I intended only a visit hither, not a continuance, and therefore
purposed, after I had stayed a few days to return to my lodging and
former course in London, but Providence ordered it otherwise.

Isaac Penington had at that time two sons and one daughter, all then
very young; of whom the eldest son, John Penington, and the
daughter, Mary, the wife of Daniel Wharley, are yet living at the
writing of this. And being himself both skilful and curious in
pronunciation, he was very desirous to have them well grounded in
the rudiments of the English tongue, to which end he had sent for a
man out of Lancashire, whom, upon inquiry, he had heard of, who was
undoubtedly the most accurate English teacher that ever I met with,
or have heard of. His name was Richard Bradley. But as he
pretended no higher than the English tongue, and had led them, by
grammar rules, to the highest improvement they were capable of in
that, he had then taken his leave of them, and was gone up to
London, to teach an English school of Friends' children there.

This put my friend to a fresh strait. He had sought for a new
teacher to instruct his children in the Latin tongue, as the old had
done in the English, but had not yet found one. Wherefore one
evening, as we sat together by the fire in his bed-chamber (which
for want of health he kept), he asked me, his wife being by, if I
would be so kind to him as to stay a while with him till he could
hear of such a man as he aimed at, and in the meantime enter his
children in the rudiments of the Latin tongue.

This question was not more unexpected than surprising to me, and the
more because it seemed directly to thwart my former purpose and
undertaking, of endeavouring to improve myself by following my