OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, QUEEN, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, &c. &c. &c. MADAM, THE gracious and condescending permission which Your Majesty has granted me to prefix your name to this Volume, seems to require, while it encourages, an explanation of the circumstances which induced me to solicit so exalted an honour. As one of the most distinguished ornaments of her sex, the memory of Hannah More, I felt, could no where be more appropriately cherished than in the heart of Your Majesty; as the steady supporter and zealous maintainer of the throne, the record of her loyalty might hope to repose in its shadow; as the eloquent advocate and diligent propagator of the Protestant Faith held by the Church established in these realms, to none could the narrative of her life look so hopefully for countenance as to the Defender of that Faith, and the temporal Head of that Church. While the history of one who was the approved and accepted monitress of youthful Royalty, might hope, however humbly and respectfully, to win from Your Majesty one favourable regard. That Your Majesty may long and happily live to cherish, guard, and govern those sacred institutions, and to protect that holy religion, of which Hannah More was through life the advocate and defender, is the fervent prayer of, MADAM, Your Majesty's most loyal subject, and grateful servant, HENRY THOMPSON. PREFACE. THE following pages have been written at the suggestion of several of Mrs. More's earliest and most valued friends, who wished themselves and the publick to possess, collected in the compass of one small volume, such particulars concerning her as were treasured in numerous living memories, and dispersed in various collections of private correspondence ;-sources becoming daily less accessible. From his local situation, and external facilities, the writer was thought to possess advantages for the task, which others, however better qualified in other respects, could not equally command. Though himself unacquainted with Mrs. More until after her retirement to Clifton, (having come to reside at Wrington about six months after her departure from Barley Wood,) he could not become the minister of a parish in which she had resided nearly half a century, without constantly associating with many who had long known her intimately; and, in the course of his ten years' ministry in that parish, he has also become well acquainted with several more of the same privileged class in Bath, Bristol, and Clifton. The information supplied by these unexceptionable witnesses was represented as an ample nucleus to which it might be reasonably expected that intelligence from more distant quarters might be gathered. Nor was the "relligio loci" altogether to be disregarded. Insensate indeed must be the heart which could encounter daily, and almost hourly, some memorial of the greatness and goodness of a human mind, and yet feel no interest in its history. In almost all the neighbouring parishes there exist schools or clubs, instituted or suggested by Hannah More. Her tributary verses call the visitor of many a surrounding village church to be wise, and meditate his end; and in Wrington, every spot is her footstep. The walls which rose beneath her eye, and within which she meditated in solitude the writings which are the property of an admiring world, or held |