Isaac Watts; his life and writings, his homes and friends

by Edwin Paxton Hood

ABNEY HOUSE, STOKE NEWINGTON.

CHAPTER VI.
Residence in the Abney family.

It was at that period of Watts’ life, when he felt in a very especial manner his loneliness, and fever and infirmity were reducing him to a painful sense of abiding weakness, that Sir Thomas and Lady Abney invited him to spend a week with them at their magnificent house of Theobalds, in Hertfordshire. He accepted the invitation, and the hosts and their guest seemed to have been so mutually pleased with each other that Watts continued in the family until his death, a period of thirty-six years. Watts must have then been about thirty-eight years of age. Johnson remarks upon this friendship that “it was a state in which the notions of patronage and dependence were overpowered by the perception of reciprocal benefits; it deserves a particular memorial;” and he refers to Dr. Gibbons’ interesting account, which is, indeed, one of the most pleasant pieces of his biography, and compels the wish that he had more frequently broken the monotony of the book by pages so pleasing. The event was one of those kind providences which those who watch the lives of eminent men, who have served their generation and the cause of God, will not fail to perceive. Think of the solitary student, the shrinking, sensitive man, the modest and fearful spirit who could not command service, and recoiled from giving trouble, how fearfully life might have dragged along through a few years of languor and pain, unequal to much service, unable to gather round him any, or but few, of the comforts of life, suddenly transferred to all the affluent comforts of this magnificent abode, to its rooms, capacious and luxurious, the abode of order, and harmony, and holiness, not only a pious household, but entirely after the type favoured by the thoughtful guest. There were the rich rural scenes, the delightful garden, the spreading lawn, and the fragrant and embowered recess, all wooing the body back to health and the heart to peace; and although a few years after his entrance into the household Sir Thomas Abney dies, yet the guest cannot be permitted to depart. The same affection and respect are continued by Lady Abney and her daughter. Lady Abney was the sister of the chief friend of Watts’ younger days, Thomas Gunston; her wealth was very great, and, says Gibbons, “her generosity and munificence in full proportion.” There must have been a pleasant fellowship and community of tastes, certainly a fitting harmony of character; reminding us of Robert Boyle with his sister Lady Ranelagh, or William Cowper with Mary Unwin; such relationships are very beautiful in their serene, unselfish character. Beneath the roof of Lady Abney Watts died. Within two months of his departure to Bunhill Fields, she was taken to her resting-place in the vaults of Stoke Newington Church. But the family in which Dr. Watts was for more than half his life an honoured guest merits some more particular mention.

Sir Thomas Abney was descended from an ancient and respectable family in Derbyshire. His father was James Abney, Esq., of Wilsley, whose ancestors had enjoyed that estate upwards of five hundred years. The son came to the City of London, and appears to have passed through the honours of Alderman, Sheriff, and Lord Mayor. For the services he rendered to King William he received the honour of knighthood, and was chosen chief magistrate some years before his turn. He appears to have had in those troublesome times great influence in the City, though holding at that time a strong opinion adverse to the Stuarts. He was chosen in 1701 to represent it in Parliament; he was a director of the Bank, and president of St. Thomas’ Hospital; and when, upon the death of the exiled James, the King of France, Louis XIV., caused the Pretender to be proclaimed at St. Germains King of Great Britain, and by the recall of the Earl of Macclesfield war seemed to be unavoidable, Sir Thomas Abney, in the Court of Common Council, proposed, in opposition to the majority of his brethren on the bench, an address to William III., declaring that they would support him against France and the Pretender: it was carried and transmitted to the King, who was then on the Continent. It is impossible now to estimate the vigour this imparted to the King’s affairs—it was the note which roused the nation. It was said that this act of Sir Thomas Abney served the cause of the King more than if he had raised for him a million of money.

It is a singular circumstance that although Watts received such marks of favour from the Abney family, Sir Thomas and Lady Abney do not appear to have, in the first days of their acquaintance, belonged to the church of which Watts was pastor. Sir Thomas was a member of that church during the pastorate of Mr. Caryl, whose daughter was his first wife. After Mr. Caryl’s death he united himself with the church of which John Howe was the minister. Nonconformists were at that time, as they have been frequently since, Lord Mayors of the City, usually complying by occasional conformity so far as to attend one part of the Sunday at church, the other at their own place of worship. When Sir Humphrey Edwin, who was a member of Pinners’ Hall congregation, was Mayor, he very unwisely caused the regalia of the City to be carried to his meeting-house, and it created a vehement storm.

But it is remarkable that Mr. Milner, usually very accurate, in his life of Dr. Watts quotes a paragraph from “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,” speaking of it as a piece of High Church vituperation, apparently unaware that this was the very production of Defoe, the satire for which he was put in the pillory; Mr. Milner, misled by the heartiness of the composition, like many of Defoe’s day, came to the conclusion that it was the work of an enemy to those whose interests the pamphlet was intended to serve. The paragraph points immediately to Sir Thomas and his friend Watts, as the reader will perceive by the designations italicized: “But a lady, Queen Anne, now sits on the throne, who though sprung from that blood which ye and your forefathers spilt before the palace-gates, puts on a temper of forgiveness, and, in compassion to your consciences, is not willing that you should lose the hopes of heaven by purchasing here on earth. She would have no more Sir Humphreys tempt the justice of God, by falling from his true worship and giving ear to the cat-calls and back-pipes at St. Paul’s; would have your Sir Thomas’s keep to their primitive text, and not venture damnation to play at long spoon and custard for a transitory twelvemonth; and would have your Sir Tom sing psalms at Highgate Hill, and split texts of Scripture with his diminutive figure of a chaplain, without running the hazard of qualifying himself to be called a handsome man for riding on horseback before the City trainbands.”

It may be noticed now how much the interest of King William and the Hanover succession to the throne of England were served by the Protestant dissenters of the City of London, and by no one more than by Sir Thomas Abney. He lived to a good old age, dying at his house at Theobalds in the year 1722. Nor can we wonder that his friend should pay a high tribute to his memory in a funeral sermon, and seek to give it a more durable place in a sketch in his “Miscellaneous Thoughts.”