Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2009
This paper argues that Puritanism and gender interacted in dialectic fashion in seventeenth-century England and changed one another significantly as a result of that interaction.1 Such Puritan strategies as reliance on the experience of the individual, extensive use of literacy, and infusion of spiritual issues into all activities deeply affected women's spirituality and their conventional roles in the community. At the same time, changes in the traditional practices of gender altered the Puritan experience. Gender gave new reality to the Puritan emphasis on spiritual egalitarianism, the Puritan practice of godly communion and counsel, and the development of lay–clerical relationships. From the interaction between Puritanism and gender, new forms of reciprocity and alternative sources of authority emerged among the godly.
Research for this article has been funded by the American Philosophical Society, the American Historical Association (Bernadotte E. Schmitt grant for research in European history), and Georgia State University. I am grateful to these three institutions for their support.
1 I am much indebted to the theoretical arguments of Scott, Joan Wallach, ‘ On language, gender, and working-class history’, in her Gender and the Politics of History, New York 1988, ch. iii. Scott sees gender ‘in the construction of social and political meaning’: p. 55. See also Susan Cahn, Industry of Devotion: the transformation of women's work in England, 1500–1600, New York 1987, 9. Although I have serious qualifications about Cahn's study, I find her notion of a ‘dialectical interaction of ideology and material conditions’ a useful model.Google Scholar
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8 BL, Add. MS 53,726, fos 59r, 71r. Whitelocke puts forward their grandmother as a model for his own daughters.
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21 Patrick, Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England, New York 1988, ch. iii, surveys the current state of the historiography.Google Scholar See also Diane, Willen, ‘Women and religion in early modern England’, in Sherrin Marshall (ed.), Women in Reformation and Counter– Reformation Europe: private and public worlds, Bloomington 1989, 148 and nn. 55–8. For a recent analysis of the complexities and ambiguities of gender relations,Google Scholar see Linda, Pollock, ‘“Teach her to live under obedience”: the making of women in the upper ranks of early modern England’, Continuity and Change 4 (1989), 231–58.Google Scholar
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26 Willen, ‘Women and religion’, 140 esp. n. 2 for bibliography on this issue. For recent discussions which show how women used religion in a liberating way to assert control over their lives, see Ellen, Macek, ‘The emergence of feminine spirituality in The Book of Martyr’, the Sixteenth Century Journal xix (1988), 63–80;Google ScholarWarnicke, Retha M., ‘Lady Mildmay's journal: a study in autobiography and meditation in Reformation England’,Google ScholarIbid., xx (1989), 68; Westerkamp, Marilyn J., ‘Anne Hutchinson, sectarian mysticism, and the Puritan order’, Church History 9 (1990), 482–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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31 In a funeral sermon for Lady Frances Roberts, Hannibal Gamon argued the case both ways. On the one hand, sin was universal: ‘By nature then both sexes are alike faultie’. On the other, since women were the weaker vessel ‘ by so much the combate she hath, is more difficult, and the victory she gets, more commendable’: Hannibal, Gamon, The Praise of a Godly Woman, London 1627, 3–4.Google Scholar
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34 Collinson, , The Birthpangs of Protestant England, 75. Collinson here is speaking of Protestant women but the phenomenon he describes is most prevalent in the godly community.Google Scholar
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37 Ibid.. 357, 341, 352, 344–5, 877, 349, 353. For a discussion of the pastoral side of Puritanism, see Morgan, Godly Learning, 10, 13, 81–6, 94, 305; Claire Cross, Church and People 1450–1660: the triumph of the laity in the English Church, London 1976, 1961. For the position of the minister, see Lake, Moderate Puritans, 89–90, 156.
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43 Hampshire Record Office, Jervoise MS of Herriard Park, 44M69, Box E 76, letter to Mr William Wilde, dated only 24 April.
44 Folger Library, V.a, 166, fo. 7.
45 Richardson, R. C., Puritanism in North–West England: a regional study of the diocese of Chester to 1642, Manchester 1972, iii. Also Patrick Collinson, ‘The role of women in the English Reformation illustrated by the life and friendships of Anne Locke’, in Godly People: essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism, London 1983, 275. Cf. Willen, ‘Women and religion’, 151.Google Scholar
46 Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby 1599–1605, ed. Dorothy M. Meads, Boston 1930, 63, 66, 154, 159, 166, 243 n. 180; East Sussex Record Office, Dunn MS 51/58, Simon Moore to Anne Busbridge, 26 Nov. 1632.
47 John, Ley, A pattern of piety or the religious life and death of that grave and gracious matron Mrs Jane Ratcliffe, London 1640, 65 and Lake, ‘Feminine piety’, 149–50.Google Scholar
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52 Ibid.. fo. 203r.
53 Ibid.. fo. 240r.
54 Ibid.. fo. 251 r.
55 Barrington Family Letters, 128–30, 167, 225–6. See also Hunt, The Puritan Moment, 221–2. Rogers also urged Lady Barrington to find inspiration from other saints and complained that charity was too meagre during his days at Hatfield Broadoak.
56 BL, Egerton MS 2648, fo. 133r. This sum was apparently never given to Rogers as, increasingly during the 1630s, Rogers's relationship with Sir Thomas Barrington, deteriorated: Cliffe, J. T., The Puritan Gentry: the great Puritan families of early Stuart England, London 1984, 136Google Scholar and Marchant, Ronald A., The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York 1560–1642, London 1960, 100–2.Google Scholar
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58 Ibid., fos 26ir, 262r.
59 Barrington Family Letters, 71, 74–5, 86, 108, 85, 160.
60 Essex Record Office, D/DBa, A 15, passim.
61 Barrington Family Letters, 168.
62 Daniel, Rogers, Treatise of the Two Sacraments of the Gospell: baptisme and the supper of the Lord, 2nd edn., London 1635, sig. A2[r]. Like so many of her clerical friends, Daniel Rogers wanted to help Lady Barrington reach assurance.Google Scholar
63 Barrington Family Letters, 61–2, 161; Essex Record Office, D/DBa, A 15, fo. 51r.
64 Ibid.. fos. 2Ov, 26r, 28r, 35f; Barrington Family Letters, 14, 100.
65 BL, Loan 29/173, fo. 260r; Jacqueline Levy, ‘Perceptions and Beliefs: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the outbreak of the First Civil War’, unpubl. PhD diss., London 1983, 61.
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68 BL, Add. MS 4275, fos 60r, 62r.
69 Ibid., fos 68–69V. I again thank Alasdair Hawkyard for transcribing this letter.
70 Greaves, , ‘Foundation builders’, 81. Davenport was admitted to the vicarage and lectureship at St Stephen, Coleman Street, London; Eales calls him ‘Lady Vere's protege’ there: Eales, Puritan and Roundheads, 62.Google Scholar
71 BL, Add. MS 4275, fo. 160r. Davenport had consulted with Dr Sibbes, and both clerics agreed that Lady Vere should remain in the Hague.
72 Ibid.. fo. i66v. For Davenport's intercessions on behalf of other clerics, see also PRO, SP 16/13/15.
73 BL, Add. MS 4275, fo. 173r.
74 Levy, ‘Perceptions and beliefs’, 160 n. 160. Correspondence is found in BL, Add. MS 4275, 4276; unfortunately, Vere's letters to the clergy do not survive.
75 Clarke, , The Lives 0f Sundry Eminent Persons, ii. 147.Google Scholar
76 BL, Add. MS 4275, fos 64r, 160r.
77 Letters of Samuel Rutherford, 214.
78 Gataker, , Paul's Desire of Dissolution, sig. B2r.Google Scholar
79 Williams served as chaplain to Barrington's daugher and son-in-law, Sir William and Lady Masham. In 1629 Lady Joan felt he twice insulted her, first by contemplating marriage with a Barrington niece, his social superior, then by warning Lady Barrington that her fear and anxiety were messages from God, ‘loud alarums to awaken you Certainely (madame) the lord hath a quarrell against you’. So offended was Lady Barrington that to the Mashams’ dismay and Roger's sorrow, she refused to see him for a number of months: Barrington Family Letters, 64–8, 79, 91; Hunt, The Puritan Moment, 221, 223.
80 CSPD, 1633–1634, 324.
81 Letters of Brilliana Harley, 65–6.
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87 BL, Loan 29/72, letter of 2 Sept. 1643.
88 In the mid sixteenth century, Mrs Elizabeth Bowes established a ‘spiritual and ideological relationship’ with John Knox, who became her son-in-law, and the recusant Margaret Clitherow became emotionally tied to priests whom she hid in her home. The degree of reciprocity in these relationships, however, is not clear. See Willen, ‘Women and religion’, 150–5. On the spirituality of English female recusants, see Rowlands, Marie B., ‘Recusant women 1560–1640’, in Mary Prior (ed.) Women in English Society 1500–1800, London 1985, 149–80;Google ScholarHanlon, J. D., ‘These be but women’, in Charles Carter (ed.), From The Renaissance to the Counter–Reformation: essays in honor of Garrett Mattingly, New York 1965, 371–400.Google Scholar
89 I am grateful to Dr Miriam U. Chrisman for discussing this issue with me.
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91 Letters 0f Brilliana Harley, 32. Even Lady Harley's ten–year old daughter followed and wrote about continental battles: Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, 94.
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94 Barrington Family Letters, 49, 61, 176. For this phenomenon among a different network of the godly, see Anthony, Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600–1660, London 1975, 64.Google Scholar
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108 Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a seminar directed by Professor Esther Cope at the Folger Institute Center for the History of British Political Thought, Washington, DC, June 1990 and at the joint meeting of the North American Conference on British Studies and the Southern Conference on British Studies, New Orleans, 1990. I thank Professor Cope, Professor Barbara Harris and Professor Arthur Slavin for discussing the paper with me.