1 .sx Infant Joy and Sorrow .sx 1757-1767 .sx FROM 1684 the parish church of St James's , Piccadilly dominated its surroundings .sx Almost twenty-five years before , Charles II had given Henry Jermyn permission to develop St James's Fields , and , in turn , Jermyn had invited Christopher Wren to build his only London church constructed on an entirely new site .sx The exterior was unduly modest , the interior sumptuous .sx The limewood reredos is by Grinling Gibbons , and John Evelyn was moved to claim that there was " no altar anywhere in England , nor has there been any abroad more handsomely adorned " .sx John Blow and Henry Purcell tested the organ by Renatus Harris given to the parish by Queen Mary in 1691 .sx Lord Foppington , in Vanbrugh's The Relapse , when asked which church he most obliged with his presence , replied :sx " Oh !sx St James's , there's much the best company !sx " .sx The spire of St James's looked down on a neighbourhood where the fashionable , the rich , the famous , the middling , the poor and the destitute existed side by side .sx A newspaper account of 1748 describes such a cityscape :sx " If we look into the Streets , what a Medley of Neighbourhood do we see !sx Here lies a Personage of high Distinction ; next Door a Butcher with his stinking Shambles !sx A Tallow-chandler shall front my Lady's nice Venetian Window ; and two or three brawny naked curriers in their Pits shall face a fine Lady in her back Closet , and disturb her spiritual Thoughts .sx " .sx Although the quality of living conditions in London improved enormously throughout the eighteenth century , St James's , like other London parishes , was infested with a variety of urban blights , such as the abuses stemming from the availability , even in the 1750s , of cheap gin .sx Thirty years later , Horace Walpole reflected that " as yet there are more persons killed by drinking than by ball or bayonet " .sx Pregnant women addicted to this spirit often gave birth to weak , sickly children who looked " shrivel'd and old as though they had numbered many years " .sx Mechanics , artisans and labourers who drifted to London in search of employment routinely deserted their wives and children when they discovered that the metropolis did not offer them a lucrative style of life .sx The abandoned wives frequently had to pawn their beds and wedding-rings , and their children were dressed in rags .sx In feeble attempts to raise funds , these women invested in State Lottery or the fraudulent and illegal private lotteries called 'Little Goes' .sx There were other diversions :sx cards , dice , draughts , baitings of bears , badgers and bulls , cock-matches and games with the intriguing names of bumble-puppy and Mississippi Fables .sx In contrast to a uniformly poor district such as Stepney , Piccadilly contained an uneasy mix of opulence and destitution .sx There were beguiling shops , open until ten in the evening , one selling crystal flasks , another displaying pyramids of pineapples , figs , grapes and oranges ; in one china shop , tableware was laid out as though a lavish dinner party was in progress .sx These emporiums of wealth existed in an environment where masses of ordure were left in the road and where open cellars and stone steps projected into and blocked the same streets .sx There was usually an assortment of mad dogs , beggars and bullock-carts .sx Profanity was commonplace , and the streets were poorly illuminated .sx Behind or above the alluring , brightly lit windows were the usually cramped , dark and poky living quarters of the shopkeepers .sx Built on a cramped corner site , 28 Broad Street , with its entrance on Marshall Street , was four storeys high , with a basement .sx In this setting , on 28 November 1757 , William Blake was born ; he was baptized on Sunday , 11 December , in St James's Church .sx William was the third son of Catherine and James Blake , a hosier and haberdasher .sx By birth , William was a child whose social status hovered between the " middle sorts " and the " working trades " , as Defoe dubbed them .sx He was certainly of what Henry Fielding called " that very large and powerful body which forms the fourth estate in the community and has long been dignified by the name of the Mob " .sx From the outset , Blake was , like so many others , an outcast from the refined , aristocratic mode of existence of eighteenth-century culture .sx As boy and man , he was a citizen of the Other London .sx James , William's father , was bound as a draper's apprentice to one Francis Smith on 14 July 1737 .sx James went with his father , also James , to the great hall of the Company of Drapers for this ceremony , where his father paid a consideration of pounds60 and a fee of 1s 2d .sx The boy would have been about fourteen , and the premium paid by his father was on the high side of average .sx James and his father were from Rotherhithe , a grimy offshoot of the City , across London Bridge on the south side of the Thames ( Swift located Lemuel Gulliver's birth there) .sx Seven years later , when his apprenticeship was over , James moved to a more central location at 5 Glasshouse Street , also a scruffy , disagreeable environment .sx According to a report of 1720 , " the houses were meanly built , neither are its Inhabitants much to be boasted of " .sx By 1749 , James was registered as a hosier in his own right .sx By the time he reached his mid-twenties , he had spent twelve years working from dawn to dusk , earning between pounds30 and pounds40 a year , a sum which allowed him to live in London precariously above the poverty line .sx In compensation for his long hours of work and relatively low wages , James would have formed close friendships with other apprentices and journeymen in his trade .sx These men shared a comradeship of work-songs , horse-play , coats of arms , regalia , slang and parades ; most of their meetings were held in taverns .sx Out of such experiences came an increasing sense of deprivation , of being outsiders to plainly visible wealth .sx In 1751 , for example , the workers employed by a hatmaker of St Olave's , Southwark , struck against him until he raised their wages :sx on 21 July , thirty dissidents arrived at his house demanding to know the name of an informant .sx The hatmaker refused the request and , but for the intervention of his neighbour , his house would have been burned .sx On 15 October 1752 , James married Catherine Harmitage , whose family lived at 28 Broad Street , Golden Square .sx Nothing else is know of Catherine's ancestry .sx The ceremony took place just off Hanover Square at St George's Chapel , which had been built by John James in 1721-4 .sx This area was fashionable in the early 1710s , but by the mid-1750s the chapel had acquired the unsavoury reputation of performing hasty , informal marriage ceremonies - fifteen took place the day James and Catherine were married .sx Catherine was about thirty at the time of her marriage , the groom being a year younger .sx The couple lived in Glasshouse Street for a year before moving to the bride's family home on Broad Street .sx Their first child , also James , was born on 10 July , almost nine month after they married .sx A second son , John , arrived on 12 May 1755 ; this boy probably died young .sx After William came another John on 20 March 1760 .sx Richard was born on 19 June 1972 - he apparently died as an infant .sx The poet's only sister , Catherine Elizabeth , was born on 7 January 1764 .sx All these children were baptized at St James's .sx Three years later , on 4 August , William's favourite sibling , Robert , was born .sx Significantly , the youngest Blake child was not baptized at St James's , and the register of subscribers who supported the ministry of the Grafton Street Baptist Church lists a 'Blake' who contributed there from 1769 to 1772 .sx James Blake probably became a Baptist in the mid-1760s .sx Such a conversion was not uncommon .sx Many members of the mercantile , artisan and working classes had long been convinced that the hierarchical authority of the Church of England was intended to keep them firmly in their places .sx Also , they yearned to feel more directly the beneficent love of God .sx Thus they dissented from the Church of England and joined groups such as the Baptists , Quakers and Methodists .sx These religions were of the heart :sx the individual cultivated the divinity within regulations and rules took second place to feeling .sx By 1769 , the earlier , 'Old' wave of dissent was linked to the mercantile classes , the comfortable 'middling' group .sx The 'New' Dissent , much more the religion of outsiders , was associated with political reform .sx Whether sympathetic to the 'Old' or 'New' Dissent , James was in touch with sentiments to which he would have been exposed as an apprentice and journeyman .sx Such religious belief often went hand in hand with political millenarianism , as in the stirring words of the Shakers' Jane Wardley :sx " And when Christ appears again , and the true church rises in full and transcendent glory , then all anti-Christian denominations - the priests , the church , the pope - will be swept away .sx " .sx In particular , the 'New' Dissent had a strong political axe to grind , coming into existence as it did because of the sense of outrage which had become pronounced among the working and artisan classes .sx This group witnessed the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small minority and increasingly realized that the King , Parliament and institutionalized religion were in league with the privileged few .sx This outrage led to antinomian sentiments , whereby the civil laws of a corrupt nation should be subverted because they were not in accord with the moral Law of the Christ who drove the money changers from the Temple .sx The artisan , shopkeeping culture into which Blake was born was one in which children were seen as slowly evolving individuals , not as little people who eventually became larger-sized adults .sx Throughout the century , there had been a slow but steady move in this direction :sx familial love was openly displayed , hierarchical authority was questioned , and gestures of love were freely bestowed on children by parents .sx These religious beliefs of both the 'Old' and 'New' Dissent , whereby the individual found within himself the warm feelings of a benign Saviour , obviously spilled over into corresponding emotions about family members .sx The intriguing particles of information which have survived about the Blake household show that both father and mother communicated their feelings of devotion and attachment to their children .sx John was the favourite of both parents , and when William protested about this , he was told that he would eventually " beg his bread " at John's door .sx William often " remonstrated " against John's special status and was ordered to be " quiet" .sx His position as the " third " child deeply disturbed him :sx he saw himself as inconsequential , as a mandrake infant who is carelessly picked up to join two other siblings .sx Favourites frequently have no friends , and William was later to refer to John as " the evil one " .sx Eventually , John borrowed money from his parents , became a baker , lost money through a combination of sloth and recklessness , threw himself on the mercy of his brothers , and , finally , joined the army , where he died .sx As a youngster , James , William's eldest brother , talked of seeing Abraham and Moses .sx Later , these visionary qualities vanished , and James developed a contempt for his " erratic " younger brother , who began to see visions himself .sx If William was not the favourite , he was certainly coddled by his father , " always more ready to encourage than to chide " .sx As soon as the young boy developed a taste for collecting prints , the same " indulgent parent soon supplied him with money to buy them ; he also gave him plaster casts of various antique statuary .sx By the mid-1760s , James seems to have won a measure of worldly success , which is strongly corroborated by his ability to gratify William's fascination with prints .sx William was definitely not the easiest of children to deal with , although he was often " easily persuaded " of the rights and opinions of others .sx From the outset , he displayed a daring impetuosity and " vigorous temper " .sx He disliked any kind of regulations and rules , so much so that James decided not to send him to school .sx And William so " hated a Blow " that he inveighed against any form of chastisement .sx As a result , " his Father thought it most prudent to withhold from him the liability of receiving punishment " .sx