About the time of Dr. Johnson's death, in 1784, Hannah More became the possessor of a rural spot, called Cowslip Green, some ten miles from Bristol. Here she built herself a cottage, intending to make it her place of retirement for a large portion of each year. In the cultivation of her garden she found leisure for reflection as well as an opportunity to pursue a favourite occupation.
The inroads which death had made in her circle of intimate friends, a growing dissatisfaction with the enjoyments of London life, and especially a keener sense of her responsibility, as a professed Christian, than she had hitherto experienced, led to a close self-examination, and to a scrutiny of the real motives of her life.
The result of this testing process showed itself in various ways. During occasional visits to London and attendance at parties she lost no opportunity of enforcing the truths of religion. Her silent witnessing was now exchanged for active exertion. The manners and practices of people who were amongst her most effusive admirers sometimes met with her indignant rebuke. Ladies of title, society beauties, and leaders of fashion, who were unapproachable by other religious influences, she urged in private to consider their spiritual interests. The method she adopted was not, usually, to start religious topics, but "to extract from common subjects some useful and awful truth, and to counteract the mischief of a popular sentiment by one drawn from religion." Perhaps a message which John Wesley once sent to her through a sister may have weighed considerably in deterring her from an entire severance from the fashionable world. "Tell her to live in the world; there is the sphere of her usefulness; they will not let us come nigh them."
Not content with personal and private reproof, advice, and entreaty, she now devoted her pen to the denunciation of folly and vice in high places. In her work, Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society, whilst protesting against prevalent irreligious practices and habits of dissipation, which even good people sanctioned, she sought to arouse a sensitive regard for mutual responsibility as set forth in the New Testament.
In 1788 the slave trade formed a burning question in Parliament. Miss More, intensely aroused by the descriptions presented of the horrible traffic, found vent for her feelings in a poem on the subject. About the same time a close friendship began with Wilberforce, which lasted to the end of life.
A yet more important friendship commenced at this period—one that was destined to work a powerful influence on Miss More's life. The Rev. John Newton, one of the leaders amongst the evangelical clergy, held the incumbency of St. Mary Woolnoth. Attendance on his ministry led to a correspondence and a deep friendship. John Newton was precisely the kind of man whom Hannah More needed to assist her in spiritual progress, and to direct her steps into paths of settled peace. Her letters to Mr. Newton, stating her difficulties and seeking counsel, breathe the spirit of the humble and sincere scholar of Christ. Her willingness to obey the Master whom she professed to serve, and her earnest desire to be brought into closer relations with God, although checked, had never been stifled by the claims of intellect or by the attractions of the world. From this time the work of the Holy Spirit in deepening her love for the Saviour became more and more prominent. Turning for a time from Christian work amongst the rich, Miss More now devoted her efforts to the improvement of the moral and religious condition of the poor.
About ten miles from Cowslip Green was the picturesque village of Cheddar, the population of which was sunk in ignorance and depravity. The incumbent lived at Oxford, and the curate at Wells, twelve miles off. There was but one service a week, and no pastoral visitation whatever. There were thirteen parishes in the neighbourhood without even a resident curate. Drunkenness and utter inefficiency prevailed to a terrible extent amongst the clergy in this district; whilst education was a question that never troubled either the clergy or the people.
At Cheddar Hannah and her sister Patty opened a school; and in a short time nearly 300 children attended regularly. The sisters had to combat strong prejudices amongst the farmers. By dint of much persuasion and flattery the opposing forces were at length won over, even to hearty concurrence.
Masters and mistresses were procured for teaching reading, seeing, knitting, and spinning, and giving religious instruction on Sundays. A second school was shortly opened in an adjoining parish, the vicarage-house, which had remained uninhabited for a hundred years, having been put into repair for the purpose.
During 1790 Miss More published a volume entitled, An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World. The book was quickly bought up, and within two years reached a fifth edition. The prevailing indifference to vital religion, the corruptions of society, the decline of domestic piety, and the absence of religion from the education of the upper classes were the themes treated by the writer with unsparing candour and convincing force.