Conclusion
As acknowledged at the beginning of this essay,the experience of English women during the Civil War period was so varied that generalisations can be made only with caution.Nonetheless,a few conclusions can be drawn.While the range of opportunities available to many women may have changed little during the war years,it is clear that at least some women did gain access to a wider range of possibilities during these years.Some women ran businesses or inspired others with their prophecies;others schemed and spied,negotiated on behalf of their families,or travelled far afield.Such expanded possibilities seem to have been available to both upper-and lowerclass women,and to both royalists and radicals.
Afterwards,women's recollections of the Civil War were coloured by many different factors:ranging from their own individual and family experience to whether the cause they had favoured had been triumphant.Royalist women had reason to deplore the rebellion(as they saw it)which had caused the war.Radical women had reason to deplore the ultimate defeat of the principles they had believed in,and the persecution which followed for many erstwhile parliamentarians in the 1660s.Yet in the recollections of almost all of these women,whatever the views to which they were ostensibly committed,a sense of excitement can often be detected.The Civil War period had been,for many,a time of danger,uncertainty,expense and anxiety,but it had also been a period of unrivalled possibility.
【注释】
[1]Email address g.wright＠bham.ac.uk.I should like to thank Richard Cust,Ann Hughes and Marie-Louise Coolahan for their advice on previous drafts of this article.
[2]The period surveyed in this paper includes not only the years 1642-49—i.e.the period terminating in the execution of Charles I—but also the interregnum before the Restoration of Charles II(1649-60).
[3]Key studies of women's role in the English Civil War include S.L.Arnault,‘The Sovereignties of Body and Soul:Women's Political and Religious Actions in the English Civil War’,in L.O.Fradenburg(ed.),Women and Sovereignty(Edinburgh,1992),228-49;A.Hughes,Gender and the English Revolution(London,2012)and K.Thomas,‘Women and the Civil War Sects’,Past and Present,13(1958),42-62.
[4]E.Mordaunt,The Private Diarie of Elizabeth,Viscountess Mordaunt(Duncairn,1856);V.Stater,‘Mordaunt,John,first Viscount Mordaunt of Avalon(1626-1675)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004).
[5]Stater,‘Mordaunt,John’.
[6]A.Fraser,The Weaker Vessel:Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England(London,1984),71-72.
[7]On Whorwood's life,see J.Fox,‘Whorwood,Jane(bap.1612,d.1684)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004)and S.Poynting,‘Decyphering the King:Charles I's letters to Jane Whorwood’,The Seventeenth Century,21(2006),128-140.
[8]Fox,‘Whorwood,Jane’.Spelling has been modernised here and in all other quotations from seventeenth-century texts.
[9]Poynting,‘Decyphering the King’.
[10]The one aspect of Whorwood's experience that seems particular to the times she lived in is her ongoing dealings with William Lilly.Consulting an astrologer was,of course,hardly novel in 1640s England;but astrologers in general(and Lilly in particular)do seem to have been unusually popular during the Civil War period:their predictive skills much in demand in a world which was every day defying conventional expectations.
[11]On the mixed loyalties of the Verney family,see S.Whyman,Sociability and Power in Late-Stuart Britain:The Cultural Worlds of the Verneys,1660-1720(Oxford,1997).Ralph Verney's father,Sir Edmund,was a committed royalist who died at the battle of Edgehill,bearing the king's standard.
[12]F.Verney,Memoirs of the Verney Family During the Civil War(London, 1892),Ⅱ.239-240.
[13]On the Cavendishes,see J.Fitzmaurice,‘Cavendish,Margaret,duchess of Newcastle upon Tyne(1623?-1673)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004)and L.Hulse,‘Cavendish,William,first duke of Newcastle upon Tyne(bap.1593,d.1676)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004).Margaret Cavendish's own account of her appeal to the Committee for Compounding can be found in her‘A True Relation of my Birth,Breeding and Life’,in Natures Pictures(London,1656),368-391,at 379-380.
[14]Cavendish,‘A True Relation’,380.
[15]Cavendish,‘A True Relation’,380.
[16]Fraser,The Weaker Vessel,238-240.
[17]On Mary and Richard Overton,see B.J.Gibbons,‘Overton,Richard(fl.1640-1663)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004).
[18]Gibbons,‘Overton,Richard’;M.Overton,The Humble Appeale and Petition of Mary Overton(London,1647).Gibbons believes that Richard Overton drafted the Humble Petition on his wife's behalf.The point to note,however,is that it was published in Mary's name,invoking the traditional notion of the petitioning wife.
[19]On Elizabeth Lilburne,see A.Hughes,‘Lilburne,Elizabeth(fl.1641-1660)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004).
[20]On Brilliana Harley see J.Eales,Puritans and Roundheads:The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War(Cambridge,1990)and‘Harley,Brilliana,Lady Harley(bap.1598,d.1643)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004).
[21]Women printers and publishers,in addition to those cited in this paper,include Alice Bing,Joan Cooke,Mary Cooke,Frances Elde,Anne Hood,Joan Orwin and Emma Short.The best single study of women's participation in the book trade is M.Bell,‘A Dictionary of Women in the London Book Trade,1540-1730’(Loughborough University,MLS dissertation,1983).
[22]My account of Hannah Allen's publishing career follows M.Bell,‘Hannah Allen and the Development of a Puritan Publishing Business,1646-51’,Publishing History,26(1989),5-66.
[23]M.Bell,‘Hannah Allen and the Development of a Puritan Publishing Business,1646-51’,6.
[24]M.Bell,‘Hannah Allen and the Development of a Puritan Publishing Business,1646-51’,6.
[25]Millenarianism will be discussed further in the next section of this essay.
[26]Among the first-time authors published by Allen,Bell cites Henry Jessey,Walter Cradock,Vavasour Powell,John Robotham,John Durant,John Moore,William Troughton,Ralph Venning and Thomas Manton.
[27]The best single study of women prophets during the English Civil War is P.Mack,Visionary Women:Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England(Berkeley and Los Angeles,1995).D.Watt,Secretaries of God:Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England(Cambridge,1997)is especially helpful in comparing Civil War prophets with their predecessors in earlier periods.On political prophecy,see further T.Feroli,Political Speaking Justified:Women Prophets and the English Revolution(Newark,DE,2006).
[28]Joel 2:28-9.
[29]D.Watt,‘Barton,Elizabeth(c.1506-1534)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004).
[30]On Davies,see D.Watt,‘Davies,Lady Eleanor(1590-1652)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004)and E.S.Cope,Handmaid of the Holy Spirit:Dame Eleanor Davies,Never Soe Mad A Ladie(Ann Arbor,1992).
[31]The reason we know so much about Davies is that she published prolifically.She was responsible for almost seventy tracts between the 1620s and the 1650s,and seems to have taken the initiative in arranging their publication.She is thus one of the earliest and most active female authors in seventeenth-century England.
[32]The best short account of Poole's life and public activities is M.Brod,‘Poole,Elizabeth(bap.1622?,d.in or after 1668)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004).Other useful studies of her various public interventions include Hughes,
[33]Cromwell himself and his son-in-law Henry Ireton have both been suggested as possible sponsors of Poole's appearance at the council.
[34]Discussions of Wight include M.Bell,‘Hannah Allen’,K.O.Bullock,‘Wight,Sarah(b.1631)’,Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford,2004),B.R.Dailey,‘The Visitation of Sarah Wight:Holy Carnival and the Revolution of the Saints in Civil War London’,Church History,55(1986),438-55,C.Gray,Women Writers and Public Debate in 17th Century Britain(Basingstoke,2007),67-103 and Wiseman,Conspiracy and Virtue,97-142.
[35]In her dream,Wight saw herself following the example of Jairus's daughter in the Bible.In the Bible(Mark 5),Jesus calls Jairus's daughter back to life from a death-like sleep.
[36]Jessey himself claimed to have based The Exceeding Riches on his own diary of Wight's trance,supplemented by the recollections of her mother and her maid.
[37]Speculative answers to the question of what underlay Wight's experience have nonetheless been proposed.Diane Purkiss,for instance,compares Wight's fast to modern disorders such as anorexia.See Purkiss,‘Producing the Voice,consuming the Body:Women Prophets of the Seventeenth Century’,in I.Grundy and S.Wiseman(eds.),Women,Writing,History 1640-1740(London,1992),139-58 and The English Civil War(London,2006),471.
[38]Bradstreet's‘Dialogue’was first published—in the form I have described—in The Tenth Muse(London,1650).When it was reprinted in Several Poems(Boston,1678),her express wish that‘Parliament prevail’in the war was revised—with the benefit of hindsight—to‘justest cause prevail’.Readers could thus decide for themselves which side's cause Bradstreet had deemed the justest.
[39]P.Thomas(ed.),The Collected Works of Katherine Philips(Stump Cross,1990),Ⅰ.1.
[40]For further discussion of Philip's complex relationship with royalism,see my Producing Women's Poetry,1600-1730(Cambridge,2013).
[41]S.Ross,‘Tears,Bezoars and Blazing Comets:Gender and Politics in Hester Pulter's Civil War Lyrics’,Literature Compass,2(2005),1-14,at p.9.
[42]Ross,‘Tears,Bezoars and Blazing Comets’,9-11.
[43]Alice Eardley is preparing an edition of Pulter's poems,to be published in the This Other Voice series,Toronto.
[44]For Halkett's autobiography and Fanshawe's memoir,see J.Loftis,The Memoirs of Anne,Lady Halkett,and Ann,Lady Fanshawe(Oxford,1979).The best edition of Lucy Hutchinson's memoirs of herself and her husband is currently N.Keeble(ed.),Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson(London,1995),though an Oxford edition,prepared by David Norbrook,is currently in progress.
[45]Purkiss,The English Civil War,for instance,draws extensively on Ann Fanshawe's memoirs to illustrate what life was like for at least one woman during the Civil War period.