⁴⁰³ St Ebbes, a district then of packed medieval streets on the south-west of Oxford’s centre.

⁴⁰⁴ A children’s primer consisting of a mounted sheet containing the letters of the alphabet, protected by a thin, transparent cover of horn, used from the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century.

⁴⁰⁵ 4 No longer in existence.

⁴⁰⁶ ‘true’ is an insertion in pencil. The letter is otherwise written in ink.

⁴⁰⁷ Upcott refers to the death of their mother, Delly Wickens. Bashaw (or Pasha) is a high-ranking Turkish official, used here to satirize his own self-importance.

⁴⁰⁸ In the 1820 Memoir, Upcott identifies this as Witney Grammar School. See above, p. 3.

⁴⁰⁹ Thomas Ebenezer Beasley (b.1762), married Phebe Cox, 1790, and had a son in 1804. He founded Uxbridge School, first on the premises of his home, and subsequently, with the backing of the Old Meeting Chapel, it moved to a building at 126 High Street, Uxbridge. After his death the school was continued by Dr Thomas Beasley, his son.

⁴¹⁰ A street in Oxford running from Longwall St to Broad Street.

⁴¹¹ Ferula is an archaic term for ferule, or a ruler with a widened end, used for beating children, in contrast to the cane, which was a slender rod also for beating children.

⁴¹² Upcott was apprenticed to John Wright (1770–1844) of 169 Piccadilly.

⁴¹³ ‘Indentures’ are articles of apprenticeship.

⁴¹⁴ The price of his ‘indentures’.

⁴¹⁵ Robert Harding Evans, Bookseller, 26 Pall Mall, London.

⁴¹⁶ Psalm 4:4: ‘Stand in awe and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.’

⁴¹⁷ 1 John 3:8.

⁴¹⁸ All’s Well That Ends Well, Act V, Scene 3, l.42.

⁴¹⁹ Upcott’s parcel sent via his uncle James Wickens and his wife Hannah.

⁴²⁰ Probably a reference to ‘her brother’, John Peck.

⁴²¹ Sarah Wickens (b.1787), daughter of Upcott’s Uxbridge Uncle James.