THE MARTYR PERIODS: RELIGIOUS ZEAL AND RELIGIOUS APATHY.
Religious life in the sixteenth century--Religion the great
motive-power--The Lollard persecutions--Protestant martyrs
of the sixteenth century--Anne Askew--Women martyrs in the
seventeenth century--Persecution of the Quakeresses--Quaker
doctrines--Seventeenth-century Anglicanism--Indifference of the
Church to social work--Condition of the clergy--Mary Astell and
her Protestant nunnery--The Countess of Warwick.
The religious history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is
notorious for comprising two great periods of martyrdom--periods which
are significant as showing the strong latent force in women, waiting
for opportunity to call it forth. Whatever position may be assigned to
women either by the Church or the State, whatever may have been the
current notions about the place they should occupy, however much they
may have been repressed or neglected, they have always been ready,
when occasion arose, to respond to the call for action. In times of
political struggle, of fierce fighting, they have been eager to spend
and be spent, enthusiastic, persistent, unflinching. In the cause of
religion, which, above all others, appeals to women, their zeal has
been most conspicuous.
It has been elsewhere noted that throughout the Middle Ages the Church
was the dominant force.[51] All over Europe the unity of Christendom
was the central idea, binding men together in spite of the rents caused
by war. In the sixteenth century this idea was overthrown. Christendom
was divided, never again to be welded into one. Yet the unloosening
of the bonds which had held the laity in subjection to ecclesiastical
authority, did not subvert the influence of religion itself among the
people. As an interest religion occupied a large place in the lives of
all classes. Those who had leisure used it for the study of theology
and religious literature; among women the literary efforts of that
period were chiefly concerned with devotional matters. Liberty awakened
an ardour more intense. A new power was given to the people--the right
of private judgment. It brought with it an overwhelming sense of
responsibility. Questions that had before been decided by an infallible
authority were left to be solved by each one for himself. Religion
became for the first time a matter dependent on personal conviction and
understanding. The priest no longer stood as interpreter between the
individual and his faith.
All the influences of the period, the literary movement, the awakening
forces of the Renaissance, the stress and stir in the whole national
life, added to rather than diminished the strength of the religious
emotion. It might have been supposed that people would have been lax
and indifferent in a period of so much general activity, when new
vistas were opening out in the social horizon. But the sixteenth
century was not a time of apathy in any department of life, and the
religious question which was agitating the whole Continent burned
fiercer than ever in England on account of the increased mental
activity.
With women who embraced the reformed faith, religion was the
dominating force. All their enthusiasm awoke. To those with a strong
spiritual bias the question of belief became the most supreme matter
of concern. To be false to conscience was to poison the very root of
their being. The Roman Catholic martyrs died loyally in the service
of the Church--that Church which was tottering from blows without
and corruption within--they died as servants of a spiritual power
that had ruled Europe. The glamour attaching to the traditions of a
Church which had had no rival in Christendom hung round their faith.
The Protestant martyrs died like soldiers in a cause which they had
espoused from intense conviction of its rightness. They died exultingly
for a belief which had become the mainspring of their lives, which was
a personal possession, a deep spiritual experience. In these martyr
periods we see the apotheosis of the religious sentiment in women.
The abnormal character of the martyr periods makes them stand out from
the general course of history. They are not evolutionary, except in
the sense in which all events spring from causes, and all phenomena,
whether material or spiritual, are part of a chain of circumstances. In
the attitude of the Church towards women during religious persecutions,
there are no features which are not characteristic of the attitude
of the Church to the general body of the laity. During these periods
differences of sex are obliterated. The perfervid zeal and fanaticism
which inspired to persecution suspended all ordinary relations.
It has also to be remembered that the martyr spirit was not the spirit
of the general body of the people. The population was not divided into
two parts, of which the larger were the persecuted and the smaller the
persecutors. The mass held a neutral position, and displayed neither
heroism nor bloodthirstiness. The martyrs and zealots were few compared
with those who escaped notice altogether.
The martyr periods certainly show what a much greater motive-power
religion was than in more peaceful times, when other forces competed
for mastery over the human mind; and they afford endless speculation to
the student of mental and moral phenomena. As regards women, it is only
in these times of religious upheaval that the Church recognized their
perfect equality with men.
There is nothing in the history of the persecutions that applies
more particularly to women than to men. Both suffered alike, and
displayed what seems to those who live in an age when all religions
are tolerated, a fanatical devotion to forms of faith as well as the
loftiest courage and fortitude. The persecutors made no distinction
of sex. A woman, by reason of being a heretic or a Papist, as the
case might be, was at once elevated to a position of unenviable
distinction. In ordinary times neither the Roman nor the Protestant
Church recognized an equality of rights between men and women. The
Romanists kept women in subjection, and curtailed their liberty of
action and thought; the Protestants checked their means of usefulness
by neglect. But neither had power to damp religious zeal, and when the
hour of peril came, women showed an unwavering spirit and a fearless
independence.
It may also be noted, in passing, that while the Roman Church
proclaimed the inferiority of women, and put a low value on their
intellectual powers, it treated their deviations from its doctrine
with the same rigour as if they had been endowed with the superior
attributes of the other sex. Women’s weakness, mental and moral,
availed them nothing. They were subjected to interrogatories as
searching and tortures as severe as men. No excuse was made for their
want of reason and understanding, and the greatest pains were taken to
convince them of error. During the Lollard persecutions in 1389, an
anchoress known to be tainted with the new opinions was carried from
Leicester to Wolverhampton, was closely immured and examined by no
less a magnate than Courtney, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, either by
threat or persuasion, prevailed upon this erring sister to recant her
heresy.
In 1459 the monks of Bath were greatly excited by hearing that a woman,
an inhabitant of the city, had spoken slightingly of the--
“holy mummeries that were carried on in the Church of Bath, and
the pilgrimages made by the devotees to the different sacred
edifices in the neighbourhood. This was wounding the monks
in the tenderest part; and as the offence militated directly
against their influence and interest, it demanded a severe and
exemplary punishment. A proper representation of this heinous
crime being made to the ecclesiastical court at Wells, it was
decreed that she should recant in the great church at Bath,
before all the congregation, the heretical and disrespectful
words she had spoken against the superstitions of the latter
city and some neighbouring places, which had been to this
effect: that it was but waste to give to the Holy Trinity at
Bath, and equally absurd to go on pilgrimages to St. Osmund at
Salisbury; and that she wished the road thither was choaked up
with (bremmel) brambles and thorns to (lette) prevent people
from going thither.”[52]
The questioning to which the Protestant martyrs of the sixteenth
century were subjected was very minute. With a notable heretic like
Anne Askew, who was burnt at Smithfield, July 16, 1546, the dignitaries
of the Church spent hours of discussion day after day, and women who
were of no renown whatever were cross-examined in much detail.
Among the Roman Catholics women of the trading class suffered
persecution because they could not bring themselves to acquiesce in
the new form of worship. The wife of a miller in All Hallows parish
refused to go to church because, she said, there was “neither priest,
altar, nor sacrifice;” and many women who showed a similar spirit may
be found among the wives of tailors, locksmiths, tanners, and others
of similar standing. Pressure was put upon tradesmen, yeomen, and
husbandmen to ensure the conformity of their wives.
“The common people of England,” it was said in derision,
“were wiser than the wisest of the nation; for here the very
women and shopkeepers were able to judge of predestination,
and determine what laws were to be made concerning Church
government.”
Anne Askew was arrested in March, 1545, and brought before Christopher
Dare at Sadlers’ Hall, Cheapside, on the charge of denying
transubstantiation, the eighteenth article of the statute. She was
afterwards examined by the Lord Mayor, by the Bishop of London’s
chaplain, by Bishop Bonner, by Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and
Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, none of whom could shake her convictions
or induce her to retract, and she was accordingly burnt at the stake.
Anne Askew was of good social position, the daughter of a knight, Sir
William Askew, and a maid of honour to Queen Catherine Parr.
It was not only a rapt enthusiasm and ecstatic fervour which sustained
women in the hour of martyrdom. There is plenty of evidence of that
comprehending courage which could anticipate and prepare for death with
the same calmness as for any ordinary event of life. The dying speeches
of the women who suffered from the merciless brutality of Judge
Jeffreys are very remarkable. That of the aged Lady Alicia de Lisle,
who was barbarously executed in 1685, after the battle of Sedgmoor, for
sheltering fugitives, is one of the most notable--
“Gentlemen, Friends, and Neighbours, it may be expected that
I should say something at my death, and in order thereunto I
shall acquaint you that my birth and education were both near
this place, and that my parents instructed me in the fear
of God, and I now die of the Reformed Protestant Religion;
believing that if ever popery should return into this nation,
it would be a very great and severe judgment.... The crime that
was laid to my charge was for entertaining a Nonconformist
Minister and others in my house; the said minister being sworn
to have been in the late Duke of Monmouth’s Army.
* * * * *
“I have no excuse but surprise and fear, which I believe my
Jury must make use of to excuse their verdict to the world. I
have been also told that the Court did use to be of counsel for
the prisoner; but instead of advice, I had evidence against
me from thence; which, though it were only by hearing, might
possibly affect my Jury; my defence being such as might be
expected from a weak woman; but, such as it was, I did not
hear it repeated again to the Jury, which, as I have been
informed, is usual in such cases. However, I forgive all the
world, and therein all those that have done me wrong.”
Another victim, Mrs. Gaunt of Wapping, who was burnt in the same year
for a somewhat similar offence, wrote the day before her martyrdom--
“Not knowing whether I should be suffered or able because
of weaknesses that are upon me through my hard and close
imprisonment, to speak at the place of execution; I writ these
few lines to signifie that I am well reconciled to the way of
my God towards me, though it be in ways I looked not for, and
by terrible things, yet in righteousness.”
She goes on to write a long speech expressive of her religious faith
and her entire lack of regret for anything that she had done in
succouring the poor, “... I did but relieve an unworthy poor distressed
family, and lo, I must die for it.”
She puts a postscript: “Such as it is you have it from her who hath
done as she could, and is sorry she can do no better.”
The Quakers went through their period of martyrdom in the seventeenth
century. In the midst of a heterogeneous state of religious parties,
the Quaker movement stands out with great distinctness as the only
religious movement in which women were recognized as leaders and
teachers. The Quakers began to preach in London about the year 1654,
five years after George Fox’s imprisonment. Both in England and in
America, whither numbers emigrated, they endured violent persecution.
The first Quakers who went to Boston were two women who sailed in
1656. They were imprisoned and maltreated, were deprived of food and
light, had their books seized and burnt, and all sorts of indignities
practised upon them. The reign of Charles II. was an exceedingly
troublous time for Quakers in England, though they had been promised
immunity from molestation in their meetings, both by General Monk
and by Charles when he came to the throne. In the first year of the
preaching in London two women, who undertook to distribute a pamphlet
written by George Fox and called “The Kingdom of Heaven,” were arrested
and sent to Bridewell prison.
As their numbers increased, so did their troubles. Quakers have never
been noted for active proselytizing, but their well-ordered lives made
a greater impression than exhortation and argument.
“Thus continuing to live in fear and a reverential awe, they
improved in true godliness; insomuch that by their pious lives
they preached as well as others with words. After this manner
the number of their society increased: but then grievous
sufferings ensued; for the priests could not endure to see that
their hearers left them; the furious mob was spurred on, and
among the magistrates there were many who, being of a fierce
temper, used all their strength to root out the professors
of the light (as they were called at first), and to suppress
and stifle their doctrine; but all proved in vain, as appears
abundantly from their history; although there were hardly any
prisons in England where some of these people were not shut
up; besides the spoil of goods and cruel whippings that befell
some of them. Yet all this they bore with a more than ordinary
courage without making resistance, how great soever their
number was; and notwithstanding many of them had been valiant
soldiers, who often had slain their enemies in the field
without regarding danger.”
That the women endured an abundant share of the persecutions and
martyrdoms which befell the Society is proved by the records. They
were scourged and ill treated in every possible way. Not only did they
endure great suffering, but took active steps in trying to rescue their
fellow-members from evil plight. When George Fox was apprehended,
in 1660, at the house of one Margaret Fell, a widow of Judge Fell,
at Swarthmore (Lancashire), his entertainer, accompanied by another
Friend, Anne Curtis, procured an interview with the king. Anne Curtis
gained the royal ear through being the daughter of a Bristol sheriff
who had been hanged for his devotion to the Stuarts.[53] Not much came
of the interview, however, for, although the king was ready enough to
listen, and gave an order for Fox to be brought up, it was evaded, and
a delay of two months ensued.
Barbara Blangdon, who suffered persecution and imprisonment for her
preaching in the west of England in 1654, made an effort, as soon as
her own release was effected, to procure that of two other members at
Basingstoke, and was successful, through her intercession with the
mayor.
In 1656 two Quakeresses were placed in the stocks at Evesham by
the mayor, with every circumstance of indignity, for visiting some
prisoners. Two years before, the Oxford scholars so violently
maltreated two Quakeresses who preached in the streets that one of
them succumbed shortly after. With the end of the seventeenth century
persecutions for the most part ceased, and a period of quiescence set
in. There was a good deal of discussion going on in the eighteenth
century anent Quakerism, and many satires and skits were issued against
the sect, but it was a war of words only.
The Quakers always maintained the equality of women with men in
religious matters. It was one of the cardinal articles of their belief.
“As we dare not encourage any ministry but that which we
believe to spring from the influence of the Holy Spirit, so
neither dare we to attempt to restrain this ministry to persons
of any condition in life, or to the male sex alone; but as
male and female are one in Christ, we hold it proper that such
of the female sex as we believe to be endued with a right
qualification for the ministry should exercise their gifts for
the general edification of the Church.”
The first woman among the Quakers to preach in London was Ann Downer,
afterwards married to George Whitehead. Private residences were
frequently used as places of worship, and women are often mentioned as
lending their houses for this purpose.
Women, being able to exercise the function of preaching, were naturally
prominent in other departments of work.
“As we believe women may be rightly called to the work of the
ministry,” say the Friends, “we also think that to them belongs
a share in the support of our Christian discipline: and that
some parts of it, wherein their own sex is concerned, devolve
on them with peculiar propriety. Accordingly they have monthly,
quarterly, and yearly meetings of their own sex, held at the
same time with those of the men; but separately, and without
the power of making rules; and it may be remarked that during
the persecutions which formerly occasioned the imprisonment of
so many of the men, the care of the poor fell on to the women,
and was by them satisfactorily administered.”
They have always continued to maintain the right of women to become
preachers, a right which seemed an exceedingly strange one, in the last
century, to members of other religious bodies. The Quakers were quite
aware of the weak points in their adversaries’ armour, and quick to
perceive the ground of the objection against their own broader view of
the position of women.
“There is yet another strong prejudice against women’s
preaching,” says one of the Quaker _Dissertations_, “and this
no less than the united interest of the whole body of men
called clergymen. For if, say they, the pastoral function may
be exercised by laymen and even women, then we shall be deemed
no longer necessary, nay, perhaps, down goes our trade, our
pomp, and revenues. And, indeed, it is hardly credible to me
that these men would have ever made the opposition that some
of them have done to a woman’s preaching Jesus in a sensible
manner, if preaching were a profession which there was nothing
to be got by.”
The Anglican clergy of the seventeenth century bore a high character
for learning. “The ordinary sort of our English clergy,” wrote Eachard,
“do far excel in learning the common priests of the Church of Rome.”
Atterbury is still more emphatic. He declares that “for depth of
learning, as well as other things, the English clergy is not to be
paralleled in the whole Christian world.” Yet Edward Chamberlayne[54]
affirms that “they are less respected generally than any in Europe;”
and both Bishop Burnet and Bishop Stillingfleet bewail the contempt
with which the clergy were regarded as “too notorious not to be
observed.”
The Anglican Church did not leaven the nation as the Roman Church had
done by works of charity and benevolence. It was remarkably indifferent
to social work and religious propagandism, outside the doors of the
church. The traditions of the Roman Church were not carried on by the
Protestants, who probably felt a repugnance to any methods adopted by
their enemies, the Papists.
“Not only were Anglicans destitute of any associations of
lay helpers in Christian work at home, and of any means for
carrying on missions abroad, but Puritans were in the same
predicament.”[55]
That there were many abuses connected with the old system of almsgiving
at the convent gate cannot be doubted, and it was impossible, in a
fast-growing nation, that such a state of things should continue;
but the Anglican Church lost one of its great holds on the people by
indifference to the offices of charity. The State had begun, in a
partial and imperfect way, in the sixteenth century, to assume the care
of the poor. The beginnings of the old poor-law system may be traced
to the reign of Elizabeth. But the State was a poor foster-mother. The
Protestant Church made no organized effort to become to the masses what
the Roman Church had been. It assumed none of that absolute authority
combined with paternal care. It is true that the ideal set up by George
Herbert of the country parson is that of a true father of his flock.
“He first considers his own parish; and takes care that there
be not a beggar or idle person in his parish, but that all be
in a competent way of getting their living. This he effects
either by bounty or persuasion, or by authority; making use of
that excellent Statute which binds all parishes to maintain
their own. If his parish be rich, he exacts this of them; if
poor, and he be able, he easeth them therein. But he gives no
set pension to any.”
There was little of what is now called Church work. And the clergy
do not seem to have thought of enlisting the aid of women in the few
tentative efforts put forth during the seventeenth century. It may be
urged that the fault lay with the women, who did not come forward or
show their willingness to co-operate. There was no encouragement for
them to do so.
“The tendencies of the period were not favourable to the
development of women’s work in the Church. Nor was it the
fashion for women to occupy a prominent position. Women played
small part in the life of the nation at large. In none of the
societies formed for missionary, devotional, or philanthropic
objects did women take a leading part. The only attempt to form
an organization of women was nipped in the bud.”
This attempt refers, probably, to the effort made by Mrs. Mary Astell
to set up a “Protestant Nunnery,” of which further mention will be made.
There was, indeed, an establishment founded by a certain Nicholas
Ferrar, some time in the first half of the century, at Little Gidding,
in Huntingdonshire, which was called a Protestant nunnery. But it was
little more than the setting up of the conventual rule in an ordinary
household.
In 1642 Parliament seemed to think it necessary that something should
be done to improve the religious life of the country, and accordingly,
on April 7--
“the Lords and Commons doe declare that they intend a due
and necessary reformation of the government and liturgie of
the Church, and to take nothing away in the one or in the
other, but what shall be evill or justly offensive, or at
least unnecessary and burdensome. And for the better effecting
thereof, speedily to have consultation with godly and learned
divines; and because this will never of itselfe attein the
end sought therein, they will therefore use their utmost
endevors to establish learned and preaching ministers with a
good and sufficient maintenance throughout the whole kingdome,
wherein many darke corners are miserablie destitute of the
meanes of salvation, and many poore ministers want necessary
provision.”[56]
The saintly George Herbert, who lived through the first quarter of
the seventeenth century, makes a mild protest against the cringing
attitude adopted by that section of the clergy who took upon themselves
the duties of domestic chaplain to wealthy families. In many, if not
most, houses the chaplain was put on a par with the upper servants, and
expected to show the same deference towards the employers.
“Those that live in noble houses,” writes Herbert, “are called
chaplains; whose duty and obligation being the same to the
houses they live in as a parson’s to his parish, in describing
the one (which is indeed the bent of my discourse) the other
will be manifest. Let not chaplains think themselves so free as
many of them do; and because they have different names think
their office different. Doubtless they are parsons of the
families they live in, and are entertained to that end, either
by an open or implicit covenant. Before they are in Orders they
may be received for companions or discoursers; but after a man
is once minister he cannot agree to come into any house where
he shall not exercise what he is, unless he forsake his plough
and look back. Therefore they are not to be over-submissive
and base, but to keep up with the lord and lady of the house,
and to preserve a boldness with them and all, even so far as
reproof to their very face when occasion calls, but seasonably
and discreetly.”
The subservience of the clergy as a class, and the slights put upon
them, arose partly from their poverty, which was treated like a fault.
In 1670, writes Eachard, £20 or £30 a-year was as much as hundreds of
the clergy could obtain. In the beginning of the eighteenth century
there were some benefices, says Henry Wharton, not above £5 a-year in
value, some hundreds not over £20, and some thousands not more than
£30. Dean Swift puts the average income of a vicar at £40.
Whether rightly or wrongly, the bulk of the clergy in the seventeenth
century seem to have enjoyed little of the prestige attaching to
the priestly office, and their social position showed some curious
anomalies. It was not because they were out of harmony with the
national life. The higher clergy who were in possession of fat livings
were, naturally, on good terms with the world, and were quite in
sympathy with the tastes and habits of their neighbours, not merely
countenancing but sharing in the amusements of the laity. But they
did nothing to win esteem for and raise the status of the lower,
ill-paid clergy, who appear on the whole to have been hard-working
and well-intentioned, with a fellow-feeling for the cares and burdens
of their parishioners. Between the fox-hunting bishops and canons and
the out-at-elbows country parsons there was a large body of learned,
scholarly divines, who reflected lustre on their class. But as a power
in social life, the Anglican Church could not bear comparison with the
Roman Church. In the first place, an authority which laid no claim
to infallibility could not exercise the same influence as one that
asserted its supremacy over all matters temporal and spiritual. And,
in addition, Protestantism favoured independence of thought. This was
more observable in the sects outside the Anglican Church. Narrow as
was the creed of the Presbyterians and that of the other dissenting
bodies which sprang up later, it was a creed held by conviction; it was
acquired, not merely accepted.
As far as women were concerned, the result of the theological change
was that, while there were numerous examples of individual piety, there
was no attempt at organized religious work. Both inside the Anglican
Church and in the ranks of the Puritans there were women noted for
their zeal and active benevolence. But neither Anglicans nor Puritans
sought, like the Romanists, to turn the great engine of woman’s power
to systematic use. To the Puritans religion was a personal affair, in
which faith counted for more than works. As for the Anglican Church,
it was, in the seventeenth century, hampered by too many difficulties
(among which may be counted the formalism of many of its own ministers)
to attempt any social work. Indeed, the teaching of Church doctrine was
neglected in many places, and, according to John Evelyn--
“people had no principles, and grew very ignorant of even the
common points of Christianity, all devotion now being placed
in hearing sermons and discourses of speculative and notional
things.”
The curious attempt, already referred to, made by Mary Astell to
establish a Protestant nunnery frightened the orthodox Church party.
It savoured to them of Popery. What she aimed at was to lead women
to embrace a higher and more purposeful life. Her so-called nunnery
was a kind of retreat for ladies where they could carry on religious
exercises and intellectual studies. It was intended as a haven for
those who disliked the frivolities of society, and desired to pursue
serious aims. But the proposal was not only laughed down, but abused as
a scheme to propagate Roman Catholicism. A lady, supposed to be Lady
Elizabeth Hastings, offered to give £10,000 for the building, but was
deterred by the false reports spread by terrified Protestants.
Mary Astell’s book, “A Serious Proposal to Ladies,” deserves to be
remembered as a unique work in that period. She was a reformer who,
in the present day, would have been in the front rank of the workers
for the advancement of women. She pleaded as much for mental as moral
improvement, and perceived very clearly the disadvantages under which
the women of the day laboured with their flimsy education and the
discouragement of all attempts to follow a more rational system.
Bishop Atterbury’s remarks on Mary Astell may be quoted as illustrating
the surprise felt by cultivated ecclesiastics at the display of
literary ability in women. Writing to Smalridge in 1706, he says--
“I happened, about a fortnight ago, to dine with Mrs. Astell.
She spoke to me of my sermon, and desired me to print it (the
sermon was delivered on the election of the Lord Mayor); and
after I had given her the proper answers, hinted to me that she
would be glad of perusing it. I complied with her request, and
sent her the sermon next day. Yesternight she returned it, with
this sheet of remarks, which I cannot forbear communicating
to you, because I take them to be of an extraordinary nature,
considering they come from the pen of a woman. Indeed, one
would not imagine a woman had written them. There is not an
expression that carries the least air of her sex from the
beginning to the end of it.”
The bishop does not divulge the exact nature of Mary Astell’s remarks,
but, as he takes them in such good part, they were probably not
unfavourable to himself. The fact that a woman was capable of literary
criticism which was not of a feminine tone filled him with astonishment.
Among the women most noted for piety and good works in the seventeenth
century was Mary, daughter of the Earl of Cork, and wife of the Earl
of Warwick, a warm friend of the Puritans. The Countess, although
a Churchwoman, seems to have found no difficulty in breathing the
theological atmosphere of her husband’s household, where Puritan
discourses were frequently heard. She was born in the year of the
accession of Charles I., 1625, and lived to see some eighteen years of
the Restoration. Her biographer, Dr. Walker, speaks of her as “great
by her tongue, for never woman used one better.” She is also said to
have been “great by her pen,” and “great in her nobleness of living and
in her free and splendid hospitality;” likewise “great in her conquest
of herself and the mastery of her passions.” She was very strict in
the observance of her religious exercises, and in her influence on
the company about her is enigmatically described as “like a spiritual
stone.”
The Countess of Warwick was no less esteemed as a mistress than as a
landlord, and
“as a neighbour she was so kind and courteous, it advanced the
rent of adjacent houses to be situated near her. Not only her
house and table, but her countenance and very heart were open
to all persons of quality in a considerable circuit; and for
the inferior sort, if they were sick or tempted, or in any
distress of body or mind, whither should they go but to the
good Countess, whose closet or still-house was their shop for
chirurgery, and herself (for she would visit the meanest of
them personally) and ministers whom she would send to them,
their spiritual physicians?”
Lady Warwick not only acted the Lady Bountiful among the poor,
distributing beef and bread regularly to the needy of four parishes,
but she extended her charity to the cause of education. The poor
children she placed in schools; scholars she provided with means to go
to the university, and the meagre salaries of ministers of religion she
supplemented out of her abundant wealth.
Then there was Lady Elizabeth Hastings, daughter of the Earl of
Huntingdon, who aided missionary work abroad, and spent freely in her
own neighbourhood on charitable works; the celebrated Lady Russell,
wife of Lord William Russell; Bishop Burnet’s wife, together with
others of less fame, who were known for their piety and active
benevolence. A careful examination of this period will reveal much
individual effort put forth by women under that strongest of all
motive-forces--the religious impulse, but little organized work, either
secular or otherwise, for the bettering of humanity.