By Emma Laws, Cathedral Librarian
Manuals of domestic devotions became increasingly popular in the 18th century. Devotional writers produced them in great numbers to instruct and guide people in a range of religious practices within the home; typically, these included daily prayers, bible readings, hymns and various texts for participating in family worship.
When not engaged as a barrister, William Melmoth the Elder (1666-1743) wrote devotional books and pamphlets urging people to reflect on and revitalise their individual faith journeys, and to develop a ‘true concern for the interest of their immortal souls’. His best-known work, The great importance of a religious life consider’d (1711), sold 420,000 copies in over thirty editions between 1766 and 1784 alone. According to the preface, ‘few have ever passed a more useful, not one a more blameless Life [than the author]; and his whole Time was employed either in doing Good, or in meditating it’.
This 1826 reprint of Melmoth’s New manual of devotions with prayers & meditations on death, judgment, heaven & hell was published by J. Bennett of Cornwall Street, Plymouth, with illustrations printed by J. Saunders of 83 South Street, Exeter. Evidently, it was well used, perhaps even treasured, by its former owners; forget-me-nots, ferns and a single petal are pressed into its pages, perhaps to bookmark favourite prayers.
While the frontispiece shows a young family engaged in communal prayer, other illustrations in the book depict individuals engaged in ‘self-examination’. Unless a family owned multiple copies, it’s hard to see how the book could be used by everyone at the same time. Perhaps the repetition of morning, midday and evening prayers committed them to memory.
There are prayers for every conceivable occasion: tending sick children; losing a spouse or child; progressing from pregnancy to birth; embarking on, or returning from a journey; engaging in lawsuits; considering marriage for the first time; feeling troubled in mind or tempted to sin; fighting wars; praying for assistance in stormy weather; praying for rain; facing a prison sentence for debt, or a crime – there are even prayers for visiting those in prison. There are special prayers, too, for young people and servants – the cynical among you may sense an ulterior motive!
‘Make me dutiful to my father and mother; obedient to my teachers; humble and reverent to all my betters.’
‘Thou has placed me in the condition of a servant; O grant that I may discharge the duties of it zealously and faithfully’.
Today, these prayers offer us a glimpse of the fragility of life and the concerns and worries of ordinary people in the 18th century. It seems to me that what people feared most at this time of social and financial insecurity and uncertainty was not so much death, but life for those left behind:
‘if thou seest fit to call me to thyself, let all who, under thee depend on me, betake themselves to thee … I leave them in thy hands … and I beg that they may ever have thy good providence for their support and stay in this world…’.