Stormy Beginnings

‘Accept my dear Selina, my heartfelt acknowledgement of all your undeviating care and kindness, and forbearance and devotion, and rest assured of the undiminished warmth of my attachment, and of my increasing regard and affection’. These words were written by Zachary Macaulay on their seventeenth wedding anniversary, in what was to be just over the halfway mark in their marriage. By the standards of the time, although on the surface it seemed to be a very traditional one, with gender roles carefully demarcated, this was by no means the whole story. It was from the start marked by an extraordinary mutuality. Neither Zachary Macaulay nor Selina Mills would have recognised the concept of gender equality; yet there were strong elements of an equal partnership in the years that they shared together.

However, the beginnings of the courtship were as rocky and bizarre as romantic relationships in a Jane Austen novel. Although the Clapham Sect and their associates were overwhelmingly male, there were two women who could make some claim on membership of its club. One was Margaret Middleton, wife of Sir Charles Middleton, later Lord Barham, Tory MP from 1778 to 1790 and Comptroller of the Navy. The Middletons held many an abolitionist meeting at Barham Court in Kent, in which Margaret made her presence felt. Despite William Wilberforce's strong aversion to having women active in the campaign, Margaret Middleton is thought by many to have been the one to persuade Wilberforce to raise the issue of the slave trade in Parliament.

The other woman was Hannah More, born in 1745, the fourth of five daughters of a Suffolk gentleman turned schoolmaster in Bristol. By the last quarter of the eighteenth century More had become a celebrated poetess and writer and a friend of those in London's artistic and literary circles such as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr Samuel Johnson. Later on she became a close friend of William Wilberforce and John Newton, the slave ship captain turned evangelical London clergyman, of Henry Thornton and Thomas Babington.