Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/25

 12 S. VI. JAN., 1920.J

NOTES AND QUERIES.

17

MRS. ANNE DUTTON:

AUTHORSHIP OF B.M. CATALOGUE,

4255 aaaa 41.

(12 S. ii. 147, 197, 215, 275, 338, 471; iii. 78, 136; v. 247.)

THE list of the works of Mrs. Dutton given in 12 S. ii. 471 include :

(a) ' A Discourse on Justification,' Octo- ,ber, 1740.

(6) ' A Discourse concerning the New Birth,' to which are added two poems, 1740.

A note upon the last work indicates that examination should show that the two poems were, in reality, three.

Both the above-named discourses were republished in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, under the name of Thomas Dutton. The former is 4255 aaaa 41, B.M. Catalogue. It was printed at Glasgow, by Wm. Smith, in 1778, pp. x, 185, and contains a ten-column list of subscribers' names.

The title-page describes : " A Treatise on Justification. .. .by the Reverend Mr. Thomas Dutton, late Minister in London, and Author of the Discourse on the New Birth and Religious Letters. The Third Edition." The end pages conclude with an announcement of proposals for printing, by subscription, " A Treatise concerning the New Birth, to which will be subjoined 36 Letters on Spiritual Subjects, by the Rev. Thomas Dutton. .. .With a Recom- mendatory Preface by the Rev. Jacob Rogers, B.A."

The preface of 4255 aaaa 41 refers to the Rev. Mr. Dutton, and states : " We have seen his discourse concerning the New Birth and his letters on Spiritual Subjects." The advertisement adds that the worthy author of the book was well known, but that copies were scarce and dear.

The projected treatise concerning the ' New Birth ' was printed at Dairy in 1803, and contains, as was anticipated in 12 S. ii. 471, three, and not two, hymns. Of it I know no copy save my own. Both books are productions that, many years previously, had been claimed by and ascribed to Mrs. Anne Dutton.

There certainly had been a Mr. Thomas Dutton, a minister, of London sometime, though not, I hope, a minister within it. He had held a mission in Edinburgh, of which the results were published under the title of : " The Warnings of the Eternal Spirit to Edinburgh, 1710." The pro- phecies therein contained were addressed

by Dutton, the principal of three impostors to hysterical audiences. He was abetted by Guy Nutt and a man named Glover ; the two acting as corner-men at his abomin- able private seances, and breaking into song when he reached the rare difficulty of con- tinuing perfectly obscure. He produced the usual result of psychic aberration in a

Lady A, and, apparently accompanied

by her, left for London. The account given of Dutton's catalepsed posturings and agitated struttings, of his face very terrible to behold (framed in plaid and whiskers), but pleasing as a bridegroom's at other times, would be rather amusing if it were not still more disgusting.

Whether this Thomas Dutton was a father-in-law of Mrs. Dutton I do not know. There is an occasional resemblance in their styles. But it is not credible that she was a literary impostor, indebted for the whole of her work to this Thomas Dutton. Much of her writing was in response to the requirements of her own time ; notably the best of her material, that produced against Sandeman.

On the other hand, it is equally difficult to believe that pious and earnest men reprinted the treatises with false ascription purposelessly. The successor of Mrs. Dutton at Great Gransden was a man named Keymer, and he probably became possessed of some of her manuscripts. He was of character that, even if his own exculpation be accepted implicitly as true, was even more despicable than that of his wife ; but this could hardly have been known to Mrs. Dutton. He would have been quite capable of selling her manuscripts, with a fresh ascription that would have overcome the objection of Presbyterians to feminine divinity. J. C. WHITEBROOK.

24 Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, W.C.2.

AN ENGLISH ARMY LIST OF 1740.

(12 S. ii. 3, 43. 75, 84, 122, 129, 151, 163, 191, 204, 229, 243, 272, 282, 311, 324, 353, 364, 391, 402, 431, 443, 473, 482, 512, 524 ; iii. 11, 46, 71, 103, 132, 190, 217, 234, 267, 304.)

3rd Foot Guards (12 S. ii. 165, 231 ; v. 270.) William Lister, captain-lieutenant May 4 , 1740, till captain 'and lieutenant-colonel, January, 1741 (when The Gent. Mag. styles him Capt. Leicester) ; d. March, 1744.

Hugh Frazer, captain and lieutenant- colonel (v. Mordaunt), April 25, 1741 ; wounded at Fontenoy.