Chapter 2 - Religion and the construction of femininity

Summary

Why may not I pray with many people in the room, as well as your professing woman that prays before men and women, she knowing them to be there; but I know not that there is anybody in the room when I pray. And if you indict one for praying, why not another? Why are you so partial in your doings?

These words are taken from the 1654 description of her own trial given by Anna Trapnel, a female prophet of the radical Protestant group the Fifth Monarchists, who lived in expectation of the second coming of Christ in England in the 1650s. Trapnel's prophecies and pamphlets were perceived as religiously and politically subversive since they anticipated the rule of Christ on earth with his ‘saints’ and at the same time expressed criticism of Cromwell, the army and parliament. The above quotation from Trapnel's account identifies a number of issues that are pivotal to the concerns of this chapter on the interrelation of women and religion in early modern Britain. The ostensible reason for Trapnel's indictment was the accusation that she was a witch, but her shrewd responses to her interrogators' questions suggest that their true motivation was a desire to regulate her expression of her religious beliefs.