Mary Bayly joined the Baptist congregation in Carter Lane, Southwark, on 2 October 1715, remaining a faithful member in the congregation into the 1770s.  She published two poems during her lifetime (both elegies), one on the death of the Duke of Cumberland in 1765 (he was the son of King William III of England) and the other on the death of her beloved pastor at Carter Lane, the Revd Dr. John Gill (1697-1771), who arrived as pastor about three years after Bayly joined the church. (To read these elegies, click here for the entries for Bayly in the Poetry section below.) 

She appears in the Carter Lane Church Book on several occasions in the 1780s, primarily in need of financial support. The entry for 19 April 1784 notes that "Sister Mary Bailey [sic] requesting that the Church would allow her somewhat towards paying her Rent it was agreed that she have the usual allowance of forty shillings a year for that purpose."  On 19 February 1787, the Church Book notes that "Sister Mary Bailey (aged 89) being unable to help herself and that for some time back she must have been in great distress had it not been for the kind assistance of Bror Ticknor with whom she lives, the present allowance from the Church not being sufficient to support her.  The Church took it into consideration and haveing rescinded the three shillings a week and the forty shillings a year for her Rent, did agree to allow Bror Ticknor Nine Shillings a week (from last Ordinance Day) to take the intire care of her and which Bror Sharp inform'd the Church he was very willing to undertake."  See Church Book, Horsley-down and Carter Lane, 1719-1808, Metropolitan Tabernacle, London (unpaginated).  

She appears in the Carter Lane Church Book on several occasions in the 1780s, primarily in need of financial support. The entry for 19 April 1784 notes that "Sister Mary Bailey [sic] requesting that the Church would allow her somewhat towards paying her Rent it was agreed that she have the usual allowance of forty shillings a year for that purpose."  On 19 February 1787, the Church Book notes that "Sister Mary Bailey (aged 89) being unable to help herself and that for some time back she must have been in great distress had it not been for the kind assistance of Bror Ticknor with whom she lives, the present allowance from the Church not being sufficient to support her.  The Church took it into consideration and haveing rescinded the three shillings a week and the forty shillings a year for her Rent, did agree to allow Bror Ticknor Nine Shillings a week (from last Ordinance Day) to take the intire care of her and which Bror Sharp inform'd the Church he was very willing to undertake."  See Church Book, Horsley-down and Carter Lane, 1719-1808, Metropolitan Tabernacle, London (unpaginated).  

Most likely she is the Mary Bailey (spellings of her name vary at this time) who was buried at Bunhill Fields  on 27 May 1787, not long after the above notice in the Church Book, although her death was not recorded in the Church Book. The notice of this burial is from the England and Wales Non-Conformist Record Indexes (RG4-8), 1588-1977, p 290. 

Nothing else is known about Bayly at present, although more work could be done to enhance our knowledge of her life as a Particular Baptist woman in eighteenth-century Southwark. She was knowledgeable enough of Dissenting print culture in the 1760s and 1770s to use Mary Lewis, a Moravian printer/bookseller at No. 1 Paternoster Row and devout follower of the Evangelical Calvinists among the Baptists, Independents, the Church of England, and her own Moravian denomination. Lewis is little known today but she stands as the leading Dissenting woman printer/bookseller in the second half of eighteenth-century London, only surpassed for the entire century by the work of the Quaker printer/bookseller, Tace Sowle. For more on Lewis and Sowle, see their entries in the Women Printers and Booksellers section of this site.