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Daniel Eccleston of Lancaster 1745-1821: a Man Not Afraid to Stand on the Shoulders of Giants Carolyn Downs University of Lancaster

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Daniel Eccleston of Lancaster 1745-1821: a Man Not Afraid to Stand on the Shoulders of Giants Carolyn Downs University of Lancaster Quaker Studies Volume 10 | Issue 2 Article 5 2006 Daniel Eccleston of Lancaster 1745-1821: A Man not Afraid to Stand on the Shoulders of Giants Carolyn Downs University of Lancaster Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/quakerstudies Part of the Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, and the History of Christianity Commons Recommended Citation Downs, Carolyn (2006) "Daniel Eccleston of Lancaster 1745-1821: A Man not Afraid to Stand on the Shoulders of Giants," Quaker Studies: Vol. 10: Iss. 2, Article 5. Available at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/quakerstudies/vol10/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quaker Studies by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ George Fox University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 202 QUAKER STUDIES QUAKER STUDIES 10/2 (2006) (203-222] ISSN 1363-013X 75. Howard, Eliot Papers, II, p. 55. 76. Diary, 29 Oct. 1707. 77. Diary, 6 Nov. 1706. Briggins also refers to 'Nr Lock' or 'Nabr Lock' on 24 Sept. 1706, 31 Dec. 1706 and 1 Jan. 1706/07. 78. The Directory: containin.� an alphabeticallist ofthe names and places of abode ofthe directors ofcompa­ nies, persollS in pub lick business, merchants and other eminent traders in the cities ofLondon and Westminster, and borough of Southwark, London, 1736, p. 30. 79. Guildhall Libraty (GL), St Bartholomew the Great, register of births of dissenters' children, records the births of five children to Joshua and Mary Lock/Locke between 1696 and 1705. LSF, London and Middlesex Quarterly Meeting, Digests of Burial Registers. DANIEL ECCLESTON OF LANCASTER 1745-1821: Quakers, 80. Davies, pp. 201-204. A MAN NOT AFRAID TO STAND ON 81. Stevenson, 'Social Integration', pp. 369-72; Davies, Quakers inEn glish Society, pp. 204-207. My forthcoming PhD thesis will consider office holding by London Friends. THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS 82. GL, Ms 3990, St Bartholomew the Great, vestry minutes, 1662-1710, vol. 1, 21 Dec. 1 £.87, 3 Aug. 1688. 83. GL, MS 3990/1, 21 Dec. 1695. Carolyn Downs 84. Stevenson, 'Social Integration', p. 375. See also Davies, Quakers, pp. 203-204. 85. PRO, PR.OB/11/319/26. University of Lancaster, England 86. PRO, PR.OB/1 1 /492/21. 87. Although see Pointon, M., 'Quakerism and Visual Culture 1650-1800', Art History 20 (1997), pp. 397-431. Pointon deals with portraiture on pp. 412-14. 88. Nicholson, F.J., Quakers and the Arts, London: Friends Home Service Committee, 1968, ABSTRACT p. 51. 89. Nickalls, J., 'Some Quaker Portraits Certain and Uncertain', Joumal of the Friends Historical It is unusual for an historian to be able to establish in great detail the life of any but those consid­ Society, supplement no. 29 (1958), pp. 1-3. ered one of 'the great and the good'. The substantial amount of documentary sources, both by, and 90. On the later period see Beck, B.S., '"A Witness Lasting, Faithful, True": The Impact about, the Quaker radical Daniel Eccleston of Lancaster (1745-1821), provide an opportunity to of Photography on Quaker Attitudes to Portraiture', MA thesis, London Institute, 2000, esp. view a turbulent period in British history through the experiences of one individual. The links Chapter 4. between industrial and scientific advance, Nonconfom1ity in reli!:,rionand calls for political reform 91. Extensive enquiries have failed to reveal the whereabouts of the original portraits. However, were growing increasingly common as the eighteenth century progressed. 1 This paper attempts to early twentieth-centmy photographs of them exist in LSF. The copies used for this article were show the centrality of Eccleston's Quaker upbringing to his later political radicalisation. Although made from those in the possession of the Howard family kindly provided by Major Oliver Howard. Eccleston was not an Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Paine or Richard Price, he was an Enlightenment From similar copies owned by the Howard family, it is clear that portraits also once existed of radical, prepared to defend with his pen and a consequent loss of his liberty, the rights of the British Mariabella Farmborough Briggins, Philip and Rebecca Eliot, and Theophilia Bellars. to freedom of thought, speech, worship and writing. 92. Pointon, M., Hat��ing the Head: Pot1raiture and Social Formation inE(tthteenth-Centuty En gland, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993, p. 14. 93. LSF, Temp MSS 143, Eliot Howard to Norman Penney, 4 Feb. 1915. KEYWORDS 94. de Krey, G.S., 'Trade, Religion and Politics in London in the Reign of William III', PhD Daniel Eccleston, Quaker, radical, George Washington, Two Acts, Atheism thesis, Princeton University, 1978, p. 145. 95. Archer, 'Social Networks', p. 90. INTRODUCTION AUTHOR DETAILS DanielEccleston of Lancaster was born in 1745 at Corner Row, near the township Simon Dixon is employed as a research officerat the Devon Record Officeand is an of Singleton in the Fylde and died, dismissed as an eccentric by the LancasterGazette, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. He has recently completed on 3 March 1821.2 These bare facts conceal a man who was first and foremost a his PhD on 'Quaker Communities in London, 1667-c1714' at Royal Holloway, level-headed businessman always seeking a new opportunity to turna profit: but who University of London. was also a philosopher, scientist, political thinker, adventurer, merchant, inventor, satirist, prisoner of conscience, republican and democrat: very much part of the Mailing address: Devon Record Office, Great Moor House, Bittern Road, Sowton, eighteenth-century radical Enlightenment. The main sources of infom1ation about Exeter, Devon EX2 7NL, England. Email: s.n.dixon@ex. ac.uk. Daniel Eccleston are his two surviving copy-letter books, held in Lancaster City Library Local Studies Collection and Friends House Library, London. These cover 204 QUAKER STUDIES DOWNS DANIEL ECCLESTON OF LANCASTER 1745-1821 205 the years 1780 and 1781. The 273 letters in the copy books hold a huge wealth of SOWING THE SEEDS OF RADICALISM? A NEW-WORLD ADVENTURE infornution: a splendidly eclectic mix of conm1ercial business, bills of exchange, protests at dishonoured bills, Quaker gossip and family news, all leavened by an The family tradition of travelling seems to have endowedEccleston with a nomadic obvious good humour. In addition to the letter books there are a number of streak. Whether he was seeking adventure or attempting to earn a living (although a individual items which include satires, letters of protest at the unjust imprisonment of combination of both seems most feasible), he set off on a series of remarkable jour­ two debtors, a petition against a local Anglican clergyman, petitions to the king, neys in 1767.9 By 1769, Eccleston was travelling around Montreal as well as the letters to the Board of Trade, and to the manufacturers Boulton and Watts, to Hudson Valley and the Great Lakes region, probably seeking trading opportunities William Pitt the younger and to two United States Presidents. Further writings traced include a series ofEccleston's scientific lectures about the possible applications and business openings.10 In the late 1760s this was frontier territory and many of the of electricity and magnetism along with two books he wrote on religious freedom local tribes, especially the French-allied Huron, were hostile to the British, for what the colonists called the French and Indian Wars (The Seven Years War 1756-63) and toleration.3 One letter, dated 10 November 1795, to the President of the Board were barely over. An important interlude inEccleston's expedition was a journeyhe of Agriculture, contains information central to understanding how the industrial took with native Indians. It was, in fact, common for settlers, trappers and frontiers­ workers of the period fed themselves and points to an English version of the Irish men to use Indian people as guides and guards so Eccleston's journey on Lakes Connacre practice being well established in Lancashire, Cumberland and W estmor­ George and Champlain in a birch-bark canoe was not a unique experience, although land.-1 To all these should be added Eccleston's 1797 tract, Riflections on Religion.5 it was certainly unusual.11 Eccleston described the occasion thus: This selection showsEccleston's desire always to be engaged upon a new task or the next thing and his versatility and energy are apparent in all of Daniel Eccleston's In my retuming from Montreal to Boston, sailed down Lake Champlain and Lake writings: he was a man of many enthusiasms and this zest for life is the key to his George, in a birch bark canoe, with the king of the Cohnawaga nation and five other many and extremely varied interests. Indians and was eleven days [and] twelve nights on the lakes and in the woods with 12 Daniel Eccleston was brought up as a Quaker, part of the Whitehaven Monthly them. Meeting from 1749, in a family that appears to have had a tradition of being actively The time he spent with native Americans may have helped develop Eccleston's involved with the work of the Religious Society of Friends - his grandmother Mary Quaker outlook on the value of people, for his vision of a world in which all were Eccleston (died 1735) was noted for her itinerant missionary work. After her mar­ equal and all were valued, no matter what their race or religion, was clearly expressed riage to Daniel's grandfather Isaac Eccleston, she and a fellow-Quaker, Agnes in his later work Riflections on Religion.13
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