Memoranda of Mary Hagger
Mary Hagger was recorded a minister at Hertford in 1794, and then spent most of her adult life unable to do the work. A concern to visit Essex was laid on her in 1797 and she refused it. What followed she called a long wilderness travel of many years: her husband's collapse, a child lost in 1809, widowhood in 1810, the paying of her own debts and many of his, and at last the resignation of her seat in the meeting of ministers and elders. She was silent for two decades. In 1827 she removed to Ashford in Kent, and in the fifth month of 1830, in her seventy-second year, Folkestone Monthly Meeting reinstated her a minister. She then did in ten years what she had not been able to do in thirty: Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, Nottinghamshire, and finally Essex — the visit she had owed since 1797, of which she wrote that it felt like paying a debt. She died at Ashford in the first month of 1840, near her eighty-second year. This edition gathers her memoranda and letters with the testimony of Folkestone Monthly Meeting concerning her, in clear modern English.
- Fully modernized English — every long sentence broken, every inversion untangled
- 1,259-word editorial introduction placing her silence and her restoration in context
- 11 chapters with argument summaries, plus a full linked table of contents
- Her own memoranda and letters, with the testimony of Folkestone Monthly Meeting
- 250 linked Scripture and reference notes throughout
- EPUB format
This edition
Read itE-book · EPUB
- Time to read2.2 hours
- Length31,474 words
- Files1 EPUB, DRM-free
How we get 2.2 hours
This figure is here so you can compare one book against another. Every title on the site is timed from its own word count at the same reading speed — nothing is adjusted book by book — so if this edition says 2.2 hours and another says half that, the second one really is about half the reading. It is a measure of size, in the way a page count is. Your own pace is your own: at the speeds typical adult readers actually manage, this edition runs anywhere from 1.7 hours to 3 hours.
What is in this edition
| Modernized text | 30,249 words |
|---|---|
| Introduction, chapter summaries and notes written for this edition | 1,225 words |
| Total | 31,474 words |
The introduction, the chapter summaries and the notes on people, places and unfamiliar terms were written for this edition. They are 1,225 of the 31,474 words above, and they are part of what you are buying.
Counted from the text of the EPUB you receive. Navigation, the title page, the table of contents and the licence page are excluded — they are packaging, not reading.
The reading rate
238 words per minute, for adult silent reading of non-fiction, applied unchanged to every title on the site. We did not pick the number; it is the pooled result of a published meta-analysis. Nothing is adjusted book by book — that consistency is what makes two of these figures worth comparing.
Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
190 studies, 18,573 participants.
The same paper puts most adult readers between 175 and
300 words per minute, and those two speeds give the
1.7 hours and 3 hours above.
Because time is words divided by speed, an even range of speeds produces an
uneven range of times, so 2.2 hours sits nearer the fast end of that
range than the middle of it.
If it were a paperback
Roughly 90–126 pages.
Words per printed page is a typesetting convention, not a measurement — it moves with trim size, type size and leading. The range above assumes 250–350 words a page. Friends Illuminated publishes no print edition of this book; the figure is here only because pages are a more familiar size than words.
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About This Edition
She was born Mary Knight at Stone Hall, near Wanstead in Essex, on the fourth of the first month, 1758, the daughter of William and Lettice Knight. She was recorded a minister at Hertford Monthly Meeting in the fourth month of 1794. Then, for something close to thirty years, she could not do the work she had been recorded to do.
The concern she refused
In 1797 a religious concern to visit the meetings of Essex was laid upon her, and she did not take it up. She is exact about this in her own memoranda and she never excuses it. What followed she called “a long wilderness travel of many years.”
The particulars are hard reading. Her husband’s affairs collapsed and his health with them. A child was lost in 1809. He died in 1810. She paid her own debts and many of his, which took years and cost her nearly everything she had. At some point in that stretch — the 1841 printing leaves the year blank — she resigned her seat in the meeting of ministers and elders. A woman who had been recorded a minister sat down and stopped being one.
Ashford
In 1827, in her seventieth year, she removed to Ashford in Kent. On the twelfth of the fifth month, 1830, Folkestone Monthly Meeting reinstated her a minister. She was seventy-two years old.
What she did with the ten years that remained is the substance of this book. Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire in 1831. Nottinghamshire in 1832. And in 1835, with Susannah Brown of Coggeshall, Essex — the county she had been asked to visit thirty-eight years earlier. Her certificate was returned to Folkestone Monthly Meeting on the seventeenth of the tenth month, 1835. Afterwards she went to Epping, and wrote that it felt to her like paying a debt she had owed since she returned from her visit into Essex.
The close
She died at Ashford on the twenty-fifth of the first month, 1840, in about the eighty-second year of her age, and was buried there on the second of the second month. The testimony of Folkestone Monthly Meeting concerning her was given forth at Canterbury on the twelfth of the third month, 1840, and opens this edition.
About this edition
Every sentence has been rebuilt for a modern reader. Her vocabulary of conviction — Truth, the Seed, First-day, the numbered months — is bracketed on first use and then left alone, because translating it would translate her out of the book. Two hundred and fifty Scripture and reference links are set into the text; every Scripture reference was checked against the King James text rather than recalled, and every person or place link was checked by hand.
