Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-25T10:32:42.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Role of Women in Early English Nonconformity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Richard L. Greaves
Richard L. Greaves
Affiliation:
professor of history inFlorida State University, Tallahassee, Florida.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The involvement of English women in the radical Protestant movements of the 1640s and 1650s has attracted the attention of a number of modern historians. The hub of such studies is Keith Thomas's provocative 1958 essay, “Women and the Civil War Sects,” which focuses on the expanded role of women in these groups and on the way in which sectarian views indirectly undermined the patriarchal family. More recently, Dorothy Ludlow has studied female preachers in this period, insisting that they were not fanatics but sober women with a distinctive sense of Christian calling who claimed full membership in the Christian community. The more well-known women, such as Anne Hutchinson and Mary Cary, have been the subject of recent studies in their own right. For the period after 1660, Pamela Volkman has examined the contrasting ways in which male and female converts to the sects were depicted, noting that women were more likely to be accused of emotional volatility, immorality, or even insanity than were men. These studies have progressed to the point that we are in no danger of overlooking the role of women in English Nonconformity in the mid-seventeenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 299 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Thomas, Keith, “Women and the Civil War Sects,” reprinted in Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660, ed. Trevor, Aston (Garden City, N.Y., 1967), pp. 332–357.Google Scholar

2. Ludlow, Dorothy, “‘Arise and Be Doing’: English ‘Preaching’ Women, 1640–1660” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1978);Google ScholarBattis, Emery John, Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1962)Google Scholar; Cohen, Alfred, “The Fifth Monarchy Mind: Mary Cary and the Origins of Totalitarianism,” Social Research 31 (Summer 1964): 195–213;Google ScholarVolkman, Pamela, “From Heroics to Dissent: A Study of the Thought and Psychology of English Nonconformity, 1660–1700, Through Autobiography” (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1982).Google Scholar

3. See, for example, Cross, Claire, “‘He-Goats Before the Flocks’: A Note on the Part Played by Women in the Founding of Some Civil War Churches,” Studies in Church History 8 (1972): 195–202;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Patrick Collinson, “The Role of Women in the English Reformation,” ibid. 2 (1965): 258–272.

4. Boswell, James, Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed.Hill, George Birkbeck, rev, by Powell, L. F., 6 vols. (Oxford, 1934), 3:287–288;Google ScholarBurrage, Champlin, The Early English Dissenters in the Light of Recent Research (1550–1641), 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1912), 2:313;Google ScholarThe Writings of John Greenwood and Henry Barrow, 1591–1593, ed. Leland H. Carlson (London, 1970), p. 307.Google Scholar

5. Greaves, Richard L. and Robert, Zaller, eds., Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth Century, 3 vols. (Brighton, 1982–1983)Google Scholar. The remaining female radical is Katherine Boyle, Lady Ranelagh. Many of the men, of course, were included for reasons other than religious radicalism.

6. The Zürich Letters, trans. and ed. Robinson, Hastings (Cambridge, 1842), p. 202;Google Scholar Burrage, 1:244; 2:99–200, 303–304, 309–310; Browne, John, History of Congregationalism and Memorials of the Churches in Norfolk and Suffolk (London, 1877), p. 254n.Google Scholar

7. Burrage, 1:325; Richardson, R. C., Puritanism in North- West England: A Regional Study of the Diocese of Chester to 1642 (Manchester, 1972), pp. 109–110.Google Scholar

8. [Nichols, Josias], An Order of Hovshold Instruction (London, 1596),Google Scholar sigs. B7v-Clv; Stone, Lawrence, “The Rise of the Nuclear Family in Early Modern England: The Patriarchal Stage,” in The Family in History, ed. Charles, Rosenberg (Philadelphia, 1975), p.30Google Scholar; Allen, Robert, An Alphabet of the Holy Proverbs of King Salomon ([London], 1596)Google Scholar; Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 1599–1605, ed. Meads, Dorothy M. (London, 1930), pp. 48, 62, 66, 80.Google Scholar See also Carpenter, John, Time Complaining (London, [1588]),Google Scholar sig. A3r, for an acknowledgment of the work of Jane and John Walrond, esq., in “the exercising of your family in godlines…”.

9. Richardson, p. 179; see also pp. 91, 105. Catholic women likewise played a major role in household religion. See Bossy, John, “The Character of Elizabethan Catholicism,” Past and Present 21 (04 1962): 40;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGreaves, Richard L., Society and Religion in Elizabethan England (Minneapolis, 1981), pp. 307–309.Google Scholar

10. Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley, 1967), p. 393Google Scholar (quoted); Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, p. 153; Carlson, Leland H., Martin Marprelate, Gentleman (San Marino, 1981), p. 129;Google ScholarWritings of Greenwood and Barrow, p. 299; The Notebook of John Penry, 1593, ed. Albert, Peel, Camden Society, 3d series, 67 (1944): 38;Google ScholarCross, Claire, Church and People, 1450–1660 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1976), pp. 167–168;Google Scholar Burrage, 2:300–301.

11. Writings of Greenwood and Barrow, p. 307; The Records of a Church of Christ in Bristol, 1640–1687, ed. Roger, Hayden (Bristol, 1974), pp. 13, 87–91;Google ScholarCross, , “‘He-Goats Before the Flocks,’” pp. 195–198;Google ScholarNuttall, Geoffrey F., Visible Saints: The Congregational Way, 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1957), pp. 27, 29;Google ScholarThe Church Book of Bunyan Meeting, 1650–1821, ed. G. B. Harrison (London, 1928), p. 2.Google Scholar

12. Seaver, Paul S., The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of Religious Dissent, 1560–1662 (Stanford, 1970), pp. 106, 217, 226;Google ScholarCollinson, , Puritan Movement, pp. 439–440, 442;Google ScholarO'Day, Rosemary, The English Clergy (Leicester, 1979), p. 91;Google ScholarDavids, T. W., Annals of Evangelical Nonconformity in the County of Essex (London, 1863), pp. 166–167.Google Scholar See also the role of Sir Thomas Knyvett's wife as a patron (Egerton MSS 2713, fols. 220r, 223r, British Library, London).

13. Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1636–1637, p. 545; Richardson, p. 138; Collinson, Patrick, Archbishop Grindal, 1519–1583 (Berkeley, 1979), pp.211–212;Google ScholarHalley, Robert, Lancashire: Its Puritanism and Nonconformity, 2 vols. (London, 1869), 2:153.Google Scholar

14. Richardson, pp. 137–138; Seaver, pp. 149, 158–160; Lansdowne MSS, 61/34, British Library, London.

15. Lansdowne MSS, 43/48; 68/58; 115/55 (quoted), British Library, London; Cross, , Church and People, pp. 159–160;Google ScholarCalendar of State Papers Domestic, 1623–1625, pp. 354–357; Writings of Greenwood and Barrow, pp. 239–240.

16. Bulkeley, Edward, A Sermon Preached … at Bletsoe (London, 1586),Google Scholar sig. A5r; The Seconde Parte of a Register, ed. Albert, Peel, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1915), 1:12–14;Google ScholarGreaves, , Society and Religion, p. 309.Google Scholar

17. Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, pp. 62–63, 67; Udall, Nicholas, preface to The First Tome or Volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the Newe Testamente (London, 1548);Google ScholarProwse, Anne, epistle to Taffin, Jean, Of the Markes of the Children of God (London, 1590),Google Scholar sigs. A3v-A4r (quoted); McIntosh, Marjorie Keniston, “Sir Anthony Cocke: Tudor Humanist, Educator, and Religious Reformer,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 119 (06 1975): 240 nn. 38–39;Google ScholarGreaves, , Society and Religion, p. 310.Google Scholar

18. Burrage, 1:324.

19. Arber, Edward, A List … of 837 London Publishers … Between 1553 and 1640 (Birmingham, 1890);Google ScholarFoster, Stephen, Notes from the Caroline Underground (Hamden, Conn., 1978), pp. 62–63.Google Scholar

20. The Works of John Smyth, ed. Whitley, W. T., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1915), 1:256;Google ScholarJohnson, Francis, A Christian Plea Conteyning Three Treatises ([Leyden], 1617), p. 309;Google ScholarThe Works of John Robinson, ed. Robert Ashton, 3 vols. (London, 1851), 2:158, 215–216;Google ScholarBurgess, Walter H., John Robinson (London, 1920), p. 292;Google ScholarAinsworth, Henry, An Animadversion to Mr Richard Clyftons Advertisement (Amsterdam, 1613), p. 34;Google ScholarAssociation Records of the Particular Baptists of England, Wales, and Ireland to 1660, ed. B. R. White (London, 1971), 1:11;Google ScholarRecords of a Church of Christ in Bristol, pp. 33, 51. I owe the observation on Goodwin's congregation to DrMore, Ellen. The Anglicans permitted women to baptize in private homes in cases of necessity and sometimes to serve as churchwardens. The Works of John Whitgift, ed. Ayre, John, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1851–1853), 2:505;Google ScholarHogrefe, Pearl, Tudor Women: Commoners and Queens (Ames, Iowa, 1975), p. 27.Google Scholar

21. Thomas, , “Women and the Civil War Sects,” pp. 337–338;Google ScholarWright, Leonard, A Summons for Sleepers ([London], 1589), p. 55;Google ScholarWorks of Whitgift, 2:499–502, 504; 3:5; Smith, Henry, A Fruitfull Sermon (London, 1591), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

22. The Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth as Illustrated by the Minute Book of the Dedham Classis, 1582–1589, ed. Usher, Roland G., Camden Society, 3d series, 8 (1905): 35;Google ScholarThomas, , “Women and the Civil War Sects,” p. 339;Google ScholarBarclay, Robert, The Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, 2d ed. (London, 1877), pp. 155–156n.;Google ScholarGreaves, Richard L., “Mrs. Attaway,” in Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals, ed. Greaves, and Zaller, , 1:28;Google ScholarA Discoverie of Six Women Preachers (London, 1641), pp. 4–5;Google ScholarAssociation Records, 1:28.

23. The Writings of John Greenwood, 1587–1590, ed. Carlson, Leland H. (London, 1962), pp. 298–299, 308Google Scholar; Richardson, pp. 79–80, 110; Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1639, pp. 466–467.

24. Carlson, , Martin Marprelate, pp. 22, 24, 36, 38, 42–45, 50, 75, 78, 137, 311;Google ScholarWritings of Greenwood, pp. 106–107, 176; Writings of Greenwood and Barrow, pp. 223–224; Collinson, , Puritan Movement, p. 140.Google Scholar

25. The Remains of Edmund Grindal, D.D., ed. William, Nicholson (Cambridge, 1843), pp. 288–289Google Scholar; Collinson, , Puritan Movement, pp. 82, 140–141Google Scholar (see also p. 93).

26. Writings of Greenwood and Barrow, pp. 295, 367, 407, 411; Notebook of Penry, pp. 54–55; Commons' Journals, 2:407; McArthur, Ellen A., “Women Petitioners and the Long Parliament,” English Historical Review 24 (10 1909): 699–700.Google Scholar

27. Burrage, 1:204, 322–323, 327; 2:9–11, 297 (quoted), 300, 301, 311, 314–320, 322; Writings of Greenwood, pp. 280, 308, 333–334.