Our "Scratch & Help" fundraisers found that once they had explained the concept and assured people that the maximum ‘help’ was only $3.00, the people approached were, generally, willing to have a go. If the People are once taught that they can accomplish the objects of their wishes by a system of Terror I feel assured that they will proceed further than breaking Frames and it is difficult to say who may be the next Objects of their Vengeance. As £700 of this had now just been paid off, & the remaining £800 was demanded to be paid before Christmas, he said that if I wo'd advance £1000 for this purpose, the assignment, or a fresh mortgage of all the Stocking frames which were worth more than double that money, wo'd be an ample security, I therefore promised to take the matter into consideration & consult my Son John (who was a solicitor) upon it on my return home. Mr Heath's just by, with whom I had a long conversation on my Sister's affairs, whose principal inconvenience he said was the want of Capital, which had occasioned her late embarrassments, which he told me were likely to be renewed by the calling in of £1500 originally lent to Mess'rs Williams & Whiter by the Sheldons, Sisters of Mr Green the former partner deceased, on a mortgage of all the Stocking frames then in use.
Three months later 'on Thursday, the fourteenth, (October 1812), I received a letter from Mr Townsend of Pewsey concerning my sister and her sons affairs, to whom he as well as myself was a principal creditor; on which I wrote, to propose a meeting with Mr. Voke and him at Winton, to talk matters over'. Nephew Edward of Nottingham who had now been for sometime out upon his first Southern journey (Sydney Williams, with his Uncle Voke having taken the northern one) came to us from Portsmouth & spent the day with us. He had fallen off his horse and suffered a simple fracture of the leg, which was well set and seemed at first to be healing satisfactorily when, after three weeks, he contracted lockjaw and died within a few days. The final nail in the coffin was the extreme depression that hit the industry in the first few years of the 19th century, culminating in the Luddite riots of 1811 described earlier. I had no idea, but this led me into a study of the Dissenting politics that controlled Nottingham for over fifty years at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, in which environment Thomas Williams the younger was immersed and prospered.
Many accidental discoveries, unearthed by patient and helpful library and record office staff, kept the project alive and, gradually, over a number of years, it developed and expanded. In November, Marsh recounts that 'on Monday the 26. we at length heard of the death of my old Mother in Law, which happen'd on the Saturday before, in consequence of which my Sister came into possession of about £500 Stock in the Consols, & some old household goods, Plate, Books etc.' Presumably, this occurred in Nottingham and, if that was so, she would probably have been buried in Nottingham - perhaps with her son, at Sneinton? These, then, were the circumstances facing the family business after Thomas Wiliams's death. Earlier accounts of the family history have rested heavily on statements made by William Williams, who emigrated to New Zealand as a C.M.S. On another occasion, Frances Porter, the author of the definitive biography of William Williams, The Turanga Journals, asked me if I knew when Henry and William had converted to Anglicanism. In September, Henry Marsh proposed going to Nottingham again 'where he was going to look into my Sister's affairs. Henry Marsh was cut off with a legacy of one thousand pounds and an annuity of a hundred pounds for life.
They invariably visited their uncle John Marsh and Lydia would go on to stay with either the Vokes in Gosport or her Aunt, Lady Clerke, married to the Rev. Joseph Townsend at Pewsey. As therefore we thought it a pity that Lydia, who had not seen her cousin for 10 years, sho'd leave us about 3 hours before her arrival; we therefore let Sydney (who co'd not himself stay any longer) go to Gosport by himself on that afternoon, & kept Lydia to see her cousin, who accordingly came between 7. & 8. in the evening. The peculiar exigencies of the times having produced many instances of insolvency and some cases having occurred of this kind among professors of religion, in which there appears to have been a culpable continuance in business, after it ought to have been given up, and an expenditure continued in, which must have been at the cost & loss of the creditors, the Church has thought it necessary in order to express its sentiments on the subject to resolve, that if any member of this Church shall hereafter become insolvent, such person shall be suspended from the communion of the Church, until such time as he shall either convince the Church that he is not guilty of wilful negligence, delay or extravagance, or 厕奴 has expressed such contrition and repentance as the nature of the case renders necessary.