194 THE WEDGWOODS. 



in partnership with a Mr. Boardman, he commenced business 

 as a Manchester warehouseman, under the style of " Bentley 

 and Boardman." In 1766 their names, as Manchester ware- 

 housemen, occur in Gore's Directory the first Directory of 

 Liverpool ever prepared, and now a very scarce and curious 

 work. In 1754 he married, for his first wife, Hannah Gates, 

 of Sheffield, but in the course of a short time became a 

 widower. 



In Liverpool Messrs. Bentley and Boardman became 

 agents for Josiah Wedgwood, and this agency continued 

 to be carried on during the time of Bentley's partnership 

 with Wedgwood. The two partners (Bentley and Boardman) 

 lived together in a house in Paradise Street (then the fashion- 

 able quarter of Liverpool, and so called from the charms of 

 its situation), since known as the " Cloth Mart," opposite 

 College Lane; and here Mr. Bentley's refined taste and 

 genial habits drew around him an intellectual circle of 

 friends. Dr. Priestley, who then held one of the professor- 

 ships in the celebrated Warrington Academy (of which 

 academy Bentley was one of the founders), James Brindley, 

 the engineer, John Wyke, " famous for instruments in the 

 watch way," as he is curiously described in the account of 

 -his second marriage, in 1768, and one of the founders of the 

 Liverpool Institution, Dr. Turner, an eminent chemist and 

 man of letters, Thomas Chubbard, the portrait painter, 

 Peter Burdett, the engraver, Dr. Clayton, the minister of 

 the Octagon Chapel, and many others, were among his 

 friends and visitors. 



In 1757 Thomas Bentley was one of the founders of the 

 Presbyterian Academy at Warrington, which was started on 

 the decay of the famous academies at Findern and Kendal. 

 In the following year, 1758, he was one of the founders of 

 the Liverpool Library; and in 1763 was the originator of a 

 religious society, for whose worship an edifice of octagonal 

 form was erected in Temple Court, and from whence the sect 

 took its curious but appropriate name of " Octagonians." 

 This sect, which was said to be founded for the improvement 



