Introduction
John Newton (1725-1807) had a wide circle of friends with whom he
corresponded regularly and to whom he offered counsel. Those receiving
advice included the well-known hymn-writer William Cowper (1731-
1800), the evangelical philanthropist, Hannah More (1745-1833), and
the anti-slave campaigner, William Wilberforce (1759-1833), as well as
a number of Dissenting ministers and friends.
Among the Dissenting ministers with whom he corresponded was the
Baptist John Ryland Jr (1753-1825), who served as pastor of College Lane
Church in Northampton and then, later, as the pastor of the Broadmead
Baptist Church in Bristol and as the Principal of the Baptist College
in Bristol. Newton’s correspondence with Ryland has been collected
together and published by Grant Gordon in Wise Counsel, John Newton’s
Letters to John Ryland, Jr.1 Using letters to Ryland from that collection,
the diary of Ryland’s second wife, Frances Barrett Ryland 2, as well as
some of Newton’s other letters, this article will explore Newton’s advice
to Ryland on marriage.3
The friendship of John Newton and John Ryland Jr.
John Newton was an Anglican priest with a warm Evangelical spirit
that led to an openness to people of all Christian denominations and
none. Described as ‘“a singularly genial man”, a devoted and exemplary
Christian minister, a theological moderate and a skilled spiritual director’,
4 he used both the pulpit and his pen to reach out to an extraordinary
number of people. D. Bruce Hindmarsh has noted that Newton’s links
with Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists may be traced back to the days
of his curacy at Olney (1764-80).5 In spite of the disapproval of some
within his congregation he went to hear Benjamin Beddome (1717-
1795)6 preach and, when he had settled at Olney, he worshipped and
dined with the local Baptist minister, William Walker.7 In May 1776,
he attended the Northamptonshire Baptist Association meetings which
were held at Olney and heard a sermon by John Ryland Sr and Robert
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Hall, as well as others. He provided accommodation for several people
attending the meeting who were from away and invited others into his
home for breakfast. He then wrote in his diary, ‘We all seemed mutually
pleased’.8 He attended the ordination service of John Sutcliff at Olney
in 1776 and regularly corresponded with others. As Hindmarsh declares,
Newton’s ‘links with Calvinistic Baptists were thus many and close’.9
One long-standing relationship was with John Ryland Sr who was a
schoolmaster for boys, as well as minister at College Lane Church in
Northampton. After meeting Ryland in 1765, Newton travelled often
to Northampton to speak to the boys in Ryland’s school. He also went
to a school whose headmistress, Martha Trinder (1736-1790)10, was a
member of the congregation at College Lane. Newton was apparently
impressed by the work in the school and by 1776, he had enrolled his
niece, Betsy Catlett (1769-1834), in Mrs Trinder’s school for girls.11
Newton became acquainted with the younger Ryland when he visited
Northampton and when John Ryland Jr (1753-1825) was fifteen, he
was first invited to visit Newton at Olney. This was the beginning of a
long friendship as Newton became for Ryland a spiritual mentor and a
friend.12 Looking to him as a ‘spiritual father’ Ryland seems to have
sought advice from Newton about everything, from preaching to pastoral
work to more personal matters of finance and moving house. Hence, it is
not surprising that when Ryland needed guidance on marriage, he turned
to John Newton. Newton’s counsel seems to have focused primarily on
three issues: finance, domesticity and spiritual devotion.
Newton’s advice on finding a marriage partner
Ryland first wrote to Newton concerning marriage when he was twentytwo.
While it does not appear that Ryland had a person, as Newton put it,
‘fixedly in view’, he seems to have had someone ‘transiently in view’.13
However, seeing that Ryland had no money, Newton’s advice was firm:
‘since you have no settlement, if she has no money, I cannot but wish
she may pass on till she is out of sight and out of mind’.14 Speaking of
what he described as a ‘grave business’ Newton claims:
I take it for granted that my friend is free from the love of filthy lucre and
that money will never be the turning point with you in the choice of a wife.
Methinks I hear you think, ‘If I wanted money, I would either dig or beg for
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it; but to preach or marry for money, that be far from me.’ I commend you.
However, though the love of money be a great evil, money itself, obtained
in a fair and honourable way, is desirable, upon many accounts, though not
for its own sake. Meat, clothes, fire, and books, cannot easily be had without
it.15
Newton, it seems, placed a great emphasis on finance. However,
realizing that Ryland might think he was putting too much stress on
money, Newton went on to explain at some length that while ‘the love of
money was the root of all evil’, pecuniary considerations were important.
Bluntly, Newton urged Ryland to consider the future and the possibility
of children to feed. He advised:
But while you are without income or settlement, if you have thoughts of
marriage, I hope they will be regulated by due regard to consequences. They
who set the least value upon money have in some respects the most need of
it…You could perhaps endure hardships alone, yet it might pinch you to the
very bone to see the person you love exposed to them. Besides, you might
have a John, a Thomas, and a William, and half a dozen more to feed (for
they all must eat).16
Newton ends this letter by urging Ryland to think carefully about
financial considerations. Describing arrangements for a marriage that
would be to Ryland’s advantage, Newton suggests that Ryland should
look for a wife who would come from a family of some financial means.
In this way he would not have to worry about finance because she would
bring ‘a tolerable fortune to boot’. He wrote:
Many serious young women have a predilection in favour of a minister of
the gospel; and I believe among such, one or more may be found as spiritual,
as amiable, as suitable to make you a good wife, with a tolerable fortune to
boot, as another who has not a penny. If you are not willing to trust your own
judgment in the search, entreat the Lord to find her for you. 17
Taken alone, these comments may seem to reflect a rather mercenary
approach to marriage. Yet Newton would have been well aware of the
financial difficulty, especially for many dissenting ministers. As with
John Ryland Sr, many ministers started schools, kept a smallholding, or
found some other source of income in order to try to make ends meet.18
While not all ministers were living in penury, Newton was aware that
Ryland could easily find himself in great difficulty. Moreover, while
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there were funds to help the widows and children of deceased ministers,
those who had no financial security could leave their family in very dire
straits.19 Newton was aware of the financial problems for John Ryland
Sr. Moreover, Newton himself had known financial hardship. When he
and Mary first married, they ‘had only their clothes and seventy pounds
in debt to their names.’20
The next time Ryland wrote to Newton about marriage, the focus does
not seem to have been on finance, but on the suitability of the candidate
in question. In January 1776, Ryland had approached a young woman’s
father for permission to pursue the match and had been rejected.21 By
December 1776, Newton wrote to him again, addressing him in the
letter as ‘Poor dear Lad’ and stressing that he had burned Ryland’s letter
to him ‘believing you would like to have it out of danger of falling into
improper hands’.22 Ryland had obviously expressed great disappointment
over the lack of success in finding a marriage partner. The circumstances
are not clear from the correspondence, but whatever happened, Newton
claimed that after reading his letter, he believed that Ryland should think
of the incident more as ‘an escape than a disappointment’.23 Always
concerned to show Ryland how life experiences might shape him not
only as a person, but also as a minister, Newton goes on to reflect on how
such a disappointment might help him face disappointment in ministry.
He wrote:
Your pride, it seems, has received a fall by meeting a repulse. I know Mr Self
does not like to be mortified in these affairs; but if you are made successful
in wooing souls for Christ, I hope that will console you for meeting a rebuff
when only wooing for yourself. Besides I would have you pluck up your
spirits.24
Newton then offers some practical advice by quoting to Ryland two
proverbs as assurance that he would ultimately find the right person:
‘There is as good fish in the sea as any that are brought out of it’ and ‘If
one won’t another will, or wherefore serves the market?’ Perhaps all your
difficulties have arisen from this, that you have not yet seen the right person:
if so, you have reason to be thankful that the Lord would not let you take the
wrong, though you unwittingly would have done it if you could. Where the
right one lies hid I know not;…The Lord in his providence will disclose her,
put her in your way, and give you to understand, ‘This is she’.25
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Newton’s advice is quite practical and down to earth. He seems to believe
that Ryland will be directed to the right person and he is insistent that
Ryland should apply the disappointment he feels to his own personal
spiritual growth: ‘Wait, pray, and believe, and all shall be well’. 26
Newton urged Ryland ‘to take notice of the very severe afflictions
which many of the Lord’s own people are groaning under, and your
trials will appear comparatively light’.27 Ryland must have struggled to
come to terms with his rejection, though later, as he reflected on the
event, he wrote: ‘Providence shewed at length that she was not designed
for me; and I found it my duty to submit to the divine Will, which I was
enabled to do.’28
The reasons for Ryland’s rejection are not clear, though Newton’s
idea of the right kind of person for Ryland would probably have
accorded with the accepted patterns of eighteenth-century domesticity.
The household in the eighteenth century was a ‘key institution’.29 While
historians argue that the gender separation between public and private
spheres may not have been quite as simple as is sometimes supposed,
for Evangelicals household roles were reinforced by Scripture. Like
their Puritan forebears, they believed that family life had been ordained
by God, and the home was the place where the structure and moral
fibre of society was taught and monitored.30 The ‘godly order’ within
the home was evident first in the fact that every person had a proper
place and role; men, women, children, servants, masters, indeed all who
were part of society, were to behave in accordance with their status or
rank. It was accepted that this ‘ordering’ had been decreed by God, and
conformity to patterns of behaviour deemed appropriate to a particular
station in life was a sign of spiritual maturity and growth in godliness.
It seems likely that Newton, and indeed Ryland, were both thinking of a
suitable marriage partner who conformed to the expected female roles of
domesticity as well as being a suitable candidate for a minister’s wife.
By 1777 it appears that Ryland had found a new potential candidate for
marriage. However, there were complications in that she was under the
care of guardians, and Ryland wrote to ask Newton’s advice. Newton’s
reply was again, at first, practical. He reminded him of the legalities
of marrying someone who was under guardianship and suggested that
Ryland should speak to the guardians to gain their consent. Newton
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probably would have known the young woman since she had been a
pupil of Mrs Trinder’s school in Northampton, where he had visited
often and where his own niece had attended. In his letter to Ryland
he spoke favourably: ‘I think this prospect preferable to the former’.31
Ryland was keen to begin a courtship, but had run into difficulty because
the young woman concerned had been involved with someone else.
Newton offered this advice:
Your first step I should think (earnest prayer to the Lord for his blessing and
direction excepted) should be to inform yourself whether her dislike to the
young man formerly proposed continues, so that she is resolved against the
connection….32
Then Newton says that Ryland should approach the young woman and
see how she felt about it, but that he should take care that it did not appear
that he had ‘courted her money rather than herself’.33 By 15 February it
seems that Ryland was making progress and Newton was writing again,
claiming that he had put on his ‘considering cap’ before replying, but
it had not taken long. He advised Ryland to speak to the guardians and
then speak to the young lady concerned.34 After two years of courtship,
Ryland seems to have been discouraged again over the prospect of
marriage. On 23 February 1779 Newton again began his letter ‘Poor
dear Lad.’ He told Ryland that his troubles were something that would
‘humble your spirit’ and give a ‘mellowness to your preaching’.35
Finally, on 12 January 1780, John Ryland married Elizabeth Tyler of
Banbury. She had been a student at Mrs Trinder’s school and had been
baptized by John Ryland Sr with others from the school on 10 April
1774.36 In his diary Ryland claimed he had been seeking the Lord’s
guidance. Years later he wrote concerning the other two women he had
considered for marriage, and claimed that he believed ‘God provided
still better for me in the end’.37Apparently Newton agreed. In January
1780 he wrote to them both:
I cordially rejoice that my two friends are at length happily brought together
And I doubt not, before this you have been ashamed twenty times over of the
unbelieving fears and complaints you have formerly indulged. Now you can
say from your heart that the Lord’s choice for you was better than your own
would have been, and that, notwithstanding all your impatience, his time is
likewise the best.38
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In this letter, he made mention of his own marriage to Mary Catlett some
thirty years before.39 He then urged Ryland to beware of falling into the
temptation of idolatry.
Beware of idolatry. You cannot love B[etsy] too much, if you love her in a
proper subordination. Look at her while you are reading this, and it will help
you to [see] an illustration of my meaning. You have not all her love. She
will continue to love her relatives, and if she had a thousand friends, she has
room enough in her heart for them all. But there is a peculiar regard due to
you, which she cannot, will dare not, to transfer to another. Just so, the Lord
leaves us scope enough for the exercise of affections towards creatures. But
there is a sense in which we must love him wholly and only. To him our love
must remain supreme and unrivalled.40
The worry over idolatry was something that Newton had wrestled with
in his own relationship with his wife, Mary. It seems that he worried that
if he idolized her, God might take her from him.41 This worry over an
idolatrous love for Mary continued even after her death, when he wrote
to Hannah More:
You perhaps know, madam, from what you have read of mine, and possibly
from what you have seen in me, that my attachment to my dearest was great,
yea excessive, yea idolatrous. It was so when it began. I think no writer of
romances ever imagined more than I realized. She was to me precisely (how
can I write it?) in the place of God. By degrees He who has the only right
place in my heart, and who alone can fill it, was pleased to make me sensible
of his just claim, and my idol was brought some steps lower down. Yet still I
fear there was somewhat of the golden calf in my love, from the moment that
we joined our hands to the moment of separation.42
While Newton’s emphasis on idolatry may have been a reflection of his
Calvinistic theology, the fear of separation by death was also born out
of an awareness of the fragility of life. Life in the eighteenth century
was harsh. Poor hygiene and lack of sanitation, as well as inadequate
medical knowledge and treatment, meant that life was overshadowed
by the constant threat of death. If a person did not die of influenza or a
pulmonary infection, life might be ended by cholera, typhoid, typhus,
dysentery or smallpox. While life expectancy varied according to social
class, gender and region, it is estimated that the average life expectancy
from birth in the mid-eighteenth century was between 35 and 40 years.43
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Women of child-bearing years were particularly vulnerable. Life in a
pre-contraceptive era meant that women often had multiple pregnancies,
and with every pregnancy there was a higher risk of death. Many women
experienced numerous miscarriages before giving birth to a child who
was stillborn, or died within a few days, or was maimed for life by the
rough treatment received if delivery was difficult. Women who survived
the trials of pregnancy were still at risk of dying in childbirth. There
were few hygienic measures taken when giving birth to a child, and the
risks of haemorrhaging or an obstructed delivery were great.44 Newton
was only too aware of how quickly death could strike. This may explain
why, as he cautioned against idolatry, he reminded Ryland that all the
pleasures of this life are transient and relationships are transient. What
mattered most was relationship to God.
By all accounts, Betsy and John Ryland had a happy marriage. Newton
wrote to him on 7 September 1780:
I am glad to find that you and your dear B[etsy] (to whom we join in
love) can see and own the hand and goodness of the Lord, in bringing
you together and now in blessing you together; that you are not
disappointed in each other, and above all, that he has given you your
desire, without sending leanness into your soul. Remember you are to
be helpmeets, not hindrances.45
By 13 March 1782 Newton was writing to Ryland, perhaps with an
awareness that, as in his own marriage, there had been no children,
I hope that you and Mrs Ryland joy on like Zechariah and Elizabeth of old
[who were] in all ordinances and commandments blameless; [and] that you
are of one heart and mind—full of love, peace, gentleness, and usefulness to
edification of all around you.46
On 17 January 1785 Newton congratulated the Rylands on their fifth
wedding anniversary and then reflected on the beginnings of his own
marriage many years earlier:
Our setting out in wedded life was something like that of an adventurous
mariner, who should put to sea without either pilot or compass. We knew and
thought but little of the Lord, but he thought of us, his plan was exceedingly
different from that we had formed for ourselves, but it gradually opened upon
us, and hitherto he has helped us. What is before us we know not, but he
knows it all, and I am enabled in some measure to cast the care upon him.
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May he be your guide and guard likewise. I trust he will. He has given you a
heart to care for his concerns, and he will care for yours.47
His words were another attempt to offer spiritual guidance to Ryland
and a reminder of the need to trust in God’s providence. Words that
proved timely. For after seven years of marriage Elizabeth gave birth to
their first child, John Tyler Ryland, on 9 December 1786. However she
soon developed a ‘consumptive disorder’ and was gravely ill.48 Hearing
the news, Newton wrote to Ryland of the difficulties of losing someone
we love, but urged him nevertheless to simply submit to God’s will and
to say ‘Thy will be done’.49
Ryland’s wife Elizabeth (Betsy) died on 23 January 1787. A few
days later, when Newton received confirmation of the death, he wrote to
Ryland. While again he urged him to trust in God, he also called him to
put his ministry first.
Your wound must be painful for a time, but the Lord will not leave you; he
will condescend to visit you; he will, if I may so speak, dress your wound, till
it be effectually healed. In the meanwhile, beware of grief; it is insinuating,
deceitful, [and] hurtful. Attend to your health and your calling. Ride, walk,
talk, change air and objects now and then. Time, prayer, and especially praise,
will relieve you. You are a soldier, you are a leader in the Lord’s army, and
private concern must give way to the public cause. The enemy presses at the
gates, and must be repelled. The Lord’s flock must be fed and guarded from
the wolves. Time is short and eternity approaching. You must drop a tear,
but I hope you will be enabled to weep as if you wept not. These are truths,
though as I hinted before, I ought to offer them with just a sense of my own
inability to apply them to myself, were your case my own.50
Newton’s rather firm emphasis on ministerial duty in the face of grief
could be interpreted as lacking pastoral sensitivity. Yet, again, it would
seem that this was an expression of belief in the providence of God.
Elizabeth’s death it seems was to be accepted as God’s will. Newton’s
pastoral concern for his friend, however, may be noted in his comment
that while he stated what should be believed and practised, he would
have had difficulty applying it to himself if he had been in Ryland’s
place. Indeed, when his own wife died in 1790, he wrote ‘that the world
seemed to die with her’ and for several years composed hymns marking
the anniversary of her death.51
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Ryland was grief-stricken over the death of Elizabeth, and financially
insecure,52 so he did not immediately rush into a second marriage.
However, in 1788, fifteen months after the death of his beloved Betsy,
Newton wrote to Ryland suggesting that it was time he married again:
Seriously, everybody knows you loved your Betsy while she lived, and
were a true mourner for her after she was gone. But the moment she went,
you were freed from the law of your wife. You are still a young man; there
are circumstances about you that make you uneasy, and to pair yourself to
another gracious suitable partner, seems the easiest and most effectual way
of deliverance from your thralldom.53
Ryland eventually made plans to marry Frances Barrett, a woman who
had known Elizabeth at Mrs Trinder’s school and had remained friends
with her. However, even as plans for the wedding were being made,
Ryland wrote to Newton and expressed his doubts over the rightness
of the match. In his reply Newton confirmed that, at Ryland’s request,
he had burned the letters Ryland had written to him about the matter.
Nevertheless, Newton advised Ryland that if he did not have the same
passion he had felt for his first wife, he should not worry, stating that
those feelings were perhaps idolatrous and certainly ‘overrated’.
As matters seem to have gone too far for receding with honour and propriety,
and as you mean to marry in the Lord, I think you should trust him to give
you such feelings as may suffice to make your relation comfortable. Where
there is grace and good sense, and a mutual desire of walking according to
the rule of his word, it may, I think, be humbly expected that his blessing on
the interchange of kind offices, which are continually recurring in so near a
connection, may conciliate, preserve, and increase friendship and esteem,
which if not accompanied by all the transports of passion, may very well
answer every valuable purpose of life. And, indeed, those feelings which you
and I have had towards the objects of our heart’s love are perhaps overrated.
If they have been sources of pleasure, they have likewise been the sources of
our sharpest and most painful trials. And I believe that they are generally so
much defiled by an idolatrous attachment, that we have little reason to boast
of them….And perhaps this might be one of the reasons why the Lord, in
his wisdom and mercy, saw it most for your good to take your Betsy home,
that you might not be hindered in your first and greatest desire of cleaving to
Him, and him alone, with full purpose of heart….54
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Humorously, Newton assured Ryland that
Your last letter to me is going into the fire, as you ordered; though, poor
thing! I see nothing in it to deserve such a sentence.55
The suggestion that Elizabeth might have died in order to ensure
Ryland’s proper devotion to God seems rather harsh. However, such
a claim was in keeping with Newton’s own concerns over idolatrous
love and again reflected the Calvinistic understanding that everything
that happens is within the sovereign purposes of God. While Ryland
obviously did not have the same feeling for Frances that he had known
for Elizabeth, he seems to have accepted Newton’s view that true piety
and devotion to God were the most important qualities for a wife. Later
he wrote:
If ever I sought the glory of God in any action of my life, I am sure it was
in this. I regarded sincere piety in the choice of a companion, more than any
other consideration whatever. It was my chief concern to be united with one
whose heart was united to Christ, and who would help me to devote myself
wholly to him.56
On Thursday 18 June 1789, Frances Barrett married John Ryland Jr. She
was twenty-eight and had never previously been married, while he was
thirty-six years of age with a young son. There is no hint in Frances’s
diary that she was aware of Ryland’s misgivings over their impending
marriage. On the Sunday after they married she wrote:
Last Thursday day ever to be remembered. I entered the marriage state and
became united, to one of the kindest, and best of men! I feel the importance
of my situation, because I am sure of all others, it will require great delicacy,
and propriety of conduct…O that I may be assisted in the discharge of every
duty, possess a lowliness of spirit becoming my station, and excited to a
greater gratitude of the divine goodness57
The friendship between John Ryland and John Newton continued until
Newton’s death at the age of eighty-two. While the relationship changed
over the years, it is evident that Ryland looked to the older Newton as
a trusted spiritual guide. Newton’s practical guidance on finance and
domesticity in marriage was shaped by the eighteenth-century social
and cultural ideal of the Christian household, as well as his Evangelical
religious views. However, Newton’s views on marriage were formed
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also by his own happy union with his wife, Mary: the one for whom
his love, he feared, was ‘excessive, yea idolatrous’. Throughout his
correspondence with Ryland, Newton always stressed that love for God
must come before anything, even before his love for his wife. When
Mary died on 15 December 1790, they had been married for forty years.
In a letter to Ryland on 26 March 1791 he expressed thanks to God that
while he had loved her, he had also been able to let her go.
I thank you for your condolences and prayers, especially the latter. I am a
debtor to the prayers of my friends. The Lord has heard them on my behalf.
I have been, and am wonderfully supported. My attachment to my dear was
very strong, indeed idolatrous; yet I have been far from sinking under the
stroke. Neither her sickness nor her death prevented me from preaching a
single sermon. I was enabled to preach her funeral, almost with the same
composure as if it had been that of another person.…I thought I could bear
the removal of any but one. And now the Lord has reconciled me (in a manner
beyond my hopes) to give up that one also; though she was dear to my heart,
as the light to my eyes. He has indeed done a marvelous thing.58
Newton lived for seventeen more years, preaching and offering counsel
to his friends until he died on 21 December 1807. Ryland died on 25 May
1825, always grateful for the spiritual guidance and practical advice of
his friend.
