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Samuel Clarke and the ‘Lives’ of Godly Women in Seventeenth-Century England*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Jacqueline Eales
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Extract

When Samuel Clarke’s The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in this Later Age was published posthumously in 1683, the ‘godly life’ was a well-established genre of Puritan literature. Clarke himself had contributed to its popularity with his various compilations of’lives’ of ministers and laity culled primarily from published funeral sermons and spiritual biographies by other authors. Today such editions would be regarded as blatant plagiarism, but in the mid-seventeenth century, before the advent of the copyright laws, they were widely appreciated, and in the Introduction to this, his last work, Clarke wrote,

I have been encouraged to make this collection, and now to publish it, finding that my former labours in this kind have been accepted with the Saints, and in the Church of Christ: which is apparent, for that they have been printed four times in a few years space, and yet never less than a thousand at a time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 27: Women in the Church , 1990 , pp. 365 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1990

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Footnotes

*

The research for this communication was undertaken during my tenure of a British Academy Thank Offering to Britain Fellowship. I would like to thank the Fellows of the Academy and the trustees of the fund for their support. I also wish to thank Peter Lake and Richard Eales for their comments on drafts of this work.

All quotations from printed and manuscript sources have been modernized.

References

1 See Clarke, Samuel, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in this later Age (London, 1683 Google Scholar).

2 The term ‘godly life’ and its variants are used throughout this piece as an umbrella term to cover the spiritual biographies attached to funeral sermons, as well as those biographies which were especially prepared for the press. There was a great deal of overlap, and in some cases the ‘lives’ were an amalgam of the two, see, for example, Ley, John, A Pattern of Piety. Or the Religious Life and Death of that Grave and Gracious Matron, Mrs Jane Ratcliffe, Widow and Citizen of Chester… whereof part was preached, and the whole written by John Ley (London, 1640 Google Scholar).

3 Clarke, , The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, 1 (London, 1683), pp. 1’11 Google Scholar. Clarke’s publishing career started in 1642, and he produced not only biographies of the Church Fathers and of contemporary ‘Saints’, but also wrote about historical figures such as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, and Queen Elizabeth, who was portrayed as ‘the unconquered defendress of die whole true Christian religion’, see Clarke, Samuel, The Second Part of the Marrow of Ecclesiastical History, 1 (London, 1650), p. 218 Google Scholar. For a list of his works see Wing, STC, 1641-1700.

4 Puritanism has attracted a long history of debate amongst historians: for a recent assessment of that debate see Greaves, R. L., ‘The puritan-nonconformist tradition in England, 1560-1700: Historiographical Reflections’, Albion, 17 (1985), pp. 449’86 Google Scholar. For a discussion of the contemporary use of the term ‘puritan’ see Eales, J., ‘Sir Robert Harley KB (1579-1656) and the “character” of a puritan’, British Library Journal, 15 (1989), pp. 134’57 Google Scholar.

5 Staunton, Edmund, A Sermon Preached at Great Milton in the County of Oxford: December 9 1654 at the Funeral of that Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ Mistriss Elizabeth Wilkinson late Wife to Dr Henry Wilkinson Principal of Magdalen Hall: Whereto is added a Narrative of her Godly Life and Death (Oxford, 1659 Google Scholar), sig. A2v: the substance of this life is reprinted in Clarke, Samuel, A Collection of the Lives of Ten Eminent Divines, 2 (London, 1662), pp. 512’35 Google Scholar; Clarke, , The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, pp. 3’7 Google Scholar.

6 See, for example, Markham, Gervase, The English Hus-Wife containing the inward and outward Virtues which ought to be in a Complete Woman (London, 1615), pp. 1’2 Google Scholar; Gouge, William, Of Domestical Duties, Eight Treatises (London, 1622), pp. 259, 269 Google Scholar, where it was argued that awoman should obey her husband ‘provided his command be not against die Lord and his word’, a proviso which opened the path to a wide range of defiance of husbands’ authority on religious grounds: see ‘The role of women in the English Reformation illustrated by the life and friendships of Anne Locke’, in Collinson, P., Godly People:Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London, 1983), pp. 273’87 Google Scholar, Thomas, K., ‘Women and the Civil War sects’, PaP, 13 (1958), pp. 42—62 Google ScholarPubMed, and Todd, M., Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 113’17 Google Scholar. For a discussion of the printed literature aimed at women in the early modem period see Hull, S. W., Chaste, Silent and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475-1640 (Huntington Library, San Marino, 1982 Google Scholar). For the general issue of patriarchy see Amussen, S., ‘Gender, family and the social order, 1560-1725’, in Fletcher, A. and Stevenson, J., eds., Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 196’217 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Baxter, Richard, A Breviate of the Life of Margaret, the Daughter of Francis Charlton of Appley in Shropshire Esq., and Wife of Richard Baxter… (London, 1681), pp. 64, 73 Google Scholar; Clarke reproduced this life in a much shortened version, see Clarke, , The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, 2, pp. 181’91 Google Scholar.

8 ‘“A magazine of religious patterns”: an Erasmian topic transposed in English Protestantism’ in Collinson, , Godly People, pp. 499’525 Google Scholar (reprinted from SCH, 14).

9 Staunton, , A Sermon Preached at Great Milton, pp. 21’2 Google Scholar; Baxter, , A Breviate of the Life of Margaret, Sig., A2v Google Scholar; Clarke, Samuel, A General Martyrology (London, 1651 Google Scholar).

10 Collinson, , Coaly People, pp. 519’24 Google Scholar.

11 Gurnall, William, The Christian’s Labour and Reward (London, 1672 Google Scholar), reprinted in Clarke, , The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, 2, pp. 144—51 Google Scholar.

12 For biographical information about Lady Vere’s daughters see DNB, 58, p. 238; for Lady Harley see Eales, Jacqueline, Puritans and Roundheads: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Out break of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990 Google Scholar). For the importance of relationships between female relatives in a different social context see Crawford, P., ‘Katharine and Philip Henry and their children: a case study in family ideology’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 134 (1984), pp. 39’73 Google Scholar.

13 DNB, 58, p. 238; for Anne Fairfax see Macray, W. Dunn, ed., The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England by Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 4 (Oxford, 1888), pp. 486’7 Google Scholar.

14 Gurnall, , The Christian’s Labour and Reward, pp. 138’9 Google Scholar; for Lady Vere’s correspondence see London, BL, MS Add. 4274.

15 Richard Baxter, ‘To the Reader’ in Clarke, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons.

16 Lake, P. G., ‘Calvinism and the English Church, 1570–1635’, PaP, 114 (1987), pp. 32’76 Google Scholar.

17 Clarke, Samuel, A Looking-Glass for Good Women to dress themselves by: held forth in the Life and Death of Mrs Katherine Clarke (London, 1677), pp. 48’9, 68 Google Scholar, reprinted in Clarke, , The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, pp. 152’9 Google Scholar.

18 Clarke, , A Collection of the Lives of Ten Eminent Divines, 2, pp. 522—3 Google Scholar.

19 Clarke, , A Looking-Glassfor Good Women, pp. 13’17 Google Scholar.

20 Clarke, , A Collection of the Lives of Ten Eminent Divines, 2, pp. 412’14 Google Scholar.

21 Nottingham, University Library, MS Portland, Commonplace Book of Brilliana Conway (1622); Lewis, T. T. ed., The Letters of the Lady Brilliana Harley, PCS, 58 (1854), pp. 69’70 Google Scholar. For the centrality of predestination in Lady Harley’s private writings see my thesis. Levy, J., ‘Perceptions and Beliefs: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Origins and Outbreak of the First Civil War’, (London, Ph.D. thesis, 1983), pp. 137’46 Google Scholar.

22 Lake, P., ‘Feminine piety and personal potency: The emancipation of Mrs Jane Ratcliffe’, Seventeenth Century, 2 (1987 Google Scholar); for the religious content in the manuscript writings of women in the Stuart period see Mendelson, S. Heller, ‘Stuart women’s diaries and occasional memoirs’, in Prior, M., ed., Women in English Society, 1500-1800 (London, 1985), pp. 181’210 Google Scholar.

23 A Brief Discourse of the Christian Life and Death of Mistriss Katherin Brettergh, printed with Harrison, William and Leygh, William, Death’s Advantage little regarded, and the Soul’s Solace against Sorrow. Preached in two Funeral Sermons (London, 1606), pp. 9’10 Google Scholar. Brettergh’s, Katherine Life was edited by Clarke and first appeared in Clarke, Samuel, The Second Part of the Marrow of Ecclesiastical History, 2 (London, 1650), pp. 111’12 Google Scholar; Clarke, , A Collection of the Lives of Ten Eminent Divines, 2, pp. 491, 513 Google Scholar.

24 Baxter, , A Breviate of the Life of Margaret, pp. 73, 79 Google Scholar; Clarke, , A Looking-Glass for Good Women, p. 19 Google Scholar; the expectation that women would lead household prayers under certain circumstances raises questions about the spiritual authority accorded women within the household. For the debate on ‘the spiritualizarion of the household’ see Todd, , Christian Humanism, pp. 96’117 Google Scholar.

25 Baxter, , A Breviate of the Life of Margaret, pp. 46’7, 101’3 Google Scholar.

26 Clarke, , A Looking-Class for Good Women, p. 4 Google Scholar.

27 Thomas, , Women and the Civil War Sects, pp. 42’62 Google Scholar; Rowlands, M. B., ‘Recusant Women, 1560–1640’, in Prior, , ed., Women in English Society, 1500-1800, pp. 149—80 Google Scholar.

28 Clarke, , A Collection of the Lives of Ten Eminent Divines, 2, pp. 491’2 Google Scholar, 516, 517, 518; Clarke, , The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, 2, p. 146 Google Scholar.

29 Clarke, , A Looking-Glass for Good Women, pp. 7, 16 Google Scholar; Clarke, , A Collection of the Lives of Ten Eminent Divines, 2, p. 513 Google Scholar; Baxter, , A Breviate of the Life of Margaret, pp. 67’8 Google Scholar.

30 Gurnall, , The Christian’s Labour and Reward, pp. 126’7 Google Scholar, see also, Clarke, , The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, p. 144 Google Scholar.

31 Baxter, , A Breviale of the Life of Margaret, Sig. A2rGoogle Scholar.