Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wpx84 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-06T23:29:14.695Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Such perfecting of praise out of the mouth of a babe’: Sarah Wight as Child Prophet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Susan Hardman Moore
Susan Hardman Moore*
Affiliation:
King’s College London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Recovering the voice of the child in the Church is hard. Christians must reckon with Jesus’ instruction to be like a child, yet the Church usually measures faith by mastery of an adult vocabulary of religious experience. The historian has to dig past adult prejudices and silences. Recent research has done much to rescue the children of early modern England from anonymity. We know, for example, about the ideal of an ‘ordered society’, in which children and youths took their place as ‘inferiors’, and yet were valued and loved. We also know that the vision of order was rarely achieved, in a country swarming with juveniles. Attempts to make the vision outward and visible can be seen in arrangements for seating in church, where the young sat apart from their elders, and in the all-pervasive discipline of catechizing, where the assumption that age instructs youth is inherent in the pattern of proceeding by question and answer. Most of the sources that tell us about childhood, however, are heavily prescriptive, or rush past youth after listing a few predictable sins.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 31: The Church and Childhood , 1994 , pp. 313 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994

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, ‘Children in early modern England’, in Avery, Gillian and Briggs, Julia, eds. Children and their Books (Oxford, 1989), pp. 45–78 Google ScholarPubMed, discusses recent literature; see also Amussen, Susan Dwyer, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1988 Google Scholar); Griffiths, Paul, ‘Some aspects of the social history of youth in early modern England with particular reference to the period c. 1560-c. 1640’ (Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, 1992 Google Scholar); Houlbrooke, Ralph, The English Family, 1450-1700 (Harlow, 1984), pp. 127–95 Google Scholar; Pollock, Linda, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500-1900 (Cambridge, 1983 Google Scholar); Thomas, Keith, ‘Age and authority in early modern England’, PBA, 62 (1976), pp. 205–48 Google Scholar.

2 Aston, Margaret, ‘Segregation in church’, in Sheils, W. J. and Wood, Diana, eds. Women in the Church, SCH, 27 (1990), pp. 237–94 Google Scholar; Green, Ian, ‘“For children in yeeres and children in understanding”; the emergence of the English catechism under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts’, JEH, 37 (1986), pp. 397–425 Google Scholar; Morgan, John, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560-1640 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 152–6 Google Scholar.

3 Rogers, John, Ohel or Bethshemesh (London, 1653), p. 419 Google Scholar; Thomas, , ‘Children in early modern England’, p. 48 Google Scholar. See also Smith, Steven R., ‘Religion and the concept of youth in early modern England’, History of Childhood Quarterly, 2 (1974-5), PP. 493–516 Google Scholar.

4 Jessey, Henry, The Exceeding Riches of Grace Advanced, 6th edn (London, 1652), p. 16 Google Scholar [hereafter ER].

5 Ibid., p. 56.

6 Burton, Robert, The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York, 1927), pp. 355–6 Google Scholar, 1st edn (London, 1621); Babb, Lawrence, The Elizabethan Malady: A Study of Melancholia in English Literature from 1580 to 1642 (Michigan, 1951), pp. 47–54 Google Scholar. ‘Youth’ was regarded as a particularly vulnerable age: see note 26.

7 Jessey, ER, pp. 6-7, 127-30, 115, 50, N; Mark 5.1-13.

8 Ibid., pp. 138, L (the tract went through eight editions in Jessey’s lifetime, and four thereafter); Jessey, Henry, A Looking Glass for Children (London, 1672 Google Scholar); W(histon], E[dward], The Life and Death of Mr. Henry Jessey (London, 1671), pp. 41–2 Google Scholar; White, B. R., ‘Henry Jessey in the Great Rebellion’ in Knox, R. Buick, ed., Reformation, Conformity and Dissent (London, 1977), p. 142 Google Scholar; Dailey, Barbara Ritter, ‘Youth and the New Jerusalem: the English catechistical tradition and Henry Jessey’s Catechisme for Babes (1652)’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 30 (1982), pp. 25–54 Google Scholar. Jessey, (1601-63 Google Scholar) appears in DNB and Matthews, A. G., Calamy Revised (Oxford, 1934 Google Scholar).

9 [ Wight, Sarah], A Wonderful Pleasant and Profitable Letter (London, 1656 Google Scholar), prefatory letter by R. B. (probably Robert Bragge, minister at Sarah’s church, All Hallows the Great: Matthews, Cakamy Revised, p. 70).

10 Crawford, Patricia, Women and Religion in England, 1500-1720 (London, 1993), pp. 97 Google Scholar, 108, 111; Dailey, Barbara Ritter, ‘The visitation of Sarah Wight: holy carnival and the revolution of the saints in civil war London’, Church History, 55 (1986), p. 451 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ludlow, Dorothy, ‘“Arise and be doing”: English preaching women, 1640-1660’ (Indiana University Ph.D. thesis, 1978), pp. 155–60 Google Scholar; Smith, Nigel, Perfection Proclaimed: Language and Literature in English Radical Religion, 1640–1660 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 45–9 Google Scholar.

11 Acts 2.17; White, ‘Jessey’, p. 142; Capp, B. S., The Fifth Monarchy Men (London, 1972), pp. 22, 59 Google Scholar.

12 Smith, , Perfection Proclaimed, and Dailey, , ‘Sarah Wight Google Scholar’, explore her case in the spiritual and political context of the 1640s.

13 Sharpe, J. A., Witchcraft Accusations in Seventeenth-Century Yorkshire: Accusations and Counter-Accusations = Borthwick Paper 81 (York, 1992), pp. 18–19 Google Scholar (Dr Sharpe developed these themes in a paper given at the Institute of Historical Research, 17 March 1993); Walker, D. P., Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1981), pp. 49–73 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacDonald, Michael, ed., Witchcraft and Hysteria in Elizabethan London: EdwardJorden and the Mary Clover Case (London and New York, 1991 Google Scholar); Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1978), pp. 569–88 Google Scholar; see also Demos, John, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (New York and Oxford, 1982), pp. 157–65 Google Scholar.

14 Walker, Unclean Spirits, p. 78; for Hawkins (1629), Public Record Office, SP 16/141/63, SP16/142/19, and David D. Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England (Boston, 1991), p. 20.

15 Nigel Smith, ‘A Child Prophet: Martha Hatfield as The Wise Virgin, in Avery and Briggs, Children and their Books, p. 80; Jessey, ER, pp. R [1647 edn], 139; Smith, Perfection Proclaimed, pp. 49-53; C. Burrage, ‘Anna Trapnel’s Prophecies’, EHR, 26 (1911), pp. 526-35.

16 Michael MacDonald, ‘Religion, social change and psychological healing in England, 1600-1800’, in W.J. Sheils, ed., The Church and Healing, SCH, 19 (1982), pp. 101-25.

17 Stuart Clark, ‘Inversion, misrule, and the meaning of witchcraft’, PaP, 87 (1980), pp. 98-127; Michael Hunter, ‘The problem of atheism in early modern England’, TRHS, 5th series, 35 (1985), pp. 135-57.

18 Jessey, ER, p. 24. Jessey’s insistence reflects the notion that mental disturbance could be measured best against the proper patterns of family order: MacDonald, Michael, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 126–8 Google Scholar.

19 jessey, ER, pp. 5, K, 24-5.

20 Eph. 6.1-3; John Bossy, ‘Moral arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments’, in Leites, Edmund, ed., Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1988), p. 233 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Gouge, William, Of Domesticall Duties (London, 1622), pp. 143–8 Google Scholar, 470-1; John Dod and Cleaver, Robert, A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments (London, 1606), p. 193 Google Scholar.

22 Jessey, ER, p. 42.

23 Burton, Anatomy, pp. 961-4; MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, p. 224; Terence R. Murphy, ‘“Wofull Childe of Parents Rage”: suicide of children and adolescents in early modern England’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 17 (1986), pp. 269-70.

24 Belloc, Hilaire, Complete Verse (London, 1991), p. 261 Google Scholar. For the influence of Puritan moralism on children’s literature of the Victorian era, see Avery, Gillian, ‘The puritans and their heirs’, in Avery, and Briggs, , Children and their Books, pp. 95–118 Google Scholar.

25 Jessey, ER, p. 128; I Peter 5.8; Burton, Anatomy, p. 878, reflects common use of the image in melancholy talk.

26 Smith, , ‘Religion and the concept of youth’, pp. 497–502 Google Scholar; Griffiths, , ‘Social history of youth’, pp. 20–60 Google Scholar; Thomas, , ‘Children in early modern England’, p. 46 Google Scholar, notes continuity here with medieval perceptions.

27 Jessey, , ER, p. 19 Google Scholar; [ White, Thomas], A Little Book for Little Children (London, 1660 Google Scholar), cited by Avery, , ‘Puritans and their heirs’, p. 97 Google Scholar; ER, p. 43.

28 Jessey, , ER, pp.128 Google Scholar, 60-1, 19.

29 Ibid., pp. 14, 88, 36, 115; Sharpe, , Witchcraft Accusations, pp. 9–10 Google Scholar.

30 Bynum, Caroline Walker, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: the Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987 Google Scholar); Bell, Rudolph M., Holy Anorexia (Chicago, 1985 Google Scholar); Tomizza, Fulvio, Heavenly Supper: the Story of Maria Janis (English edn Chicago, 1991 Google Scholar). Walter Vandereycken and Deth, Ron Van, ‘Miraculous Maids? Self-Starvation and Fasting Girls’, History Today, 43 (August, 1993). pp. 37–42 Google Scholar, discuss cases of extraordinary abstinence from food, from the 1660s to the nineteenth century, as the connecting link between medieval fasting and modern anorexia.

31 Jessy, ER, pp. N, 116, 57.

32 Tolmie, Murray, The Triumph of the Saints (Cambridge, 1977), p. 109 Google Scholar.

33 Jessey, , ER, pp. 137–43 Google Scholar; Mark 5.42-3.

34 Dailey, , ‘Sarah Wight’, pp. 445–6 Google Scholar, discusses medical interest in the case; Smith, ‘Martha Hatfield’, the relation between illness and prophecy; MacDonald, Witchcraft and Hysteria, ‘Introduction’, discusses the character of hysteria.

35 On children, see note 13 above; for Spira and Drake, Dailey, , ‘Sarah Wight’, pp. 441–4 Google Scholar; for Honywood, Thomas, , Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 145 Google Scholar; for inherited melancholy. Burton, Anatomy, pp. 184–8.

36 Jessy, ER, pp. 39, 36, R, 8-9. Smith, , Perfection Proclaimed, pp. 46–7 Google Scholar, 49, and Dailey, ‘Sarah Wight’, comment on Sarah’s role in cementing communities of piety and politics.

37 Ibid., p. 119. On discernment and fraud, Sharpe, Witchcraft Accusations, p. 13; Walker, Unclean Spirits.

38 Fisher, James, The Wise Virgin (London, 1653), pp. 17–18 Google Scholar.

39 Jessey, ER, pp. 150-1; MacDonald, Witchcraft and Hysteria, pp. xxxix-xlvii.

40 Thomas, ‘Age and authority’, p. 210.

41 Smith, ‘Martha Hatfield’, p. 79.

42 Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties, ‘Epistle Dedicatory’.

43 Avery, ‘Puritans and their heirs’, and John Sharp, ‘Juvenile holiness: Catholic revivalism among children in Victorian Britain’, JEH, 35 (1984), pp. 220-38, comment on the changing context for children’s spirituality.

44 Fisher, Wise Virgin, pp. 135–6; Jessey, ER, p. 151.