On 29 December 1648, Elizabeth Poole confronted the Army Council at Whitehall, saying she had a message from God, conveyed to her in a vision. Surprisingly, the Council devoted three days to examining her claims, and at first what she said seemed rewarding. Poole declared that she had seen ‘the presence of God with the Army’ and outlined her vision:

Poole equates the female body with the nation-state and the male body with its ruler. Like others, Poole writes the new government into legitimacy by describing it in metaphors used by the monarch. She casts the male figure of the army as a healer-sovereign, a figure at once Christ-like and professional. This figure is securely and unproblematically masculine, its strength guaranteed by the feminine weakness of its counterpart. In Poole's figuration of the land as woman, the female figure is ‘sickly’, ‘imperfect’, ‘crooked’ and requires male intervention for healing.