At this juncture a distant relative procured him an opportunity of preaching as a candidate at Sheffield, but his trial sermon was not approved: his manner was thought “too gay and airy.” One of the ministers at Sheffield had, however, more discrimination, and by his good offices he was recommended to a congregation at Nantwich, in Cheshire, who gave him an invitation to preach there for a year certain. Accordingly, he put together his few worldly possessions—his globes, his beloved books, his stock of sermons, and the manuscripts of the theological treatises he was too poor or too diffident to give to the world—and took the Ipswich packet to London as the least expensive way of getting down to Cheshire.
The chapel in which Priestley preached at Needham was taken down and rebuilt in 1837. When Rutt was preparing his edition of Priestley’s Memoirs, his daughter, Mrs Notcutt, who lived in Ipswich, made inquiries respecting Priestley, but with no result.
No reminiscences of him could be found at Needham. He was evidently thought too poor and too obscure for his memory to be treasured.
CHAPTER III
Goes to Nantwich—Starts a School—Is appointed a Tutor in the Warrington Academy—Life at Warrington.
Priestley left Needham Market in 1758. He had been there three years, and he was in his twenty-fifth year when he entered upon his work at Nantwich. Of this place he had always the happiest recollections. The meeting-house, as we learn from Partridge’s Historical Account of Nantwich, 1774, was a good, decent building, “to which appertains a convenient house for the minister.” Whether he actually occupied this house is uncertain. One account states that he boarded with Mr John Eddowes, a grocer, and sometimes showed his agility and sprightliness by leaping over the counter. Eddowes was described by Priestley as a very sociable and sensible man, and as he was fond of music his guest was—
“Induced to learn to play a little on the English flute, as the easiest instrument;” and, he continues, “though I was never a proficient in it, my playing contributed more or less to my amusement many years of my life.”
And he adds,—
“I would recommend the knowledge and practice of music to all studious persons; and it will be better for them if, like myself, they should have no very fine ear or exquisite taste, as by this means they will be more easily pleased and be less apt to be offended when the performances they hear are but indifferent.”
At Nantwich he found the people good-natured and friendly, and happily free from those controversies which had been the topics of almost every conversation in Suffolk. He had indeed little mind for them himself. His congregation never exceeded sixty persons, and a great proportion of them were travelling Scotchmen, men, he says, of very good sense, and, what he thought extraordinary, not one of them at all Calvinistical. As there were few children in the congregation there was little scope for exertion with respect to his duty in catechising.