His situation would have been desperate, had he not been occasionally relieved by sums out of charitable funds, procured by means of Dr. Benson, and Dr. Kippis. Several vacancies occurred in his vicinity; but he was treated with contempt, and thought unworthy to fill any of them. Even the dissenting clergy in the neighbourhood thought it a degradation to associate with him, and durst not ask him to preach: not from any dislike to his theological opinions; for several of them thought as freely as he did; but because the genteeler part of their audience always absented themselves when he appeared in the pulpit. A good many years afterwards, as he informs us himself, when his reputation was very high, he preached in the same place, and multitudes flocked to hear the very same sermons, which they had formerly listened to with contempt and dislike. His friends being aware of the disagreeable nature of his situation at Needham, were upon the alert to procure him a better. In 1758, in consequence of the interest of Mr. Gill, he was invited to appear as a candidate for a meeting-house in Sheffield, vacant by the resignation of Mr. Wadsworth. He appeared accordingly and preached, but was not approved of. Mr. Haynes, the other minister, offered to procure him a meeting-house at Nantwich in Cheshire. This situation he accepted, and, to save expenses, he went from Needham to London by sea. At Nantwich he continued three years, and spent his time much more agreeably than he had done at Needham. His opinions were not obnoxious to his hearers, and controversial discussions were never introduced. Here he established a school, and found the business of teaching, contrary to his expectation, an agreeable and even interesting employment. He taught from seven in the morning, till four in the afternoon; and after the school was dismissed, he went to the house of Mr. Tomlinson, an eminent attorney in the neighbourhood, where he taught privately till seven in the evening. Being thus engaged twelve hours every day in teaching, he had little time for private study. It is, indeed, scarcely conceivable how, under such circumstances, he could prepare himself for Sunday. Here, however, his circumstances began to mend. At Needham it required the utmost economy to keep out of debt; but at Nantwich, he was able to purchase a few books and some philosophical instruments, as a small air-pump, an electrical machine, &c. These he taught his eldest scholars to keep in order and manage: and by entertaining their parents and friends with experiments, in which the scholars were generally the operators, and sometimes the lecturers too, he considerably extended the reputation of his school. It was at Nantwich that he wrote his grammar for the use of his school, a book of considerable merit, though its circulation was never extensive. This latter circumstance was probably owing to the superior reputation of Dr. Lowth, who published his well-known grammar about two years afterwards.