“P.S.—If your ladyship is so good as to spare a minister for three weeks, I shall be glad to wait upon the dear young men and their patroness at the College.”[174] Footnote 172: Trevecca College was in the parish of Talgarth, South Wales. It was supposed to be part of an old castle erected in the reign of Henry the Second. The date over the entrance was 1176. Footnote 173: Thomas Maxfield, who had seceded from Wesley’s Connexion in 1763, and had received episcopal ordination from the Bishop of Derry. Footnote 174: “Life and Times of the Countess of Huntingdon,” vol. ii., p. 98. This is an important letter, not only as exhibiting the views of Fletcher, but as containing a curious chapter in the earliest history of Trevecca College. The College, as it was ostentatiously called, had been opened ten months. It had one master; and the author of the “Life and Times of the Countess of Huntingdon” says Joseph Easterbrook was the person who occupied this position; but adduces no proof in support of his assertion. Another, and a far greater authority, attests that the master of the College was a child. Who was he? In 1788, there was printed “A Sermon, occasioned by the Death of the celebrated Mr. J. Henderson, B.A., of Pembroke College, Oxford: Preached at St. George’s, Kingswood, November 23; and at Temple Church, Bristol, November 30, 1788. By the Rev. William Agutter, M.A., of St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford. Published at the request of the Congregations. Bristol. 1788.” 8vo, pp. 32. The text of the sermon is, “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” Mr. Agutter’s eulogy of Henderson cannot here be quoted at full length: the following are brief extracts from it:— “Mr. Henderson was born, as it were, a thinking being; and was never known to cry, or to express any infantine peevishness. The questions he asked, as soon as he was able to speak, astonished all who heard him.” “His memory was so strong that he retained all he read; and his judgment so solid that he arranged, examined, and digested all that he remembered, and thus made it his own.” “At a time that other children were employed in the drudgery of learning words, he was occupied in obtaining the knowledge of things. _While but a boy, he was engaged to teach the learned languages. At twelve years of age, he taught Greek and Latin in the College of Trevecca. The Governor of the College at that time was the Rev. Mr. Fletcher, late Vicar of Madeley._”[175] Footnote 175: The _Arminian Magazine_, for 1793, confirms this statement. Mr. Agutter proceeds to say, that, when Fletcher was dismissed from Trevecca, Henderson was dismissed with him. This, then, was the master—the only master of Trevecca College during the first year of its existence—a child, a wonderful child, twelve years old! A further account of this prodigy, or, as the _Monthly Review_, of 1789, called him, “a second Baratier,”[176] may interest the reader.