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SOME FURTHER CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN RICHARD BAXTER AND KATHERINE GELL*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2010

KEITH CONDIE
KEITH CONDIE*
Affiliation:
Moore Theological College and the University of Sydney
*
Moore Theological College, 1 King St, NewtownNSW 2042, Australia[email protected]
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Abstract

The puritan pastor and writer, Richard Baxter, and a member of a prominent Derbyshire family, Katherine Gell, exchanged a series of letters between 1655 and 1658. This article highlights the existence of three further items of correspondence in this exchange, located in the Derbyshire Record Office, hitherto believed not to be extant. The additional three letters are all penned by Baxter and include his replies to her first two epistles (dated 28 July 1655 and 4 September 1655) as well as a reply to a non-extant Gell letter (dated 31 July 1658). The correspondence provides valuable insights into Baxter's pastoral methods and the nature of puritan piety. The first two items draw attention to the importance of the dimension of duty within Baxter's pastoral agenda; while expressed in a context of warmth and encouragement, he believes that Gell will find a measure of resolution to her spiritual struggles by careful attention to the obligations of Christian living. The third letter, written some years later, after Baxter has discovered that Gell suffers from melancholia, is couched in a gentler tone and reveals a more reciprocal dimension to their relationship.

Type
Communication
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 165 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

I would like to express my appreciation to the Archivists at the Derbyshire Record Office for their assistance in answering my inquiries and providing transcripts of the correspondence.

References

1 For Baxter, see N. H. Keeble, ‘Baxter, Richard (1615–1691)’, in Oxford dictionary of national biography (ODNB) (Oxford, 2004).

2 William Lamont, ‘Gell, Katherine (bap. 1624, d. 1671)’, in ODNB.

3 The correspondence is available in microform from World Microfilms, POB 35488, St John's Wood, London nw8 6wd (www.microworld.uk.com/microfilms.asp), entitled The correspondence of Richard Baxter (1615–1691). A superb resource for the study of the correspondence is N. H. Keeble and Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Calendar of the correspondence of Richard Baxter (2 vols., Oxford, 1991).

4 See, for example, Lamont, ‘Katherine Gell’; William L. Lamont, Richard Baxter and the millennium (London and Totowa, NJ, 1979), pp. 34–7, 138–9; Alison Searle, ‘“My souls anatomiste”: Richard Baxter, Katherine Gell and letters of the heart’, Early Modern Literary Studies, 12 (2006), pp. 1–26; and John F. Brouwer, ‘Richard Baxter's “Christian directory”: context and content’ (Ph.D thesis, Cambridge, 2005), ch. 2.

5 For details of the Archival history, see <URL: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=026-d3287_3&cid=0#0>(accessed 17 Apr. 2009).

6 See Archives 2004: a summary list of archives made available in Derbyshire Record Office during 2004 (Derby, 2004) p. 5, <URL: http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/Images/Archives2004_tcm9–16958.pdf> (accessed 17 Apr. 2009).

7 DRO, Matlock, papers of the Gell family of Hopton, D3287/47/7. The name ‘Robert Parker’ should read ‘Robert Porter’. While most of the letters in the collection from this individual are signed ‘R. P.’, the letter ending on p. 15 is attributed to ‘R. Porter’. For Porter, see Stephen Wright, ‘Porter, Robert (1623/4–1690)’, in ODNB.

8 Katherine Gell's handwriting can be recognized from her letters located in Dr Williams's Library, London.

9 Baxter correspondence, v, fo. 216; Keeble and Nuttall, Calendar, i, letter no. 256, pp. 185–6. The first section of this letter is missing from the microfilmed correspondence, and some quotations are taken from the Calendar.

10 Brouwer, ‘Baxter's “Christian directory” ’, p. 44. Cf. Isabel Rivers, Reason, grace & sentiment: a study of the language of religion and ethics in England, 1660–1780, i: Whichcote to Wesley (2 vols., Cambridge, 1991), p. 15.

11 Baxter correspondence, v, fo. 216; Keeble and Nuttall, Calendar, i, letter no. 256, pp. 185–6.

12 DRO, Matlock, papers of the Gell family of Hopton, D3287/47/7, 28 July 1655, pp. 155–65.

13 For details of Baxter's pastoral strategy, see J. William Black, Reformation pastors: Richard Baxter and the ideal of the reformed pastor (Carlisle, 2004), especially ch. 4.

14 These works by Baxter are A sermon of judgment (1655) and Making light of Christ and salvation (1655).

15 See Baxter's autobiography, Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), i, pp. 3–6, and Richard Baxter, A Christian directory, in The practical works of Richard Baxter (4 vols., Morgan, PA, 1996), i, pp. 15, 478–9, 730–1. See also N. H. Keeble, Richard Baxter: puritan man of letters (Oxford, 1982), ch. 2.

16 DRO, Matlock, papers of the Gell family of Hopton, D3287/47/7, 4 Sept. 1655, pp. 166–75.

17 Baxter correspondence, v, fo. 215; see also Keeble and Nuttall, Calendar, i, letter no. 267, pp. 190–1. In a letter from her husband, John Gell, penned 19 Mar. 1658, the loss of this child is described as ‘that which was your great trouble’. DRO, Matlock, papers of the Gell family of Hopton, D3287/60/14.

18 Keeble and Nuttall, Calendar, i, letter no. 267, p. 190, maintain that the correspondence is with John Billingsley, a clergyman at Chesterfield, Derbyshire. Gell makes reference to a sermon she heard from Billingsley, but the letter does not state explicitly that the correspondence was with him. Baxter's reply letter includes the statement, ‘Mr ch: addeth another of your doubts whether you may pray absolutely for grace for your children’, which is perhaps the correspondent in question. This may be Samuel Charles, vicar of Mickleover, Derbyshire from 29 July 1657 until his ejection in 1662, who, according to Edmund Calamy's account, was at this time ‘in Sir John Gell's Family at Hopton’. Richard Baxter, An abridgement of Mr. Baxter's history of his life and times. With an account of the ministers, &c. who were ejected after the restauration, of King Charles II … The second edition: in two volumes … By Edmund Calamy, D. D. (2 vols., London, 1713), ii, p. 182. See also Keeble and Nuttall, Calendar, i, letter no. 370, p. 249. For Billingsley, see Stuart B. Jennings, ‘Billingsley, John (1625–1683)’, in ODNB.

19 See the previous footnote.

20 The works listed are: William Whately, The new birth: or, A treatise of regeneration; William Whately, The redemption of time; William Pinke, The tryall of a Christians syncere loue vnto Christ; William Fenner, Wilfull impenitency the grossest self-murder; John Rogers, The doctrine of faith wherein are practically handled twelve principall points; Thomas Hooker, The soules preparation for Christ being a treatise of contrition; Thomas Shepard, The sincere convert; Thomas Shepard, The sound beleever a treatise of evangelicall conversion; Samuel Smith, The great assize. Baxter also includes his own True Christianity, or, Christs absolute dominion (1655) and A sermon of judgment (1655).

21 DRO, Matlock, papers of the Gell family of Hopton, D3287/47/7, 4 Sept. 1655, pp. 166–175.

22 DRO, Matlock, papers of the Gell family of Hopton, D3287/47/7, 31 July 1658, pp. 252–6.

23 The relevant letters are Baxter correspondence, v, fo. 217, iv, fo. 142, v, fo. 3, v, fo. 11, v, fo. 28, iv, fo. 183 (Keeble and Nuttall, Calendar, i, letter nos. 312, 334, 370, 377, 404, 412).

24 DRO, Matlock, papers of the Gell family of Hopton, D3287/47/7, 31 July 1658, pp. 252–6.

25 Baxter correspondence, iv, fo. 142. See also Keeble and Nuttall, Calendar, i, letter no. 334, p. 231.

26 See, for example, The right method for a settled peace of conscience and spiritual comfort (1653), Directions for weak, distempered Christians (1669), and A Christian directory (1673).

27 Letter from John Gell to his wife, Katherine Gell, DRO, Matlock, papers of the Gell family of Hopton, D3287/60/14.

28 For discussions of the perceived severity of puritan piety, see Theodore Dwight Bozeman, The precisianist strain: disciplinary religion & antinomian backlash in puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2004); David R. Como, Blown by the Spirit: puritanism and the emergence of an antinomian underground in pre-Civil-War England (Stanford, CA, 2004); and John Stachniewski, The persecutory imagination: English puritanism and the literature of religious despair (Oxford, 1991).

29 William Bagshaw, De spiritualibus pecci (London, 1702), pp. 58–9. See also Lamont, ‘Katherine Gell’. For Bagshaw, see Stuart B. Jennings, ‘Bagshawe, William (1628–1702)’, in ODNB.

30 Bagshaw, De spiritualibus pecci, pp. 58–9.

31 Perhaps, as well as Baxter, only her husband (note his comment to his wife: ‘It hath pleased God to exercise you with variety of dispensations, sometimes you are full of feares, & in a manner hopeless, then to revive those dying hopes, the lord vouchsafes mercy’, DRO, Matlock, papers of the Gell family of Hopton, D3287/60/14) and the Derbyshire clergyman, Robert Porter. See Baxter correspondence, v, fo. 5; Keeble and Nuttall, Calendar, i, letter no. 489, p. 337: ‘Her own spiritual state and anxiety are things which she imparts “but to you & Mr. <Robert>Porter”.’ Note also that in her first letter Gell wrote ‘I desire concealment’, wishing her concerns to remain private (see Baxter correspondence, v, fo. 216). See also n. 7.

32 Searle, ‘ “Souls anatomiste” ’, p. 24.