Before Clapham

Cherie Harder and Peter Edman

The Legacy of Margaret Middleton

History has many forgotten heroes, villains, and colorful characters, as the very process of compressing the past into a narrative edits out the roles of countless actors. While this may be unavoidable, it also means that the compelling stories of many exceptional individuals are rarely, if ever, told.

William Wilberforce, once considered an obscure historical figure, has made a comeback in the public consciousness as the leader of efforts he believed God had placed before him as his “two great objects”: the abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners and morals. The almost miraculous accomplishment of both took not only Wilberforce’s lifelong dedication, but also that of a close circle of friends who became known as the Clapham Sect (named after their neighborhood of Clapham). But while it has become increasingly clear that the Clapham Sect was as essential to the British abolitionist movement as Wilberforce, few know much of those who gathered that band of friends.

One such little-known but highly influential figure was Lady Margaret Middleton. In our Reading on Wilberforce, biographer John Pollock writes that “the principal agent in securing Wilberforce” to first offer a motion to Parliament to abolish the slave trade “was Captain Sir Charles Middleton of the royal Navy and his artist wife.” Lady Middleton is worth remembering as one who used her gifts of hospitality, friendship, and a passion for justice to gather for conversation (and later, strategizing) the friends who would become the leading abolitionists of her time.

Lady Middleton was born Margaret Gambier sometime in the 1730s. She was from a family of Huguenot émigrés and the niece of a Navy captain and seems to have been converted at a young age to an active faith under the preaching of George Whitefield. While visiting her uncle, she met Charles Middleton, then a teenage midshipman. The two fell in love, but because her family disapproved of the match (and eventually disinherited her) and Middleton could not support a wife, they did not marry until 1761, nearly twenty years later.

During the intervening time Margaret lived with a school friend in Kent named Elizabeth Bouverie, another Huguenot who owned the estate of Barham Court in Teston. This friendship continued after Margaret’s marriage, as Charles came to live at Barham Court, farming it during a twelve-year lull in his distinguished naval career (and later inheriting the estate).

No personal letters of Margaret Middleton survive. Most of what little we know of her is through the letters and diaries of her friends such as Hannah More and William Wilberforce, who testify repeatedly to her influence on their lives and actions. We do know she was what was then called “highly accomplished,” and a noted portrait artist. She and Elizabeth Bouverie hosted a wide variety of artists, activists, and intellectuals at Teston, including Samuel Johnson (who called Margaret one of the wisest people he knew—no small compliment) and the painter Joshua Reynolds.

Her social standing is noteworthy, for the times in which she lived were as hostile to public faith as anything we know today. Resisting such strong social pressure took courage and the wise use of social capital. And we know that she did resist and helped others to do the same. Sir Charles later credited his wife for fostering his own deep faith. Hannah More was always vocal about her debt to Lady Middleton’s friendship and personal example of faith and philanthropy, which became an ideal that shaped the Victorian age.

After Charles was made a baronet in 1781 he brought in a friend, James Ramsay, to become vicar of Teston and his personal secretary. Ramsay had served with Middleton at sea and had observed the treatment of slaves at first-hand. Ramsay’s two decades of correspondence with Lady Middleton on issues of moral reform led directly to his landmark book-length tract, the Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies. She continued to support and encourage him—helping to shape and edit several drafts—until it was finally published in 1784, with a preface featuring a long uncredited letter of hers.

Ramsay’s notoriety brought more people to Teston, where Lady Middleton made her home a center for the abolitionist cause. The Middletons’ social clout helped forge alliances between a variety of groups interested in the issue but previously unknown to each other. Then their daughter married a close friend of William Wilberforce, through whom they met the rising MP, and introduced him to Ramsay at Teston.

So many important discussions were had and plans made at Teston that Hannah More wrote that Teston should become known as the “Runnymede” of the African slaves. More’s own best-selling Thoughts Upon the Manners of the Great, published in 1788, was a direct result of strategies for changing the cultural climate devised at Teston, and its early drafts were seen only by Wilberforce, Mrs. Bouverie, and Lady Middleton. The real work for Wilberforce’s first 1789 bill against the slave trade was done at Lady Middleton’s home in Teston.

Margaret died suddenly in 1792, the same year John Thornton purchased the estate in Clapham that became abolitionist headquarters. Thus by the time the Clapham circle was formed, the work toward abolition and the reformation of manners—Wilberforce’s two “great objects” of his famous 1787 diary entry—was already well underway. The work got its start and first took its bearings in the salon of the remarkable Lady Middleton.

Margaret Middleton’s life demonstrates the essential role one unsung individual can play, by exercising unique gifts and abilities within a framework of community, in radically changing a nation and the world. Wilberforce, the more public figure, was given “two great objects” to achieve, but he was not asked to achieve them alone. He was able to do so, with God’s grace, only through the assistance, encouragement, and influence of others, including Lady Middleton. Like them, much of what we are called, even commanded, to do cannot be done alone. The story and legacy of Lady Middleton is another illustration of the truth that often our callings can only be lived out in the context of community—and that historical prominence is no true measure of faithfulness and influence.  

Cherie Harder is President and Peter Edman is Director of Research for The Trinity Forum.

2 Responses (comments are closed) • Features, Leadership, Public Square, Fri 30 Oct 2009