Directed by David Cressy
and Lori Anne Ferrell.
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A Summer 2003 NEH Institute. Directed by David Cressy and Lori Anne Ferrell. |
Parliament  Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677). Civitatis Westmonasteriensis Pars, 1647. • Women and Parliament in Seventeenth-Century England: The Examples of Lady Eleanor Davies and the Leveller Petitioners
Full-text of A Bloody Masacre Plotted by the Papists, 1641. Full-text of Lady Eleanor Davies's Samsons Fall (1624). Full-text transcription of John Hales's A Declaratyon of the Successyon of the Crowne Imperyall of England, 1563. Includes study questions. Full-text of An Acte whereby certayne offences be made treason, 1571. Includes study questions. |
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Women and Parliament in Seventeenth-Century England On 28 July 1625, as she tells the story, Lady Eleanor Davies had a mystical experience during which she heard the voice of Daniel recruiting her to prophesy that the Day of Judgment was nineteen and a half years away. In her newfound role as prophetess, she criticized King Charles I and Parliament and predicted the deaths of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Lady Eleanor was imprisoned at least four times. She stood several trials, the first and most important of which was in 1633 when Charles I commanded that she be called before the High Commission. Found guilty of circulating false prophecies and printing unlicensed books, Lady Eleanor was fined £3,000 and sent to prison. Before her sentence was given, she watched Archbishop Laud burn her books in front of her. Lady Eleanor saw this act as the theft and destruction of her "children," and she called Laud a rapist and murderer. When Laud was executed in 1645, nineteen and a half years after Lady Eleanor had heard the voice of Daniel, Lady Eleanor took it as evidence that the Day of Judgment had come. Lady Eleanor married twice. Like Laud, both of her husbands reacted to her books by burning them. In each case, Lady Eleanor predicted that the men would be judged for their misdeeds, and indeed, Eleanor's first husband, Sir John Davies, died suddenly while her second husband, Sir Archibald Douglas, went mad soon after burning her writings. A vehement anti-papist, in 1636 Lady Eleanor led a raid on the Lichfield Cathedral, ruined its altar hangings, and sat on the bishop's throne, all of which earned her a stay of sixteen months in Bedlam. She was moved to the Tower of London in 1639 and was subsequently released. During her lifetime, Lady Eleanor printed more than fifty tracts in which she warned that the Day of Judgment was at hand. In her prophetic writings, she represented herself as Daniel, the bride of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and, playing upon an abbreviation of her first married name "Da" and her last married name "Do," as the Alpha and Omega. She also saw herself as a representative of the British Isles, citing her family's heritage and her marriage connections with England, Scotland, Ireland, and France. The Folger Shakespeare Library's holdings include a volume of forty-five bound tracts by Lady Eleanor which was probably owned by her daughter, Lucy, Countess of Huntingdon. The Folger volume includes the tract titled Samsons Fall (1642), in which Lady Eleanor warns Parliament that Charles I has become too popish; indeed the King has become like Samson in that he has fallen under the seductive spell of the French Catholic Delilah, Henrietta Maria, at the cost of British unity. In contrast to Lady Eleanor, whose status as a prophet made it necessary to remain, to a certain extent, separate and superior, other women grouped together to present their addresses to Parliament. Of particular interest are the petitions by Leveller women in the 1640s. The Levellers believed in religious toleration, basic human rights, constitutional reform, and democratic election. In 1648, several prominent Leveller men, including John Lilburne, Richard Overton, Thomas Prince, and William Walwyn, were imprisoned for criticizing the Rump Parliament and Oliver Cromwell. The Leveller women responded by drawing up a petition, which reportedly had ten thousand signatures, and taking it to Parliament. Though Parliament refused to admit the women's petition, the incident was widely reported. In the second edition of that petition, To the Supream Authority of England the Commons Assembled in Parliament. The humble Petition of diverse wel-affected WEOMEN [sic], of the Cities of London and Westminster, the Borrough of Southward, Hamblets, and places adjacent. Affecters and Approvers of the Petition of Sept. 11. 1648 (1649), the Leveller women argue for their right to fight for their beliefs, dying for them if necessary: "Nor will we ever rest until we have prevailed, that We, our husbands, Friends, and Servants, may not be liable to be abused, violated, and butchered at mens Wills and pleasures. But if nothing will satisfy but the bloud of those just men, those constant unda[u]nted Asserters of the Peoples freedoms will satisfy your thirst, drink also, and be glutted with our bloud, and let us all fall together: Take the blood of one more, and take all: slay one, slay all." Throughout the petition, it is possible to identify strains of what we could call early liberal feminist discourse. The Leveller women stress their intelligence and ability to reason, and, even in this short document, the word "equal" appears three times, variations of the word "liberty" can be found five times, and at several points appeals are made to justice and to the importance of overthrowing tyranny and slavery. Only in the twentieth century did it become possible to discuss women's addresses in Parliament rather than just women's addresses to Parliament. The first woman elected to Parliament was Nancy, Viscountess Astor, who sat in the House of Commons from 1919 to 1945. In 1967, Barbara Wootton became the first woman member of the House of Lords. On 11 June 1987, and at the age of thirty-three, Diane Abbott became the first black woman MP. Parliament gained a record one-hundred-twenty women in May 1997; thirty-five of these were selected for their seats as a result of the Labour Party's policy of gender equitable shortlists. In June 2001, the number of women in the House of Commons fell for the first time in twenty years. Currently, only eighteen percent of British MPs are women. Amy Scott-Douglass California State University Fullerton Full-text of Lady Eleanor Davies's Samsons Fall (1624). Suggestions for further reading: Lady Eleanor Davies Cope, Esther S. Handmaid of the Holy Spirit: Dame Eleanor Davies, Never Soe Mad a Ladie. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. ---, ed. Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies. Oxford University Press, 1995. Feroli, Teresa, ed. Eleanor Davies. The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works. Aldershot, England; Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000. Mack, Phyllis. Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Leveller Women Petitioners Achinstein, Sharon. "Women on Top in the Pamphlet Literature of the English Revolution." Women's Studies 24 (1994): 131-63. Reprinted in Feminism and Renaissance Studies, edited by Lorna Hutson, 339-375. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Crawford, Patricia. Women and Religion in England, 1500-1720. London; New York: Routledge, 1993. Higgins, Patricia. "The Reactions of Women with Special Reference to Women Petitioners." In Politics, Religion, and the English Civil War, edited by Brian Manning, 179-224. London: Edward Arnold, 1973. Hughes, Ann. "Gender and Politics in Leveller Literature." In Political Culture and Cultural Politics in England: Essays Presented to David Underdown, edited by Susan Amussen and Mark Kishlansky, 162-188. Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: St Martins, 1995. |
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