 
Priestley left Needham Market in 1758. He had been there three years, and he was in his twenty-fifth year when he entered upon his work at Nantwich. Of this place he had always the happiest recollections. The meeting-house, as we learn from Partridge’s Historical Account of Nantwich, 1774, was a good, decent building, “to which appertains a convenient house for the minister.” Whether he actually occupied this house is uncertain. One account states that he boarded with Mr John Eddowes, a grocer, and sometimes showed his agility and sprightliness by leaping over the counter. Eddowes was described by Priestley as a very sociable and sensible man, and as he was fond of music his guest was—
And he adds,—
At Nantwich he found the people good-natured and friendly, and happily free from those controversies which had been the topics of almost every conversation As the duties of his office left him ample opportunity to turn the active powers of his mind to account, he again attempted to establish a school, and this time with a success far beyond his anticipations.
Priestley, in truth, was an excellent teacher, and with the success which his efforts brought him there passed away the last traces of the aversion with which he had entered on that calling. He made it his study to regulate his business as a schoolmaster in the best manner, and he was able to say with truth that in no school was more business done, or with more satisfaction, either to the master or the scholars, than in this school of his. He was no longer haunted, as at Needham, with the fear of debt, and he was able to add to his stock of books and to gratify his wish to possess some philosophical instruments, such as a small air-pump Such leisure as he had he gave to literature, recomposing his Observations on the Character and Reasoning of the Apostle Paul, which he began at Needham, and compiling an English grammar for the use of his school, on a new plan. This work, which was printed in 1761, had a considerable reputation in its day. David Hume acknowledged to Griffith, the bookseller, that he was made sensible of the Gallicisms and peculiarities of his style on reading it. Priestley remained three years at Nantwich. His success there as a teacher induced the trustees of the newly-founded academy at Warrington to reconsider the desirability of engaging him as tutor in the Classical Languages and in what used to be called Polite Literature. His name had already been mentioned in connection with the Warrington Academy by his friend, Clark of Daventry, at the time of its establishment and whilst he was at Needham. “But,” says Priestley, “Mr (afterwards Dr) Aikin, whose qualifications were superior to mine, was justly preferred to me.” On the death, on March 5, 1761, of Dr John Taylor of Norwich, the learned author of A Hebrew Concordance and other theological works, and a well-known classical scholar, the head of the academy and its tutor of divinity, Dr Aikin was appointed to succeed him, and Priestley was invited to take Dr Aikin’s place.
Priestley’s removal to Warrington, in September 1761, was one of the turning-points in his career, and no single circumstance in it exercised a greater influence on his life and fortunes. “The Warrington Academy for the education of young men of every religious denomination for the Christian ministry, or as laymen,” and the men who formed its tutors, played a notable part in the history of Nonconformity in England. In Taylor of Norwich; in Aikin, the father of the well-known physician and lecturer on Natural History, and of Anna LÆtitia, better known as Mrs Barbauld, the poetess; in John Reinhold Forster, the naturalist, who accompanied Cook in his second voyage; in Nicholas Clayton, who succeeded Aikin as divinity tutor; in William Enfield, the author of the History of Liverpool and the well-known compiler of The Speaker, who afterwards became Rector AcademicÆ; in Pendlebury Houghton, and in Gilbert Wakefield, the accomplished editor of Lucretius, Priestley had for colleagues or successors as eminent a set of teachers as any place of learning at that time could boast of. It was at the Warrington Academy, the successor of the older academies belonging to the English Presbyterian body at Findern and Kendal, and the direct ancestor of the Manchester College at Oxford, that the free thought of English Presbyterianism first began to crystallise into the Unitarian theology, and for a time it was the centre of literary taste and activity, and of political liberalism The Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (vol xi. p. I, 1858-59) contain “A Historical Sketch of Warrington Academy,” by Mr Henry A. Bright, compiled in great measure from a parcel of papers, letters and memoranda which had belonged to the Rev. J. Seddon, and which had been rescued from the hands of a Liverpool cheesemonger, who was using them for the ordinary purposes of his shop. Among these papers were letters of Priestley, Kippis, Aikin and others of lesser note, all of interest as throwing light on the history of the academy. I am indebted to Mr Bright’s paper for the following account of the character and fortunes of the academy. Mr John Seddon, we learn, was its virtual founder. The letters referred to, as well as the testimony of contemporaries, bear witness to “the concern which he had ever expressed for its support, honour, success; the indefatigable pains which he took for this purpose; the indifference which he showed to fame or censure, to good or evil report, so that he might serve the general designs of the institution.” Seddon, although described as “a dullish person,” must have been a man of considerable pertinacity, patience and resource, as shown by the manner in which he steered his venture through the difficulties and dangers incident to its establishment, for he had to contend with the doubts, hesitation and luke-warmness of its professed supporters, and the “pleasing spirit of jealous rivalry” which existed between Liverpool and Manchester as to its locality. Liverpool advanced seven “excellent reasons” why the academy Its first home, immortalised by the lines in which Mrs Barbauld bids us “Mark where its simple front yon mansion rears, The nursery of men for future years,” was described, in terms eminently suggestive of the incomparable Mr George Robins, as “a range of buildings” with “a considerable extent of garden ground, and a handsome terrace walk on the banks of the Mersey, possessing altogether a respectable collegiate appearance.” The “ugly, mean, old brick house,” no longer “A dim old mansion, hidden half-away From a dull world grown careless of its fame,” has been transformed into a place of quiet, old-world dignity, and is now turned to uses worthy of its fame and in harmony with its traditions. In spite of the seeming unanimity of the trustees, and the zeal and energy of their secretary, Mr Seddon, the fortunes of the Academy were ill-starred from the outset. Dr Taylor, one of the first Arians who ministered to the English Presbyterians, and an erudite and accomplished man—an author so widely read in his day that he is even mentioned by Burns in his Epistle to John Goudie: “’Tis you and Taylor are the chief, Wha are to blame for this mischief”— was ill fitted to direct the precarious existence of the enterprise, and the old scholar must have sighed often for the free and independent position, and the dear home among an affectionate people, which he had sacrificed in leaving Norwich for Warrington. Dissensions arose, in the midst of which Dr Taylor died. Dr Taylor, as already stated, was succeeded as theological tutor by Dr Aikin, who retained that position until his death in 1780.
Under his judicious guidance matters now went more smoothly: indeed, the eighteen or twenty years which followed constituted the golden age of the Academy, In the year following Taylor’s death the academy moved from the house by “Mersey’s gentle current,” then, we are told, an uncontaminated stream noted for its salmon, to the new Academy, which is described as a brick building in a quiet and secluded court, with stone copings and a clock and bell turret in the centre, of no great architectural beauty, but not unpleasing with its quaint, old-world look. This, too, was celebrated in verse by Mrs Barbauld: “Lo! there the seat where science loved to dwell, Where liberty her ardent spirit breathed.” It exists no longer: municipal improvements have swept it away, and all that remains of Academy Place are the houses at right angles to it where dwelt Priestley and Enfield. As to emoluments, the tutors had each £100 a year from the subscription fund, and “with respect to dwelling houses, are to be at their own expenses.” Poor students were exempted from the payment of fees, but richer ones paid two guineas yearly to each of the tutors, who might take boarders into their houses at £15 per annum for those who had two months’ vacation, and £18 per annum for those who had no vacation, exclusive of “tea, washing, fire and candles.” If the living at Warrington was plain and the thinking high, there was a degree of decorous gaiety, of refinement, of social charm, “easy, blithe and debonnair,” pervading the little community, which, as may be gleaned from the memoirs and reminiscences of the period, impressed and delighted everyone who was witness of
Miss Lucy Aikin, the granddaughter of Priestley’s colleague, the niece of Mrs Barbauld, and the accomplished authoress of Memoirs of the Courts of Queen Elizabeth, and the biographer of Addison, has left us a little sketch of that society in which the early years of her girlhood were spent.
But we learn there were other attractions in the Warrington circle besides the tutors and their philosophy.
We are further told the beautiful Miss Rigbys, whose father was “provider of the Commons,”
On another occasion she wrote:—
Those wicked Miss Rigbys must have made the life of that “dullish person,” Mr Seddon, who acted as Rector AcademiÆ, and who was responsible for law and order, well-nigh insupportable. On one occasion—perhaps it was to celebrate their return—they asked some of the students to supper.
Nor were the Rector’s feelings likely to be soothed by such letters as the following from Mr Samuel Vaughan of Bristol, sent during the Long Vacation, complaining bitterly of the disappointment he felt as regards the Academy, and the “too great latitude allowed the students”:—
That the mauvais quart d’heure under the ancestral roof was not without its chastening influence on the improvident Ben is evident from the fact that the same post brought the perturbed Rector a letter from him protesting that—
However, he expresses contrition and promises amendment, fears that he has encroached on Mr Seddon’s goodness and forbearance, and that his conduct may have acted injuriously on the Academy, etc., etc., and winds up by saying that Mr Wilkes will probably get a pardon from the Crown, and that he (Mr Vaughan) does not believe that he ever wrote the North Briton—No. 45. Alas! Mr Benjamin Vaughan’s contrition was very short-lived, for next year that “affectionate but distressed pupil” had to confess to the Rector that he dare not show his accounts to his father.
And yet Mr Benjamin Vaughan became a useful member of society, had a seat in the House of Commons, and had the honour of having dedicated to him the Lectures on History and General Policy, to which is prefixed an “Essay on a Course of Liberal Education for Civil and Active Life,” to which he had listened as a pupil and which Priestley published in 1788. Whatever may have been Mr Seddon’s worries he had at least the consolation of a loving wife, although, it is to be feared, she too suffered much at the hands of those terrible Miss Rigbys, and even from Miss Aikin, who was somewhat of a quiz. The daughter of an equerry to Frederick Prince of Wales, she was a very fine lady, and, says Mr Bright, “spelt abominably.”
I cannot resist quoting the last paragraph of this most charming but laborious letter.
We cannot, however, concern ourselves at greater length with the life at the Warrington Academy, or dwell much longer on the fortunes of that seat of learning. To do full justice to the theme would need indeed the witty pen which in “Cranford” delineated the social life of a neighbouring town with such inimitable grace and charm. The worthy Mr Seddon died in 1770, and was succeeded as Rector by Dr Enfield, a man distinguished for elegance of taste and sound literary judgment, and who, on the death, ten years later, of Dr Aikin, became chief tutor. For various reasons, which it is unnecessary to state here, the trustees eventually decided to remove the Academy to Manchester, and Warrington knew it no more after 1786. During the twenty-nine years of its existence in the latter place some 400 pupils had passed through it—many of them noteworthy men in their day, such as Percival; the Aikins; Rigby of Norwich; Estlin of Bristol; Sergeant Heywood; Hamilton Rowan, the Irish rebel; Malthus, the political economist; Lord Ennismore; Sir James Carnegie of Southesk; Mr Henry Beaton, Mr Pendlebury Houghton and Dr Crompton.
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