Another gardener rose to note, who about the same time was seeking jobs in Mortlake, Kingston, or any parish around Kew where he could find poor lodging and ill-paid work. His real name was William Hunt, but he changed this to Huntingdon, as would appear, by way of hiding himself from the consequence of some youthful ill-doing; and he afterwards justified the _alias_ in characteristic fashion by claiming to have undergone “the new birth” under that assumed name, to which--“as I cannot get at D.D. for want of cash, neither can I get at M.A. for the want of learning”--he added the odd degree S.S., meaning “Sinner Saved.” After undergoing the pangs of spiritual labour along with hard troubles of the flesh at Ewell and Sunbury, he began to preach among his humble neighbours, and kept up this ministry while earning a livelihood by unloading coals at Thames Ditton, so that he became notorious as the converted coal-heaver. He rose to be the Spurgeon of his day, with John Bunyan rather for model, as far as one can judge from the twenty volumes of his works, little known to the “new theology” of our generation, which hardly remembers him unless from a casual allusion by Macaulay. He was indeed of a more fanatical and fuliginous spirit than would nowadays recommend a popular preacher; and his picture in the National Portrait Gallery suggests a coarsely strong animal nature, subdued, as it might be, by religious enthusiasm. So great grew his following that “Providence Chapel” was built for him in London, and rebuilt in Gray’s Inn Lane when destroyed by fire. Though he boasted of being “Beloved of God, but abhorred of men,” godliness proved to him no small gain. He is said to have had an income of £2000 a year in his latter days, when, having lost the helpmeet of those early struggles, he married Lady Saunderson, widow of a Lord Mayor, with whom he lived in a villa at Cricklewood. He died at Tunbridge Wells, 1813, and was buried at Jireh Chapel, in the outskirts of Lewes.
It would make too long a story were one to bring in all the celebrities and notorieties living at Richmond, which has books enough of its own to illustrate it, and a fame that would overshadow that of Kew. The latter place owes everything, unless its river prospects, to princely care; but Richmond is so richly endowed by Nature that it could not fail to be a favourite place of residence. Perhaps the best known of its inhabitants in the Georgian century was James Thomson, the poet of _The Seasons_, who ended his life at a cottage in Kew Foot Lane, its place afterwards taken by the Richmond Hospital. But there were lords, belles, and fashionable folk who also had homes here. At the time of the French Revolution, Richmond society got a new element in some of the immigrant _noblesse_ lucky enough to be able to rent houses in such a choice _ville de plaisance_, while others had to content themselves with mean lodgings in St. Pancras or Soho.