who
accompanied Cook in his second voyage; in Nicholas Clayton, who
succeeded Aikin as divinity tutor; in William Enfield, the author of the
_History of Liverpool_ and the well-known compiler of _The Speaker_, who
afterwards became _Rector Academicæ_; in Pendlebury Houghton, and in
Gilbert Wakefield, the accomplished editor of _Lucretius_, Priestley had
for colleagues or successors as eminent a set of teachers as any place
of learning at that time could boast of. It was at the Warrington
Academy, the successor of the older academies belonging to the English
Presbyterian body at Findern and Kendal, and the direct ancestor of the
Manchester College at Oxford, that the free thought of English
Presbyterianism first began to crystallise into the Unitarian theology,
and for a time it was the centre of literary taste and activity, and of
political liberalism of the district in which it was placed--the
Areopagus in the Athens of Lancashire, as it was called.
The _Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire_
(vol xi. p. I, 1858-59) contain "A Historical Sketch of Warrington
Academy," by Mr Henry A. Bright, compiled in great measure from a parcel
of papers, letters and memoranda which had belonged to the Rev. J.
Seddon, and which had been rescued from the hands of a Liverpool
cheesemonger, who was using them for the ordinary purposes of his shop.
Among these papers were letters of Priestley, Kippis, Aikin and others
of lesser note, all of interest as throwing light on the history of the
academy. I am indebted to Mr Bright's paper for the following account of
the character and fortunes of the academy. Mr John Seddon, we learn, was
its virtual founder. The letters referred to, as well as the testimony
of contemporaries, bear witness to "the concern which he had ever
expressed for its support, honour, success; the indefatigable pains
which he took for this purpose; the indifference which he showed to fame
or censure, to good or evil report, so that he might serve the general
designs of the institution."
Seddon, although described as "a dullish person," must have been a man
of considerable pertinacity, patience and resource, as shown by the
manner in which he steered his venture through the difficulties and
dangers incident to its establishment, for he had to contend with the
doubts, hesitation and luke-warmness of its professed supporters, and
the "pleasing spirit of jealous rivalry" which existed between Liverpool
and Manchester as to its locality. Liverpool advanced seven "excellent
reasons" why the academy should _not_ be settled at Warrington; of these
one of the Manchester party writes:--"Some of them are _false_, others
_dubious_, and all, whether true or not, _trifling_ and _impertinent_."
This "retort courteous" was naturally followed by "Remarks on a letter
from the gentlemen in Manchester to the gentlemen in Liverpool,
subscribers to the intended Academy," in which "the gentlemen in
Liverpool" lose their temper most completely. Every fourth word in the
remarks is italicised. "The gentlemen of Manchester," are stigmatised as
"the authors of contention and division," and are subjected to much
scathing sarcasm. Evidently the omens were not very propitious, but the
wordy warfare eventually spent itself. Mr Seddon got his way; the
trustees ultimately settled down to business and on June 30, 1757, the
academy was duly inaugurated.
Its first home, immortalised by the lines in which Mrs Barbauld bids us
"Mark where its simple front yon mansion rears,
The nursery of men for future years,"
was described, in terms eminently suggestive of the incomparable Mr
George Robins, as "a range of buildings" with "a considerable extent of
garden ground, and a handsome terrace walk on the banks of the Mersey,
possessing altogether a respectable collegiate appearance." The "ugly,
mean, old brick house," no longer
"A dim old mansion, hidden half-away
From a dull world grown careless of its fame,"
has been transformed into a place of quiet, old-world dignity, and is
now turned to uses worthy of its fame and in harmony with its
traditions.
In spite of the seeming unanimity of the trustees, and the zeal and
energy of their secretary, Mr Seddon, the fortunes of the Academy were
ill-starred from the outset. Dr Taylor, one of the first Arians who
ministered to the English Presbyterians, and an erudite and accomplished
man--an author so widely read in his day that he is even mentioned by
Burns in his Epistle to John Goudie:
"'Tis you and Taylor are the chief,
Wha are to blame for this mischief"--
was ill fitted to direct the precarious existence of the enterprise, and
the old scholar must have sighed often for the free and independent
position, and the dear home among an affectionate people, which he had
sacrificed in leaving Norwich for Warrington. Dissensions arose, in the
midst of which Dr Taylor died.
Dr Taylor, as already stated, was succeeded as theological tutor by Dr
Aikin, who retained that position until his death in 1780.
"Dr Aikin," says Gilbert Wakefield, "was a gentleman whose endowments
as a man and as a scholar it is not easy to exaggerate by
panegyric.... His intellectual attainments were of a very superior
quality indeed. His acquaintance with all true evidences of
revelation, with morals, politics and metaphysics, was most accurate
and extensive. Every path of polite literature had been traversed by
him, and traversed with success. He understood the Hebrew and French
languages to perfection, and had an intimacy with the best authors of
Greece and Rome superior to what I have ever known in any Dissenting
minister from my own experience."
Under his judicious guidance matters now went more smoothly: indeed, the
eighteen or twenty years which followed constituted the golden age of
the Academy, and the brightest and happiest of these were the six years
of Priestley's stay.
In the year following Taylor's death the academy moved from the house by
"Mersey's gentle current," then, we are told, an uncontaminated stream
noted for its salmon, to the new Academy, which is described as a brick
building in a quiet and secluded court, with stone copings and a clock
and bell turret in the centre, of no great architectural beauty, but not
unpleasing with its quaint, old-world look. This, too, was celebrated in
verse by Mrs Barbauld:
"Lo! there the seat where science loved to dwell,
Where liberty her ardent spirit breathed."
It exists no longer: municipal improvements have swept it away, and all
that remains of Academy Place are the houses at right angles to it where
dwelt Priestley and Enfield. As to emoluments, the tutors had each £100
a year from the subscription fund, and "with respect to dwelling houses,
are to be at their own expenses." Poor students were exempted from the
payment of fees, but richer ones paid two guineas yearly to each of the
tutors, who might take boarders into their houses at £15 per annum for
those who had two months' vacation, and £18 per annum for those who had
no vacation, exclusive of "tea, washing, fire and candles."
If the living at Warrington was plain and the thinking high, there was a
degree of decorous gaiety, of refinement, of social charm, "easy, blithe
and debonnair," pervading the little community, which, as may be gleaned
from the memoirs and reminiscences of the period, impressed and
delighted everyone who was witness of it. Among those who had pleasant
memories of the place were John Howard, the philanthropist, whose works
on prison reform were printed by Eyres of Warrington under Dr Aikin's
superintendence;[6] William Roscoe, the author of the _Lives of Lorenzo
de Medici_ and _Leo the Tenth_, who first learned to care for botany
from his visits to the Warrington Botanical Gardens, and whose first
work, _Mount Pleasant_, was also printed there; Pennant, the naturalist,
whose _British Zoology_ and _Tour in Scotland_ first saw the light at
Warrington; Currie, the biographer of Burns, etc.
"The tutors in my time," wrote Priestley--("they knew better," said
Miss Lucy Aikin, "than to usurp the title of _Professors_")--"lived in
the most perfect harmony. We drank tea together every Saturday, and
our conversation was equally instructive and pleasing. I often thought
it not a little extraordinary that four persons who had no previous
knowledge of each other should have been brought to unite in
conducting such a scheme as this, and be all zealous _Necessarians_ as
we were. We were all, likewise, Arians; and the only subject of much
consequence on which we differed respected the doctrine of atonement,
concerning which Dr Aikin held some obscure notions. The only Socinian
in the neighbourhood was Mr Seddon of Manchester, and we all wondered
at him."
Miss Lucy Aikin, the granddaughter of Priestley's colleague, the niece
of Mrs Barbauld, and the accomplished authoress of _Memoirs of the
Courts of Queen Elizabeth_, and the biographer of Addison, has left us a
little sketch of that society in which the early years of her girlhood
were spent.
"I have often thought," she says, "with envy of that society. Neither
Oxford nor Cambridge could boast of brighter names in literature or
science than several of those Dissenting tutors--humbly content, in an
obscure town and on a scanty pittance, to cultivate in themselves, and
communicate to a rising generation, those mental acquirements and
moral habits which are their own exceeding great reward. They and
theirs lived together like one large family, and in the facility of
their intercourse they found large compensation for its deficiency in
luxury and splendour."
But we learn there were other attractions in the Warrington circle
besides the tutors and their philosophy.
"We have a knot of lasses just after your own heart," writes Mrs
Barbauld (then Miss Aikin) to her friend Miss Belsham, "as merry,
blithe and gay as you would wish them, and very smart and clever--two
of them are the Miss Rigbys."
We are further told the beautiful Miss Rigbys, whose father was
"provider of the Commons,"
"made wild work with the students' hearts; and the trustees had to
insist that they must be removed from the house if any students stayed
there. And so for a time they were, but Mrs Rigby's health fortunately
broke down, and the young ladies were brought back again.
"Rousseau's _Heloise_, too, had much to answer for, and at its
appearance (so Miss Aikin tells me), 'everybody instantly fell in love
with everybody'; and then it was that our poetess, after winning the
hearts of half the students, some one or two of whom for her sake
lived (I am informed) 'sighing and single,' was carried off to
Palgrave by that queer little man whom henceforth she was to 'honour
and obey.'"
On another occasion she wrote:--
"Somebody was bold enough to talk of getting up private theatricals.
This was a dreadful business! All the wise and grave, the whole
tutorhood, cried out, 'It must not be!' The students, the Rigbys and,
I must add, my aunt, took the prohibition very sulkily, and my aunt's
Ode to Wisdom was the result."
Those wicked Miss Rigbys must have made the life of that "dullish
person," Mr Seddon, who acted as _Rector Academiæ_, and who was
responsible for law and order, well-nigh insupportable. On one
occasion--perhaps it was to celebrate their return--they asked some of
the students to supper.
"Hams and trifles, and potted beef and other luxuries, were placed
before them, and the students were asked to help the ladies. But the
hams were made of wood, and the trifles were plates of soap-suds, and
the potted beef was potted sawdust, and the other luxuries were
equally tempting and equally tantalising."
Nor were the Rector's feelings likely to be soothed by such letters as
the following from Mr Samuel Vaughan of Bristol, sent during the Long
Vacation, complaining bitterly of the disappointment he felt as regards
the Academy, and the "too great latitude allowed the students":--
"My son Ben's expenses during ten months' absence amounted to £112,
and Billy's to £59, 12s.; this should nearly suffice for the
University, and of itself would to many be a sufficient objection, but
in my opinion the consequence of the expense is abundantly more
pernicious, as it naturally leads to Levity, a love of pleasure,
dissipation and affectation of smartness; diverts the attention, and
prevents the necessary application to serious thoughts and Study. When
I sent my Sons so great a distance, it was with a view to preserve
them from the reigning contagion of a dissipated age, to imbibe good
Morals, acquire knowledge, and to obtain a manly and solid way of
thinking and acting, but they are returned with high Ideas of modern
refinements, of dress and external accomplishments, which if ever
necessary, yet resumed by them much too soon. As one instance, they
think it a Sight to appear without having their hair Frissened, and
this must be done by a dresser, even upon the Sabbath. No person can
more wish for, and encourage an open and Liberal way of thinking and
acting than myself, yet do I think that day should be kept with
Ancient Solemnity, for to say the least, the reverse gives offence to
many serious good People, and exhibits an Ill example at a time when
Religion is at so low an ebb as to stand in need of every tie and prop
(whether real or imaginary) for its support, therefore any relaxation
or Innovation under sanction of such a seminary as yours may have the
most pernicious tendency, for when restraints even in unessentials are
removed they are frequently a clue or gradation to the fashionable
levity of the Age and Irreligion."
That the _mauvais quart d'heure_ under the ancestral roof was not
without its chastening influence on the improvident Ben is evident from
the fact that the same post brought the perturbed Rector a letter from
him protesting that--
"none of us have been vicious but only gay.... Our recreations have
been innocent though expensive, but they imagine that they cannot be
expensive without being criminal."
However, he expresses contrition and promises amendment, fears that he
has encroached on Mr Seddon's goodness and forbearance, and that his
conduct may have acted injuriously on the Academy, etc., etc., and winds
up by saying that Mr Wilkes will probably get a pardon from the Crown,
and that he (Mr Vaughan) does not believe that he ever wrote the _North
Briton_--No. 45.
Alas! Mr Benjamin Vaughan's contrition was very short-lived, for next
year that "affectionate but distressed pupil" had to confess to the
Rector that he dare not show his accounts to his father.
"My father, last year, was extremely angry at an account I gave him of
£112 spent at Warrington--the present sum is £179. Bill disclaims all
share in the expenses above £60. _I_ then have £119 to answer for; _I_
who promised such a strict amendment, and who had as many excuses last
year as at present. I had more journeys, more music, and yet,
according to his knowledge, have spent £7 more in my present year of
pennance, repentance, etc.!"
And yet Mr Benjamin Vaughan became a useful member of society, had a
seat in the House of Commons, and had the honour of having dedicated to
him the _Lectures on History and General Policy_, to which is prefixed
an "Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life,"
to which he had listened as a pupil and which Priestley published in
1788.
Whatever may have been Mr Seddon's worries he had at least the
consolation of a loving wife, although, it is to be feared, she too
suffered much at the hands of those terrible Miss Rigbys, and even from
Miss Aikin, who was somewhat of a quiz. The daughter of an equerry to
Frederick Prince of Wales, she was a very fine lady, and, says Mr
Bright, "spelt abominably."
"Among the Seddon papers is a letter which her husband wrote to her
during a short absence in 1766. On the back of his letter Mrs Seddon
prepares a rough draft of an answer to her truant husband. The word
which puzzles her most is 'adieu,' and she has to spell it over three
times before she can determine whether the 'e' comes before the 'i,'
or the 'i' before the 'e.' The knotty point is at last settled and the
fair copy written out; and this, too, her careful husband put away and
preserved among his papers."
I cannot resist quoting the last paragraph of this most charming but
laborious letter.
"Let me hear of you as often as you can; for it does me more good, and
has a much stronger _a_ffect upon my spirits than either e_a_ther or
salvolatiley. Adieu, my dear, _e_xcept the sincerest and best wishes
for your health and happiness, of one whose greatest pleasure in this
world is in subscribing herself your truely affectionate wife.--J.
Seddon.
"_P.S._--I shall want cash before you return; what must I doe? Pray
put me in a way how to replenish. Remember me propperly to everybody."
We cannot, however, concern ourselves at greater length with the life at
the Warrington Academy, or dwell much longer on the fortunes of that
seat of learning. To do full justice to the theme would need indeed the
witty pen which in "Cranford" delineated the social life of a
neighbouring town with such inimitable grace and charm.
The worthy Mr Seddon died in 1770, and was succeeded as Rector by Dr
Enfield, a man distinguished for elegance of taste and sound literary
judgment, and who, on the death, ten years later, of Dr Aikin, became
chief tutor. For various reasons, which it is unnecessary to state here,
the trustees eventually decided to remove the Academy to Manchester, and
Warrington knew it no more after 1786.
During the twenty-nine years of its existence in the latter place some
400 pupils had passed through it--many of them noteworthy men in their
day, such as Percival; the Aikins; Rigby of Norwich; Estlin of Bristol;
Sergeant Heywood; Hamilton Rowan, the Irish rebel; Malthus, the
political economist; Lord Ennismore; Sir James Carnegie of Southesk; Mr
Henry Beaton, Mr Pendlebury Houghton and Dr Crompton.
"In looking over the students' names," says Mr Bright, "I cannot but
notice how many of their descendants are still the staunch supporters
of the liberal dissent which was the distinguishing characteristic of
the Academy. Some families, like the Willoughbys of Parkham, whose
last lord was educated at Warrington, have now died out; others, like
the Aldersons of Norwich, of which family the late judge was a member,
have seceded to the Church of England. But we still find united the
lineal and the theological successors of the Academy's students in the
Rigbys, the Martineaus, and the Taylors of Norwich, the Heywoods and
the Yateses of Liverpool, the Potters of Manchester, the Gaskells of
Wakefield, the Brights of Bristol, the Shores of Sheffield, the
Hibberts of Hyde, and the Wedgwoods of Etruria."