John Edwards (Unitarian minister)

[9][10] William Russell, Priestley's patron and the lay leader of the New Meeting, had been burnt out of his home; he moved to Gloucester, and then in 1793 to the United States, with his brother George left in charge in Birmingham.

[13] At this time, however, the West Midlands did not have the reform politics associations that had arisen in other industrial areas of England.

Local nonconformist ministers linked to the Society for Constitutional Information played a significant role.

Coleridge decided he should tone down the radical edge of what he said, so as not to have an adverse impact on Edwards's reputation.

William Roscoe then wrote to Edwards, offering help to bring Coleridge to Liverpool, to work as a political journalist.

[17] Roscoe in a further letter to Edwards concluded that Coleridge would be better suited in Derby than Liverpool, "this mercantile slave-dealing place.

This work was a set of eight engravings by William Ellis, after drawings by Philip Henry Witton, a clerk and draughtsman who went on to be a canal engineer.