But a more remarkable person than Richard Cromwell was Cromwell’s niece, the granddaughter of the great Protector, Mrs. Bendish, in whom it was said the very Protector himself lived again. Her husband was Thomas Bendish, Esq., a descendant of Sir Thomas Bendish, Baronet, ambassador from Charles I. to the Court of Turkey. He died in 1707, but she survived him till 1728, removing, however, in the latter years of her life, to Yarmouth. She was a piece of astonishing eccentricity. She had a great admiration for Owen as a theologian and Watts as a poet; and very early in his life Watts addressed to her his poem against tears. She was a member of his church. Her admiration for her grandfather was extraordinary, and no one was permitted in her presence to express a doubt concerning his legitimate sovereignty or essential greatness. What she might have been as a man is beyond all power to speculate; as a woman she certainly inherited much of her grandfather’s dreamy, musing, moody, and ruggedly imperative character. Her character and her connections both alike commanded for her great respect, but she was an oddity. She was fond of night walks, even on lonely roads. She would not suffer a servant to attend her, saying God was a sufficient guard, and she would have no other. Visiting at the houses of friends, she would usually set off at about one in the morning in her chaise, or on horseback, chanting as she went one of Watts’ hymns in a key, it is said, more loud than sweet. There are pictures of her, word paintings, which bring her before our eyes in the oddest light. Capable of comporting herself with dignity in the best society, she disdained no menial employment, and very cheerfully turned her hand to the pitch-fork or the spade among her labourers and workmen, working herself with a right ready and forcible good will, from the early morning to declining day, in an attire as mean as the meanest of those with whom she was toiling, giving no account, say some records, of either her character or even her sex. It is a curious thing to find the youthful Isaac Watts talking to this strong-minded creature like a patriarch in his lines addressed to her in 1699, in which occurs the fine verse:
If ’tis a rugged path you go,
And thousand foes your steps surround,
Tread the thorns down, charge through the foe;
The hardest fight is highest crowned.
We could have liked a portrait of her from the pen of Watts, or a record of some of his conversations with her or with her uncle, but it does not appear to have been in his way either to sketch the portraits of his friends or to violate private confidences or conferences by putting them on paper. Her son was another of Watts’ intimates, and with him the family of Bendish became extinct. He died at Yarmouth, unmarried, in the year 1753.
Among the ministerial friends of Watts stands the almost forgotten name of John Shower, a very beautiful and eminent man in his day, a man of large learning and extensive travel. He had ministered for some time to an English congregation at Rotterdam, and, returning to England, he passed through the periods of trouble afflicting the communion to which he belonged. Watts was on terms of close intimacy with him, and they must have been congenial in their lives of elevated and profoundly cultured piety.
And there were men around Watts in the ministry with whom he had great congeniality of sentiment. Eminent among these was Samuel Rosewell, the son of Thomas Rosewell, celebrated for his trial for high treason and unjust condemnation before the impious Jefferies. Watts gives an interesting account of his visit to him on his death-bed in one of his sermons preached at Bury Street. “Come, my friends,” says he, “come into the chamber of a dying Christian; come, approach his pillow, and hear his holy language: ‘I am going up to heaven, and I long to be gone, to be where my Saviour is.—Why are His chariot-wheels so long in coming?—I hope I am a sincere Christian, but the meanest and the most unworthy:—I know I am a great sinner, but did not Christ come to save the chief of sinners?—I have trusted in Him, and I have strong consolation.—I love God, I love Christ.—I desire to love Him more, to be more like Him, and to serve Him in heaven without sin.—Dear brother, I shall see you at the right hand of Christ.—There I shall see all our friends that are gone a little before (alluding to Sir T. Abney).—I go to my God and to your God, to my Saviour and to your Saviour.’ These,” observes Watts, “are some of the dying words of the Rev. Mr. S. Rosewell, when, with some other friends, I went to visit him two days before his death, and which I transcribed as soon as I came home, with their assistance.” It was after this visit Watts wrote to his friend the following note:
“Dear Brother Rosewell,