WOMEN OF THE COMMONWEALTH PERIOD
The great evil of Puritanism was the tendency to hypocrisy which it
produced among the people, by forcing upon them the simulation of a
virtue greater than they in reality possessed. An affectation of piety
which was carried to fanatical extremes, and which affected men and
women alike and made them fall into stereotyped expressions and cant
utterances having a savor of religiosity, while barren of the spirit
of true devotion, was, to say the least, unwholesome for the nation.
But the very fact that the pendulum had swung so far in the direction
of primitive austerity in life and in worship showed that behind
the hollow and insincere forms and words of Puritanism there was
a magnificent earnestness of purpose, such as had been foreign to
English life as a whole, although to be found among the followers of
Wyckliffe and the Lollards.
As the spirit of Puritanism spread, its opponents, who were styled the
Libertines, became more defiant in their attitude and less regardful
of the strictures which the narrow-minded bigots, as they styled the
Puritans, cast upon them. Thus, the women were divided by the extremes
of position occupied by the men. Drunkenness among women of rank
became very common. Intellectual fervor declined and learning became
superficial, while the pet vices, inanities, and vain pomp of the
reign of Elizabeth lost much of their glitter and became mere prosaic
and gross immorality. While the women of the court indulged in
revelry, to the scandal of their sisters of the middle classes, the
latter, by their piety as well as by their pious affectations, brought
upon themselves coarse witticisms, ribald mirth, and allegations of
misconduct under the guise of sanctity. So it happened that just when
the women of the middle classes were approaching in position their
sisters of the higher circles, by the ascent of the class to which
they belonged and by the recognition on the part of the superior ranks
of their worth as individuals and their importance as a sound element
of the nation, the tendency toward a uniform equality, however remote
its realization, was rudely checked by an issue which sundered the
respective classes to the nethermost poles. It then became but a
question of which section of the nation should administer its affairs
and direct its destiny. When the two opposing camps of aristocracy
and democracy met in conflict, King Charles was led to the gibbet, not
because the feeling of the people was so especially bitter against him
personally, as that he was the impersonation of an aristocracy which
had become so intrenched in power, that, regardless of its acts, it
claimed divine right to rule.
The female sex, as a whole, was not held in high esteem by the
Puritans, however dear to them may have been the women of their own
households. By the gayety and licentiousness of the brilliant era of
Elizabeth, women had forfeited the esteem of these stern censors of
public virtue, and were held up as snares in the way of the righteous
and as emissaries of Satan. It would be unjust to the sound judgment
of those earnest men of powerful thought and tested standards even
to suggest that they did not make a distinction between woman in
disgrace--as they regarded the women in representative life about
them--and woman in her normal and helpful relationship to society,
as illustrated in the Biblical types of exalted womanhood. It was but
natural that, at a time when the social sin was the canker of society,
woman should have been looked upon in the light of the temptress in
Eden. It is only with such qualification that the characterization
of a writer on the period of the Commonwealth, whose description is
generally accurate, can be accepted: "Under the Commonwealth, society
assumed a new and stern aspect. Women were in disgrace; it was
everywhere declared from the pulpit that woman caused man's expulsion
from Paradise, and ought to be shunned by Christians as one of the
greatest temptations of Satan. 'Man,' said they, 'is conceived in sin
and brought forth in iniquity; it was his complacency to woman that
caused his first debasement; let man not therefore glory in his shame;
let him not worship the fountain of his corruption.' Learning and
accomplishments were alike discouraged, and women confined to a
knowledge of cooking, family medicines, and the unintelligible
theological discussions of the day."
The high tension which had been maintained during the preceding reign
was followed during those of James I. and Charles I. by a mental
inertia; and the intellectual life of the people, which had resulted
from the revival of learning in the sixteenth century, languished and
almost died of inanition. Even among those men--the courtiers--who
amused themselves chiefly by the foibles of the other sex, there was
a morbid reaction against their associates in frivolity. It was no
longer customary to praise women for their wit and repartee and
to look upon them as brilliant, or to regard their coarse jests as
delicate humor; instead of this, these men affected toward them great
contempt, and scoffed at all other men who manifested respect for
the sex. Whether among the nobility or among the Puritans, woman was
wounded in the house of her friends.
Amid the premonitory rumblings of civil strife and the actual horrors
of war, when the nation was rent asunder, the matters of belief and of
conduct were the burning themes for thought and discussion; it was not
possible to maintain interest in intellectual concerns, even if there
had not been a reaction from the highly wrought state of mind of the
preceding era. That behind the Puritans' apparent hatred of beauty and
of the grace of intellect and of life there was no real abandonment of
the true principles which underlie all permanent beauty and grace is
sufficiently shown by the production of that poet who sounded deepest
the reaches of philosophy and scaled highest the ascents of poetic
thought--the great Milton. He it was who caught the deep significance
of the movements of the age, and brought them into harmony with the
parable of human history--a feat so mighty that it called forth the
highest flights of poetic fancy and sought the embodiment of the best
graces of language. It is not without interest to note the absence of
woman in the lofty theme of Milton, saving only as she appears in the
Puritanic conception of the temptress.
Another of the Puritans, who in his way was as great as Milton,
Bunyan, the Bedford tinker, caught and set forth in magnificent
allegory the meaning of the Puritan movement for the individual;
but there is an absence of woman in the story of the pilgrimage of
Christian to the Celestial City, excepting as she appears in the
character of the temptress, as at Vanity Fair. The Christian Graces,
who are represented as women, are not types of the sex of the day, but
are used to point the contrast the more sharply between woman in ideal
and woman as the product of the times of the Puritans. It remained,
however, for the Puritans to refine the sex by the fires of relentless
criticism and to produce the severer, but much nobler, Christian
woman, who became the normal type, not only for the middle classes,
but, to an extent, for the women of the higher circles as well.
The state of society was not favorable for intellectual expression
on the part of woman, although it can hardly be said that it retarded
intellectual progress. The character of the English woman was being
affected in a way to save it from becoming merely superficial and
volatile, like that of her French sister, and her intellect was being
sobered for literary production that should have worthier qualities
than mere brilliancy to recommend it. When the women of the middle
classes stepped out into the arena of authorship, the value of the
Puritan period as a corrective of the frivolity and false standards
for women which had previously obtained becomes manifest in their
writings.
The loss of opportunities of education for the women of the middle
classes, which was a result of the dissolution of the religious
houses, had never quite been made good, and even down to the second
half of the seventeenth century there was no adequate system of
popular education. In the case of the children of the nobility,
suitable education and training for their station in life could be
obtained only by sending them abroad to Italy, France, or Germany,
or by bringing foreign teachers into the country. Girls were never
sent abroad for their education; and in the case of the daughters of
middle-class society, all that was regarded as needful was training
in the practical affairs of housewifery--to which, in the case of the
Puritans, was added inculcation of the Scriptures and the reading
of other devout books. The current opinion is well expressed in the
following citation from _The Art of Thriving_: "Let them learne plaine
workes of all kind, so they take heed of too open seeming. Instead of
song and musick, let them learne cookery and laundry, and instead of
reading Sir Philip Sydney's _Arcadia_, let them read the grounds
of huswifery. I like not a female poetesse at any hand: let greater
personages glory their skill in musicke, the posture of their bodies,
the greatnesse and freedome of their spirits, and their arts in
arraigning of men's affections at their flattering faces: this is not
the way to breed a private gentleman's daughter."
Even if higher education for women were not recognized as important in
the seventeenth century--and the facilities were not at hand, even if
the sentiment had existed--it would be captious criticism to construe
this into a grievance against the sex. In all that pertained to
dignity and real worth, the women of the Commonwealth, with all the
narrowness of their training, were much in advance of womankind at
the beginning of the modern era, and their moral differentiation from
the women of the same class before the spread of Puritanism was most
marked. Puritanism was a distinct gain for woman, for through that
movement the process of raising women in the social scale received
great impetus. A comparison with the girls of France of about the
same period certainly shows that the low state of education among the
sex in England was not in any wise peculiar to English conditions.
Fenelon, in referring to the neglect of the education of the girls
of his country, says: "It is shameful, but ordinary, to see women who
have acuteness and politeness, not able to pronounce what they read;
either they hesitate or they intone in reading, when, instead, they
should pronounce with a simple and natural tone, but rounded and
uniform. They are still more deficient in orthography, whether in the
manner of composing their letters or in reading them when written."
The Civil War itself had a wide effect upon the state of education
among the people. Families in which education had been fostered,
with the turn of their fortunes found it impossible to continue it;
families whose fortunes had risen by political changes felt their
deficiency in this respect, and affected to despise accomplishments of
which they themselves were destitute. Certain of the more enlightened
Puritan women pretended to apply themselves to the study of Hebrew, on
the ground that they looked upon it as necessary to eternal salvation.
Such pedantry brought no credit to those who affected it, but only
served to heap odium upon the higher studies, which were now rejected
with contempt on all sides. How effectually interest in education was
suppressed by the civil disorders is shown by a remark of a traveller
who visited the country after the Revolution. He says: "Here in
England the women are kept from all learning, as the profane vulgar
were of old from the mysteries of the ancient religions." It is
amusing to note the theories which had arisen with regard to female
education and which were used to extenuate its lack. Some apologists
for feminine ignorance gravely asserted and led others to believe
that the women of England "were too delicate to bear the fatigues of
acquiring knowledge," besides being by nature incapable of doing so,
for, said they, "the moisture of their brain rendered it impossible
for them to possess a solid judgment, that faculty of the mind
depending upon a dry temperature." But the unanswerable argument of
all was that death and sin had fallen upon the race of Adam solely
in consequence of the thirst which Eve had manifested for knowledge.
In the face of such contentions, it was not difficult to lead people
generally to accept the further conclusion as to the disastrous
consequences which would certainly come upon society when woman became
puffed up with her mental acquirements; the favorable opinion which
she would then have of herself would not harmonize with that obedience
to men for which she was created. Worthy of note is the fact that
these views extended in some circles to the arresting of the progress
of religious instruction, especially that of a public nature. Evelyn,
in his _Diary_, says that while the saints inherited the earth under
the Protectorate, it was his invariable custom to devote his Sunday
afternoons to the catechising and instruction of his family; but, he
remarks, these wholesome exercises "universally ceased in the parish
churches, so as people had no principles, and grew very ignorant of
even the common points of Christianity, all devotions being now placed
in hearing sermons and discourses of speculative and national things."
There was a sterner side to the religious movement in England than its
relation to matters intellectual or even moral. The Reformation under
Henry VIII. had added the names of certain women to those of the noble
army of martyrs of all the ages. To be false to conscience was to be
false to the very principles of their being, and both Catholic and
Protestant women became intensely strong in their convictions and
intolerant of those of others. The Roman Church offered up its
holocaust to the passions and prejudices of the leaders of the
Protestant movement, just as the Roman Church in turn exacted the
tribute of their lives from many adherents of Protestantism. Woman was
looked upon as inferior to man and less capable of responsible action,
but in meting out persecutions there was no distinction as to sex, the
weaker suffering equally with the stronger. The history of religious
persecutions in England is one of its least engaging chapters, and
extends over a long period. Puritan, Prelatist, and Catholic alike
darkened the annals of the times by deeds of violence. To recite the
sufferings of women under the crossfires of persecution would be at
best an ungracious task; and as such experiences form but a part of
the history of the sex during the period which we have broadly styled
the period of the Commonwealth, an instance or two of the sufferings
of notable women, irrespective of their party affiliations, will
suffice for citation.
One of the most sorrowful of the judicial murders of which a woman was
the victim, which occurred during the whole of this extended period,
was that of Lady Lisle, who, because of her sympathies with Monmouth's
rebellion against the king, was brutally executed, the specific charge
being the harboring of fugitives. The king's project to hand over
the nation to papacy nowhere aroused such outbursts of indignation as
among the Covenanters of Scotland, who saw in it the destruction of
all their hard-wrought-out religious liberties, and the endangering of
their lives, besides the return of the nation to the chaos from which
it was emerging. The address of Lady Lisle before her execution is
an example of the sublimity to which woman's character may rise under
persecution, when the spirit is buoyed by faith: "Gentlemen, Friends,
and Neighbors, 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 Non-conformist Minister and others in my
house; the said minister being sworn to have been in the late Duke of
Monmouth's army." Continuing, she said: "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
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 of the same "Bloody Assize" of Jeffreys,
Mrs. Gaunt, of Wapping, pathetically says: "I did but relieve an
unworthy, poor, distressed family, and lo, I must die!"
The age was the legatee of a spirit of venom and bigotry which
expressed itself in deeds of violence more distressing than those
incident to the religious wars. Deeds of blood, when connected with
the defence of convictions, have about them something of the heroic,
but there is absolutely no ray of glory to fall upon and lighten the
dreary records of the war upon defenceless women charged with being
witches, which broke out with fresh virulence with the increase of
religious fervor under the Commonwealth. The charges were many and
specious, but a very common form centred about the compassionate
functions of women as the ameliorators of human distress.
The history of witchcraft is so intimately associated with that of
medicine, that to write an account of the one involves a recital of
the other. The utter lack of knowledge of the anatomy of the human
body and its functions, which continued down to quite recent times,
accounts for the mystery and magic which surrounded the whole subject
of medicine, not only earlier than and during the period of which
we are speaking, but long subsequent to it. The one who could
successfully treat disease was regarded as in league with the powers
of darkness. Until the practice of medicine came to be established
upon scientific principles, the care of the sick largely devolved upon
women. Had it been men instead of women who performed the crude but
often sincere service of nurse and physician, they would have come
under the same ban with the effects of which the practitioners of the
other sex were visited. It is not probable, however, that the public
odium would have gone to such lengths of violence in its expression.
Among savage peoples, as the primitive tribes of Africa and the
American aborigines, the man who can dispel disease by a fetich--the
great medicine-man of a tribe--has always been regarded with a feeling
of combined jealousy, suspicion, and fear; but, because of the occult
powers he is supposed to control, fear predominates and passes into a
form of reverence. Not so, however, in the case of woman, of whom
we write; she was looked upon as having forfeited, to an extent, her
claims upon humanity by her original alliance with Satan, and, being
outside of the pale of God's grace, or sustaining only a permissive
relationship to it, it was deemed a pious, a safe, and a creditable
thing to mete out to her the divine dispensation of wrath. Thus again,
amid numerous instances of woman's suffering as a penalty for her sex,
we have the occurrence of woman being persecuted unto death because of
her compassion. It was not regarded as despicable for the very person
who had been succored by her in the hour of sickness to turn informant
and declare that he or she had been healed by diabolical agency, and,
whether under the influence of an honest hallucination, or simply
actuated by a malicious propensity, to declare that evil spirits had
actually been conjured up in human form and been seen by the eyes of
the sufferer.
Women were not blameless in the matter of their reputation for
possessing occult knowledge and having diabolical relations; for there
were many women who, being morally not beyond reproach, separated
themselves from society as they grew older, and resorted to medicinal
knowledge and magic for a living and to maintain in the public eye
the position of unenviable notoriety of which they had become
morbidly fond. It gratified such natures to be reputed to possess
the power--which even philosophers ascribed to them--of, at certain
seasons, turning milk sour, making dogs rabid, and producing other
such freakish manifestations. They were considered to be able not only
to heal sickness, but to cause it; and the presence in one's clothing
of a pin whose irritant end was pointed in the wrong direction was
sufficient to make the person believe that he was under a spell of
witchcraft. If a cow or a horse fell lame, it was the village witch
who did it; if a child developed as an imbecile, or anyone became
bereft of reason, it was laid at the door of the witch; the failure
of crops, a drought,--anything that interfered with the comfort
or convenience of a person or a community,--was due to some such
representative of Satan.
As the number of happenings of this sort increased, or there occurred
an epidemic of disease, or a flood or famine of especial virulence,
the number of alleged witches correspondingly increased; and so the
persecution swelled in volume, each wave of malevolence receding only
to rise in larger aspect on the next occasion of its arousing. Not
until the reign of Henry VIII. were there any enactments against
witchcraft in England; prior to the passage of these acts, the
persecution of a sorceress followed only upon an accusation of
poisoning. During some parts of the Middle Ages the crime of poisoning
was extensive, and certain women were adepts in making the deadly
potions. To such abandoned characters resorted persons of state who
desired to make away with hated rivals, or the men and women of the
nobility who sought to hide or to further their intrigues by the death
of someone who stood in their way. As the women who practised the
arts of the poisoner were also devotees of sorcery, the crime and
the superstition came to be thought of together. One reason for the
detestation of witches was the subtlety they displayed in concocting
poisons which slowly sapped the vitality of a person, as if by a
wasting illness. In 1541, conjuring, sorcery, and witchcraft were
placed in the list of capital offences. Similar statutes were enacted
during the succeeding reigns of Elizabeth and James I.
The curious matter of demoniacal possession called forth a great
many books and pamphlets treating of its nature, history, methods of
repression, and the dispossession of those under witches' spells. John
Wier, a physician, wrote a treatise, in the last half of the sixteenth
century, in which he described witches as but exaggerated types of the
perversity which is found in women generally. In the easy subjection
of the sex to malign influences he saw a proof of its greater moral
weakness.
The seventeenth century was as prolific of cases of persecution of
women for demon possession as any of those of the less enlightened
period of mediaevalism. In 1568, in a sermon before Queen Elizabeth,
Bishop Jewell said: "It may please your Grace to understand that
witches and sorcerers within these few last years are marvellously
increased within your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects pine away
even unto the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their
speech is benumbed, their knees are bereft. I pray God they never
practise _further than upon the subjects_." The Bull of Innocent
VIII., in 1484, did not do more for the furtherance of persecution of
the unfortunates who came under suspicion of using magic than did the
declaration of Luther: "I should have no compassion on these witches;
I would burn all of them." As upon the continent, so in England
reformers took up the persecution of witches with keen zest, as a
contest with the powers of darkness working for the destruction of the
peace and health of humanity in an open and flagrant manner. The
same spirit of espionage which was one of the baleful effects of
the outbreaks of persecution during the Middle Ages attended the
persecution of witchcraft in England during the seventeenth century.
To save themselves from suspicion, persons informed against others,
and even members of a household would give evidence leading to the
trial of those of their own kin. When an unfortunate fell under
suspicion,--which too frequently meant the animosity of an
evil-disposed person,--the minister would denounce her by name from
the pulpit, prohibit his parishioners from harboring her or in any way
giving her succor, and exhort them to give evidence against her. The
Puritans had conned well the story of the Witch of Endor, and, with
their tendency to reproduce the Old Testament spirit, felt that the
existence of witches was an abomination in the sight of the Lord,
which would bring divine wrath upon the community that sheltered them
unless the sin were purged from it by their death. In this they were
but the inheritors of the faith of the Church from the early ages, and
are liable to no more serious censure for their persecution of witches
than that which they merit for the vindictive and splenetic spirit
and the satisfaction in barbarities and cruelty which too often they
evinced.
The persecutions attendant upon witchcraft are chargeable to no one
division of the Church more than to another, for Protestant as well as
Catholic, Puritan as well as Prelatist, felt that in this work he was
fulfilling the will of God and safeguarding society. King James I., in
his _Demonology_, asks: "What can be the cause that there are twentie
women given to that craft where there is only one man?" He gives as
his reason for the disparity in numbers the greater frailty of women,
which he easily and satisfactorily proves by reference to the fall of
Eve, as marking the beginning of Satan's dominance of the sex.
In entering upon a crusade of persecution of witches, the Puritans
were in harmony with the enactments of the sovereigns before the
Commonwealth, and were in conformity with the temper of the times and
the universally prevailing belief of the country. The austerity they
assumed toward the sex in general made it easy for them to believe
that particular characters, given over to vagabondage, were by reason
of their moral turpitude especial subjects of Satan for the temptation
of men. With them, the persecution of witches was not solely a
matter of superstition, but of public morals as well. They were often
actuated by a sincere desire to raise the standard of morality, and to
preserve order and decency. That the women rather than the men should
have suffered for evil courses was due, of course, to the conception
that moral reprobation is to be visited upon the weaker sex.
In the second half of the seventeenth century the witchcraft
superstition became a veritable epidemic, and persecution broke out
in different sections of the country. Hardly had the stories of the
execution of witches in one place ceased to be a nine days' wonder,
when the tongues of the people were busy with stories of similar
occurrences somewhere else. An angry sailor threw a stone at a boy;
and the boy's mother roundly cursed the assailant of her offspring,
and added the hope that his fingers would rot off. When, two years
later, something of the sort actually did happen, her imprecation was
remembered against her, and there was also brought to light the fact
that a neighbor with whom she was at odds had been seized with
severe pains and felt her bed rocking up and down. The evidence was
conclusive, the woman must be a witch; such was the verdict, and death
was her sentence. Two women who lived alone, and, probably partly
because of their solitary existence, had developed irascible tempers
and demeanors which enlisted the hearty dislike of the inhabitants of
the fishing hamlet near by, were subjected to the petty persecutions
in which children instigated by their parents are such adepts; finding
existence too miserable to care very much for their reputations, they
endangered their security by their attitude toward their tormentors.
At last, nobody would even sell them fish, and their cursing and
prophecies of evil for their enemies became increasingly violent. In
the order of nature, some children were seized with fits, and, under
the inspiration of their elders, declared that they saw the two women
coming to torment them. After being eight years under accusation,
the women were brought to trial, and Sir Matthew Hale, the presiding
judge, after expressing his belief that the Scriptures proved the
reality of witchcraft, decided against the unhappy women and condemned
them to be hanged. This occurred in 1664, and constituted the
celebrated witch trial of Bury St. Edmunds.
These instances serve to illustrate the fate of a vast number of
hapless women during the seventeenth century; it is said that during
the sittings of the Long Parliament alone, as many as three thousand
persons were executed on charges of witchcraft. Besides these
unhappy wretches, a great many more suffered the terrible fate of
mob violence. The frenzied populace were often too impatient to await
legal procedure, and stoned the miserable women to death. In the minds
of the great majority of the people, such women were not human beings
at all, and so there was no cruelty in treating them with the greatest
violence possible. Indeed, such earnestness of purpose against the
adversaries of God could but redound, they thought, to their eternal
advantage. After all, was it not a devil, who for the time being
assumed human form, that they were treating with such violence?
to-morrow, the same demon might be found in a dog or in some other
animal, or perhaps afflicting with cholera the swine of some peasant,
to his severe loss. A description of a witch in the first half of the
seventeenth century says: "The devil's otter-hound, living both on
land and sea, and doing mischief in either; she kills more beasts than
a licensed butcher in Lent, yet is ne'er the fatter; she's but a dry
nurse in the flesh, yet gives such to the spirit. A witch rides many
times post on hellish business, yet if a ladder do but stop her, she
will be hanged ere she goes any further." The penal statutes against
witchcraft were not formally repealed until 1751, when there was
closed for England one of the saddest chapters in the history of human
mistakes. The last judicial executions for witchcraft in England were
in 1716.
In pleasing contrast to the unhappy creatures who were the victims
of fanatical persecutions during the Commonwealth period--the women
executed for witchcraft--stand the noble women who were developed by
the stern conditions of the Civil War--the heroines of internecine
strife. The domestic incidents of the Civil War form an interesting
commentary upon the character of the English woman, as they reveal
her in brave defence of castle or homestead, patient in hardship,
courageous in danger, and fertile in resources to avert misfortune.
Every important family was ranged on one side or the other, and the
line of division often passed through households. To all other issues
which aroused human passion, or touched the springs of human character
and brought forth the reserve heroism of human life, was added that
issue which stirs deepest the human heart,--the issue of religion. The
contest was not merely between king and people: it was a contest as
well between the people themselves as to the form of religion they
desired as the expression of their faith.
Under such conditions women could not be kept out of the turmoil and
the strife; perhaps one of the important ends which this distressful
period brought about was the crystallizing of the convictions of many
women, who otherwise would not have thought or felt deeply upon
that subject which is fundamental to the welfare of a nation and
the character of its people,--the subject of religion. Royalists
and Puritans, the women were arrayed on each side. They followed the
issues with an earnest alertness born of an intelligent understanding
of the causes involved and their own vital relation to the contest in
its results.
One of the Puritan women who literally entered into the fray was Mrs.
Hutchinson. Her father, Sir Allen Apsley, was governor of the Tower
during Sir Walter Raleigh's incarceration. It is probable that Mrs.
Hutchinson had some knowledge of medicine, because during the siege of
Nottingham she was actively engaged in dressing the soldiers' wounds
and furnishing them with drugs and lotions suitable to their cases,
and met with great success in her role of physician even in the cases
of those of some who were dangerously wounded. But it was not solely
in the character of nurse and physician that she was so active, for,
in conjunction with the other women of the town, after the departure
of the Royalist forces, she aided in districting the city for patrols
of fifty, the courageous women thus taking an active share in the
arduous duties of the town's defence. This intrepid woman later
appeared in the character of peacemaker. The elections of 1660 were
of a violent character, on account of the ill feeling between the
Royalists of the town and the soldiers of the Commonwealth. At the
critical moment, Mrs. Hutchinson arrived, and, being acquainted with
the captains, persuaded them to countenance no tumultuous methods,
whatever might be the provocation, but to make complaint in regular
form to the general and let him assume the work of preserving the
peace. This they consented to do; and the townsmen were equally
amenable to her wise counsel, and contracted to restrain their
children and servants from endangering the peace of the people.
Courage and initiative were not limited to the women on one side of
the contest, as is well illustrated by the conduct of the Countess of
Derby, who, in 1643, made a remarkable defence of Latham House; the
countess was of French birth and had in her veins the indomitable
spirit of the Dutch, for she was a descendant of Count William
of Nassau. She was called upon either to yield up her home or to
subscribe to the propositions of Parliament, and, upon her refusal to
do either, was besieged in her castle and kept in confinement within
its walls, with no larger range of liberty than the castle yard. Her
estate was sequestered, and she was daily affronted with mocking and
contemptuous language. When she was requested by Sir Thomas Fairfax to
yield up the castle, she replied with quiet dignity that she wondered
how he could exact such a thing of her, when she had done nothing
in the way of offence to Parliament, and she requested that, as the
matter affected both her religion and her life, besides her loyalty to
her sovereign and to her lord, she might have a week's consideration
of the demand. She declined the proposition of Sir Thomas Fairfax
to meet him at a certain house a quarter of a mile distant from the
castle for purposes of conference, saying that it was more knightly
that he should wait upon her than she upon him. After further
parleyings failed of conclusion, she finally sent a message that
brought on a renewal of the siege. She said that she refused all the
propositions of the Parliamentarians, and was happy that they had
refused hers, and that she would hazard her life before again making
any overtures: "That though a woman and a stranger, divorced from
her friends and robbed of her estate, she was ready to receive their
utmost violence, trusting in God for deliverance and protection."
The siege dragged on wearily for six or seven weeks, at the end of
which time Sir Thomas Fairfax resigned his post to Colonel Rigby. The
castle forces amounted to three hundred soldiers, while the besieging
force numbered between two and three thousand men. In the contest five
hundred of these were killed, while the countess lost but six of her
soldiers, who were killed through their own negligence. The colonel
manufactured a number of grenadoes, and then sent an ultimatum to the
countess, who tore up the paper and returned answer by the messenger
to "that insolent" [Rigby] that he should have neither her person,
goods, nor house; and as to his grenadoes, she would find a more
merciful fire, and, if the providence of God did not order otherwise,
that her house, her goods, her children, and her soldiers would
perish in flames of their own lighting, and so she and her family and
defenders would seal their religion and loyalty. The next morning the
countess caused a sally of her forces to be made, in which they got
possession of the ditch and rampart and a very destructive mortar
which had been used to bombard the besieged. Rigby wrote to his
superiors, begging assistance and saying that the length of the siege
and the hard duties it entailed had wearied all his soldiers, and
that he himself was completely worn out. In the meanwhile, the Earl
of Derby and Prince Rupert made their appearance, and Rigby made a
hurried retreat; in his endeavor to escape the Royalist forces, he
fell into an ambush and received a severe punishment before he reached
the town of Bolton. Such were the deeds of women of spirit upon each
side of the civil conflict; and because of their elements of character
and loyalty to conviction, the women of the better classes of England,
irrespective of their affiliations, mark a high point of progress in
the sex toward the goal of independence and individuality which the
civil strife aided them to secure.
The Society of Friends, or Quakers, was one of the religious
communities of the Commonwealth, whose members suffered grievously on
account of their religion. To the lot of their women fell an abundant
share of persecutions and martyrdoms; they were scourged, and ill
treated in every conceivable way. Their lives, inoffensive and pure,
were a constant rebuke to those of the loose livers about them.
Although Charles II. had promised, on coming to the throne, that
he would befriend them, their miseries were not greatly abated. The
persecution of Quaker women had continued from the middle of the
sixteenth century, when, in the west of England, Barbara Blangdon was
imprisoned for preaching, and other Quakeresses were placed in
the stocks by the Mayor of Evansham, and also treated with other
indignities. Throughout the seventeenth century, cruel persecutions of
women of the Quaker persuasion were often repeated.
With the Friends, the idea of the ministry of the Gospel was broadened
so as to include in its preachers and teachers those who possessed
the necessary gift, without regard to sex. Whatever may be individual
opinion as to woman's prerogative in this respect, there can be no
manner of doubt but that the advance in the status of woman which was
marked by the Society of Friends was a real contribution to the times
and a gift of permanent value to the English women in general. Those
women who claimed the right to preach were as ready to suffer on
behalf of their ministry. They were scourged, and ill treated in
every possible way; Bridewell Prison opened to receive many within its
gloomy interior; but they remained steadfast to the cardinal articles
of their belief, declaring: "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 imbued with a right qualification of the
ministry should exercise their gifts for the general edification of
the Church."
Having considered the conditions which existed during the period of
the Commonwealth in England, and particularly the rise of the Puritan
spirit and its dominance, as related to the women of the times, it
now remains to bring this period into connection with that of the
Restoration, which offers to it such a strong contrast. It is not
conceivable that, if the Puritan leaven had so thoroughly permeated
the mass of the English people as appeared to be the case upon the
surface of English society, there would have been so sudden and
radical a reaction upon the return of Charles II. from his long
sojourn abroad. That so many who cried "crucify him" should now be
found with "all hail" upon their lips, that women who had assumed
the Puritan twang and pious demeanor should throw off their assumed
character and stand out in their true light under the glare of a
court that was brilliant with revelry, is evidence of the futility of
attempting to force ideals and standards upon a people who have not
been gradually developed to the attainment of the qualities which they
are commanded to assume.
Even those women who could not abide the insufferable weight of
piety which spread over the period frequently found it politic not to
antagonize that which formed the very atmosphere they had to breathe;
but these women were not shameless profligates because they could not
enter into the intense introspection and the outward circumspection of
the Puritan dame. When the return of Charles II. brought to the front
a code of manners which revealed the real morals of the people, many
women who had walked "circumspectly," and were not under suspicion of
playing a part, did not any longer conceal their real proclivities,
but stood forth as women of pleasure. The Countess of Pembroke, Lady
Crawshaw, and Mrs. Hutchinson, all ornaments of their sex during the
Puritan regime, were yet alive at the Restoration, and beheld with
dismay the shameless performances of their countrywomen.
As marking an epoch, Puritanism is to be regarded as having destroyed
the last relics of medievalism. "Under the Stuarts," says Creighton,
"society became essentially modern, and many of the institutions upon
which the comfort of modern life depends had their origin."