William Curtis

William Curtis of Chesterton (1761-1829), son of the Rev. Thomas Curtis of Linton, was for a time Robert Robinson’s assistant and amanuensis and later the manager of Robinson’s Chesterton farm.  He married Robinson’s daughter, Ellen, in 1786, and later assisted William Frend in preparing Robinson’s Ecclesiastical Researches (1792) for the press.   Apparently he withdrew from St. Andrew’s shortly after Robert Hall’s arrival in 1791, most likely due to theological differences, probably Arianism, for two of his sister-in-laws became Unitarians along with Mary Hays (see their letters in this collection). From 1791 to 1801, Curtis was the innkeeper at the Cardinal’s Cap, a popular inn in Cambridge, and later (1801-14) at The Hoop, in Bridge-street, Cambridge.  For more on Curtis, see Church Book: St. Andrew’s Street xiv, 71, 73,75-76, 125, 137; Cambridge Intelligencer 16 May 1801, 28 November 1801.