4 July 1793

George Dyer, Bride Lane, to Mary Hays, Gainsford Street, 4 July 1793.1

Dear Madam,

        I will be with you, if possible, on Tuesdy I beg you will be so obligg as to say nothing to any one about Dr P.y answering Evanson;2 as to my concern in a certain work, I have waited saying any thing to yr friend who spoke to me, & therefore wish that information to hand between me and you be nothing. I am somewhat hurt that Mr Randal3 should have taken my book, because I only lent it for him to get one himself; however think nothing on what I said to yr < > as I mean to write to him, as soon after I come to town; I would not wish him to think I was offended, but I am far from being pleased, as I shall tell him.

         With my best compts to the family I remain, dear Madam,

                                    yrs very sincerely

                                                 (in great haste) G. Dyer 

No 18 Bride Lane

July 4. 1793

Address: Miss Hays. | Gainsford Street | Horsley Down | Southwark

1 Misc. Ms. 2165, Pforzheimer Collection, NYPL; Brooks, Correspondence 282-83.

2 Joseph Priestley's Letters to a Young Man, occasioned by Mr. Wakefield's Essay on Public Worship; to which is added, a Reply to Mr. Evanson's objections to the observance of the Lord's day, appeared in 1792, published by Joseph Johnson.  Priestley published a second part in 1793, Letters to a Young Man : Part II. Occasioned by Mr. Evanson's Treatise on the Dissonance of the Four Generally received Evangelists, once again using Johnson, which is the pamphlet being referenced above.

3 Most likely this is Edward Randall (1765-1840), youngest son of John Randall (1715-99), the Cambridge University music professor and organist at Great St. Mary’s Church. The elder Randall became a friend of Robert Robinson during the latter’s tenure at St. Andrew’s Street.  The younger Randall was a well-known solicitor and author of two publications: Judicial Essays: Being Remarks on the Laws of England (1793) and Freedom of Election, the Law of the Land (1802), the latter printed and sold by Benjamin Flower.  Randall’s mother, Grace, was a member of the Baptist congregation in St. Andrew’s Street from 1773 until her death in 1792. Randall's first wife, Ann (d. 1797) was admitted to St. Andrew's Street in 1791.  He remarried in 1798, this time to Miss Mary Menoch of Walworth, Southwark, who joined the church in St. Andrew’s Street in 1812; she died in 1827. Randall was an active supporter of the Baptist Mission in the East Indies after 1810, serving as the treasurer of the local auxiliary. For some time after his mother’s death in 1792, Edward lived with his father at Kenmare House, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, which probably explains how Dyer (who was still visiting Cambridge frequently as part of his work on his Memoir of Robert Robinson) came across Randall.  For more on Randall, see Church Book: St. Andrew’s Street 77, 128, 138, and 158; Cambridge Intelligencer  11 March 1797, 27 January 1798, 3 November 1798, 19 January 1799, and 29 May 1802.