The coach found its way slowly through the streets to some
lodgings in Clerkenwell. It was well the stranger did go, for his
companion on arrival was hardly able to crawl upstairs to give a
coherent account to his wife of what had happened.
Zachariah Coleman, working man, printer, was in April 1814 about
thirty years old. He was employed in a jobbing office in the city,
where he was compositor and pressman as well. He had been married in
January 1814 to a woman a year younger than himself, who attended the
meeting-house at Hackney, whither he went on the Sunday. He was a
Dissenter in religion, and a fierce Radical in politics, as many of
the Dissenters in that day were. He was not a ranter or revivalist,
but what was called a moderate Calvinist; that is to say, he held to
Calvinism as his undoubted creed, but when it came to the push in
actual practice he modified it. In this respect he was inconsistent;
but who is there who is not? His theology probably had no more gaps
in it than that of the latest and most enlightened preacher who
denies miracles and affirms the Universal Benevolence. His present
biographer, from intimate acquaintance with the class to which
Zachariah belonged, takes this opportunity to protest against the
general assumption that the Calvinists of that day, or of any day,
arrived at their belief by putting out their eyes and accepting
blindly the authority of St.
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