Footnotes

• A fine archive of mid-eighteenth century letters, written throughout at a remarkably intense level of religious fervour. Two of Elizabeth Kingsley's closest friends were Hannah Wilberforce and Eliza Delafield. Hannah was married to the uncle of the future anti-slavery campaigner, William Wilberforce, and bought him up after the death of his father in 1768, when he was still a child. She it was who inculcated him with Evangelical views, much to the horror of his mother and grandfather who a few years later took him back into their care. In 1771 we find Eliza Delafield telling Elizabeth Symonds that "Mr Mrs & Master Wilberforce spent a few days at Mr Littlehales's while I was there"; and the following year, on 8 April 1772, we find Hannah herself telling Elizabeth that "Our Dear By writes full of faith, & Love, & it calls loudly upon us for thankfulness he is in a Barren Soil [boarding at Pocklington School], but... it is God only Can give the increase". Elizabeth's other great friend, Eliza Delafield, later Lady Cardale, lived before her marriage at Olney, and was a correspondent of John Newton. On 5 July 1771, she writes to Elizabeth from Olney: "Mr Newton being to preach at Northampton next Wednesday disappoints us of the pleasure of waiting on you... Mr & Mrs Newton join in best respects to you... The reason of Mr Newton's not going to Northampton this week was the Bishops being there". This evangelical tradition was to manifest itself in the career of Elizabeth's nephew, Charles Kingsley, the evangelic rector of St Luke's, Chelsea, and his son the novelist.

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