Patricia Crawford - Womens Worlds in Seventeenth Century England

This rich and exciting collection brings seventeenth-century women to life. Full of unexpected information, the documents are culled from a wide range of sources, much of it archival material which has never been published before. This is a superb volume.

Lyndal Roper, Royal Holloway, University of London

Teachers and students have needed a book like this for a long time. Now, at last, we will be able to read the collected words of Englishwomen ordinary Englishwomen as they spoke in courts, scribbled down accounts, shared advice with one another, and otherwise left records of their experiences, fears, and hopes. Many original documents are printed here for the first time, and all will delight and inform readers. Created by the careful research and attentive teaching of two respected historians, this is a wonderful book.

Judith M. Bennett, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Womens Worlds in Seventeenth-century England presents a unique collection of source materials on womens lives in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The book introduces a wonderfully diverse group of women and a series of voices that have rarely been heard in history, from a poor Devon servant-girl to Queen Anne herself.

Drawing on unpublished, archival materials, Womens Worlds explores the everyday lives of ordinary early modern women, including their experiences of work, sex, marriage and motherhood, their beliefs and spirituality, their political activities, relationships and mental worlds. This book deepens and challenges our understanding of womens lives in the past.

Patricia Crawford is Professor of History at the University of Western Australia, and her books include Women in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 1998), with Sara Mendelson. Laura Gowing is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hertfordshire, and is author of Domestic Dangers: Women, Words, and Sex in Early Modern London (Oxford University Press, 1996).

Edited by Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing

First published 2000

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group, an informa business

First issued in hardback 2015

2000 Editorial matter and selection, Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing

Typeset in Garamond by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Womens worlds in seventeenth-century England / edited by Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.

1. WomenEngland History Sources. I. Crawford, Patricia M. II. Gowing, Laura.

HQ1599.E5W731999

305.40942dc219924671

CIP

ISBN 978-0-415-15638-7 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-138-13143-9 (hbk)

From the start this project has been supported by the interest and advice of many friends and colleagues: we would like to thank in particular Amy Erickson, Frances Harris, Anne Laurence, Sara Mendelson, Mary Prior, Lyndal Roper, and Helen Weinstein. We would also like to thank Sarah Barry, Vic Burrows, Shonaidh Marsh and Sarah Toulalan for research assistance. Graeme Hankey, Richard Read, Judy Straton, and Richard Wall kindly gave specialist advice on various questions. Amy Erickson acted as reader for the whole book, Jane Long and Maureen Perkins read sections of the text, Garthine Walker read ; their comments and help were very gratefully received. Helen Weinstein gave valuable help on finding and thinking about illustrations. Amy Erickson, Amy Froide, Frances Harris, Katharine Hodgkin, Sara Mendelson and Claire Walker each contributed documents in their own specialist fields, which are acknowledged in the text.

Staff in record offices and libraries across England, in the United States and in Australia were unfailingly helpful: we would like to thank particularly the Bodleian Library, the British Library Manuscripts Section, Friends House Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Royal College of Physicians and the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.

Laura Gowing thanks the University of Hertfordshire for support of the project with teaching relief; Patricia Crawford thanks the University of Western Australia for general support. Heather McCallum, our editor at Routledge, was always ready with good advice and enthusiasm. Finally, wed like to thank our students, on whom much of this material was first tested and for whom this book is intended; we hope that the books readers will find in the documents presented here some of the pleasures we have had researching the histories of early modern women over the years.

Permission from the following authorities to publish the following documents in their copyright or keeping is gratefully acknowledged: the Trustees of Dr Williams Library, London (for document 2.3); the Catholic Record Society (for document 2.6); the prioress and community of the Priory of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Sayers Common, West Sussex (for document 2.7); the Bristol Record Society and the Rev. Roger Hayden (for document 2.10); the Wiltshire Record Society (for document 5.7); the Bodleian Library; the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York; the British Library; the Corporation of London, Guildhall Library and the London Metropolitan Archives; East Sussex Record Office; Essex Record Office; the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC; the Library Committee, Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain; Lichfield Record Office and the Diocesan Registrar; North Yorkshire Record Office; the Public Record Office, Kew; the Royal College of Physicians, London; Somerset Archives and Record Service; the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London. All efforts have been made to trace other copyright holders.