[B. H. Draper, Baptist hymn writer.] Autograph Letter Signed proposing to the nonconformist bookseller Josiah Conder an edition of Philip Henry’s sermons, from manuscripts, with reference to Sir John Bickerton Williams and John William Cunningham.

See his entry in the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, and Conder’s entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 4to. On the first leaf of a bifolium, the second addressed on the reverse, with postmark, to ‘Mr. Josh. Conder, / Bookseller, / Bucklersbury, / London.’ In fair condition, lightly aged and worn, spiked, folded for postage, and with damage and slight loss to the second leaf from the breaking of the wafer. Begins: ‘Learning lately from my friend Mr. Williams of Shrewsbury, [the future Sir John Bickerton Williams (1792-1855)] that you had engaged with him for his MS. Sermons of the excellent Philip Henry, I am led to give you the offer of another volume of a similar kind. I have long, like Mr. Williams been an assiduous collector of the Henry MSS. - and I possess many that are really valuable. I have a beautiful exposition of the Philippians and the Colopians by P. Henry. I believe Philip’s [sic] MSS. are now considerable scarce.’ He claims to have in his possession ‘[t]he most beautiful specimen that can be produced of Philip’s writing is in my possession. It is a part of an Hebrew Grammar he drew up for his own use - it is imcomparably beautiful.’ He asks if ‘a fac simile of this MS. be very acceptable to the public, and add to the value of the Book?’ If Conder should ‘think proper to treat’ with Draper for his manuscripts - ‘I mean a MS. Volume of Sermons of Philip Henry’ - he would like to ‘prefix to it a Preface of ten or twelve pages’: ‘Philips’s Sermons were really most of them preached in a Barn, and I should like to thump the velvet cushion a little on such an occasion. The Author of that insidious work [an evangelical history of the Church of England published in 1814 by John William Cunningham (1780-1861), which went through ten editions by 1816] merits ample and severe castigation.’ He will not offer the manuscript to any other publisher until he hears from Conder. Some of the sermons are long, and all are in Philips’s handwriting: ‘many of them cannot fail of exciting much attention, and doing much good’. For further information he refers him to his own correspondent, ‘Mr. Button, Paternoster’. In 1816 Conder did publish an edition of eighteen of Philips’s sermons, ‘from his original manuscripts’, with notes by. Williams, but no mention of Draper.