Naomi Baker, "Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century" (Reaktion Books, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

New Books Network – Naomi Baker, "Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
Host: Yana Byers
Guest: Naomi Baker (Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Manchester)
Date: November 7, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features Naomi Baker, discussing her groundbreaking book Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century. Through insightful conversation with host Yana Byers, Baker explores the extraordinary stories, writings, and legacies of women who challenged the religious, social, and political status quo in 17th-century England. The dialogue dives into the sources, contexts, and the enduring significance of these voices, spotlighting both the radical theological ideas and the personal stories behind them.

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Main Themes & Purpose

• Exploration of “radical” 17th-century religious women: their lives, beliefs, writings, and legacies.
• Examination of how religious, social, and political turmoil enabled women to assume public, prophetic, and activist roles.
• Consideration of historical sources, including both supportive and hostile accounts.
• Reflection on the significance of recovering these erased or marginalized voices.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Baker’s Intellectual Trajectory—From “Plain Ugly” to “Voices of Thunder”

Timestamp: 03:03–05:10

• Baker details her early academic work on Quaker women’s writing.

• She describes returning to this passion after research on identity, gender, and the body.

• Manchester’s rich archives of nonconformist writing were pivotal to her research.

  "It feels to me like a return home rather than a departure, because I'm going back to texts I studied many decades ago and now I'm able to revisit them."
  — Naomi Baker [04:40]

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2. 17th-Century Context—A Breeding Ground for Radicalism

Timestamp: 05:10–11:51

• Religion and politics were inseparable; the era saw the collapse of traditional authority and censorship (especially in the 1640s).

• Radical Protestant ideas focused on individual conscience and direct relationship with God, encouraging dissent and new movements.

• Apocalyptic anxieties galvanized activism, not fatalism.

• These women acted from a fusion of spiritual and social conviction.

  "Their spiritual conviction is inseparable from a sense of social justice and from a commitment to a wider cause. And so that's what makes them radical."
  — Naomi Baker [10:38]

  "There is a very widespread sense of apocalyptic crisis. ... It did seem as if the sky was falling."
  — Naomi Baker [12:10]

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3. The Theology: Direct Divine Inspiration and Individual Conscience

Timestamp: 14:00–17:01

• Radical women believed God spoke directly to them; this made them extremely threatening to authorities.

• This conviction also led to some of the earliest forms of women’s autobiographical writing—stories told not for ego but as testimony.

• Their unmediated claim to spiritual authority justified dissent from any hierarchy, including within their own radical groups.

  "It's very, very hard for anyone to then dismiss your ideas or to shut you down, because that's what you just keep reverting to. Well, it doesn't matter what you think. ... God can speak to whoever he wants to."
  — Naomi Baker [14:18]

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4. The Sources—Unearthing Women’s Voices

Timestamp: 18:16–21:12

• Baker notes sources are patchy: some women left only hostile accounts written by critics; others wrote autobiographies, testimonies, or tracts.

• The act of finding and interpreting these traces is complex and often involves reading between the lines of condemnation.

  "...we only have hostile accounts. And of course, that raises all kinds of issues about how much we can trust the accounts. We have to tread very carefully in what we take at face value...But nevertheless, it does give us a glimpse because obviously they wouldn't be so scandalized if nothing had been happening."
  — Naomi Baker [18:49]

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5. Profiles—Case Studies of Radical Women

a) Rose Thurgood—Poverty, Faith, and Self-Authorship

Timestamp: 21:12–28:28

• Wrote an unprecedentedly early (1630s) conversion narrative, describing her struggles with poverty and faith.

• Thurgood uses writing as a means of coming to terms with suffering, demonstrating a depth of interiority often denied to early modern women.

  "You don't come across these authentic raw voices very often in 17th-century writing, especially by women and especially from women of this social status. I do think this is a unique document..."
  — Naomi Baker [24:56]

b) Anna Trapnell—Prophet, Political Critic, Ecstatic Visionary

Timestamp: 28:49–34:55

• Trapnell fell into public ecstatic trances, prophesied against Oliver Cromwell, was accused of witchcraft, imprisoned, but remained unbowed.

• Her visionary and sensuous writing situates her within, but also apart from, older traditions of female mysticism.

  "This is a young woman who is taking on the highest figures of the state from this prophetic position, from this apparently weak position of lying in bed and falling into a trance. But there's nothing weak about Anna Chapman..."
  — Naomi Baker [29:27]

• Her notoriety led to demonizing engravings and persistent misrepresentation.

  "...that picture is an example of how she's never been taken on her own terms. She's been mislabeled, she's been misidentified and obviously demonized. So it's time for her to have her own renaissance, I think."
  — Naomi Baker [34:35]

c) Hester Biddle—Quaker, Preacher, Advocate for Social Justice

Timestamp: 36:11–38:54

• Preached and published for decades, despite frequent imprisonment and violence.

• Targeted entire cities in Old Testament–style denunciations, focusing on inequality and hypocrisy.

  "She tends to take aim not at individuals but at whole cities, which makes her seem quite ... like an Old Testament prophet."
  — Naomi Baker [36:43]

d) Catherine Evans & Sarah Cheevers—Imprisonment and Endurance

Timestamp: 38:54–41:36

• Traveled abroad to spread Quaker teachings, arrested by the Roman Inquisition in Malta, endured psychological and physical hardship, and wrote powerful accounts of their ordeal.

  "They're only meant to be stopping off briefly in Malta, but ... they're openly on the streets of Malta preaching the Quaker truth. They're arrested, they're throwing in an Inquisition cell."
  — Naomi Baker [39:25]

e) Anne Wentworth—A Voice Against Domestic Abuse

Timestamp: 41:36–45:09

• Publicly denounced her prominent husband’s abuse in published tracts, despite ostracism and destitution.

  "...she almost dies. She becomes ill and almost dies, and then she recovers. And she believes that God has saved her life so that she can tell the truth."
  — Naomi Baker [42:17]

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6. Lasting Significance and Legacy

Timestamp: 45:53–48:24

• Baker underscores the importance of recovering these voices: while later generations and early historians erased their memory, their legacy influenced movements for social justice and women’s rights, providing a throughline to the present.

  "Not just in terms of these particular women that I write... but the radical groups as a whole. They lived and behaved in ways which were totally confronting to ideas of social hierarchy, to ideas of injustice... And I think they have had a legacy inspiring later movements."
  — Naomi Baker [46:34]

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7. Next Steps and Ongoing Research

Timestamp: 48:29–49:07

• Baker is continuing with deeper research into specific theological ideas and further exploring women’s interpretations of apocalyptic writing.

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Memorable Quotes

• "Religion is not one way of understanding this. Religion needs to be interpreted much more specifically…it's their very strongly held belief which enables them to do that."
  — Naomi Baker [35:24]

• "We need to know more about them because it raises all kinds of questions about our own legacy, our own history, the legacy of our own ideas, and also where our ideas have come from, the inheritance that we have as feminists, as women who want to discover our own voices."
  — Naomi Baker [47:09]

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Notable Moments with Timestamps

• [03:28] Baker recounts coming “home” to her initial research interests.
• [10:38] On individuality and conscience fueling radical religious expression.
• [14:18] The threat and power of direct divine inspiration for women.
• [21:12] Mystery and excitement of finding women’s voices in unexpected textual places.
• [24:56] Rawness and modern-seeming selfhood of Rose Thurgood’s account.
• [29:27] Anna Trapnell’s bold confrontation of Cromwell and the public sphere.
• [34:35] Misrepresentation and demonization of radical women.
• [36:43] Biddle as an Old Testament-style prophet for whole cities.
• [42:17] Anne Wentworth’s survival and public stance against domestic abuse.
• [46:34] The lasting impact and legacy of radical women’s voices.

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Tone and Style

The conversation is inquisitive, warm, and respectful, balancing genuine scholarly enthusiasm with a commitment to nuance and historical empathy. Baker’s voice is passionate and her arguments are articulated with both academic care and narrative flair, making the stories vivid for listeners far removed from these early modern worlds.

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Concluding Thoughts

Naomi Baker’s research is a reclamation of silenced voices—women who, through faith and conviction, transcended the boundaries of their time. Their stories, uncertain as they sometimes remain, continue to resonate, challenging both past and present notions of authority, gender, and agency.

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For more, check out Naomi Baker’s Voices of Thunder: Radical Religious Women of the Seventeenth Century (Reaktion Books, 2025).

Transcript

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[Naomi Baker]

Matthew chapter 6. Each day will have its troubles, but by God's grace they can be survived.

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Use the Rebind Study Bible App's chat function to ask questions and get answers in real time. That's thought provoking discussion and analysis rooted in decades of research and wisdom from more than 40 scholars at your fingertips. The Rebind Study Bible App is a new way to experience the Bible with enhanced depth, at your own pace in the moments you have. Search the Apple App Store for Rebind Study Bible or go to rebind app.com newbooks network for a free seven day trial. Hello everybody, this is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network and if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Production. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Yana Byers]

Hello everyone and welcome back to New Books in Early Modern History, a podcast on the New Books Night Network. I'm Yana Byers, your host, and I'm here today with Naomi Baker, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester, to talk about her new book, Voices of Radical Religious women of the 17th century out this year, 2025 from reaction books. Hello, Naomi.

[Naomi Baker]

Hello. Thank you so much for having me on.

[Yana Byers]

Oh, it's a delight. And how are you today this lovely fall day?

[Naomi Baker]

I am very well, thank you. Enjoying some autumn sunshine and beautiful colours of leaves, which I have to say, match beautifully with my book, which has, as you know, a beautiful orange stroke red cover. So I'm feeling very autumnal today on all foot.

[Yana Byers]

Yeah, I like the autumn vibes. It is a striking book. It's a beautiful. The beautiful cover and Reaction puts out such a nice product.

[Naomi Baker]

So beautiful. I'm really happy with the, the production of the book. It's beautiful.

[Yana Byers]

Fantastic. Okay, so you're a scholar of English Renaissance literature and your first book is called Plain Ugly and it talks about physical unattractiveness and the body, how we see ourselves, or, you know, how, et cetera in English Renaissance literature. And I think I see the through line that took us from Plain Ugly to Voices of Thunder. But I'd like to hear you tell me and our listeners about how you came to write the book.

[Naomi Baker]

Well, I actually did my PhD more years ago than I wish to remember on Quaker women's writing. So in that sense, I began my academic research looking at these kinds of texts. And that's actually why I came to Manchester University, because there are fantastic archives here in Manchester of non conformist writing, including 17th century Quaker collections, quite extensive collections, because the Quakers and many of these radical groups were very northwest England, you know, did come from northwest England, originated in northwest England, many of them. So that was the reason I came to Manchester for my PhD and I worked on Quaker writing. And then for my postdoctoral work, I actually worked on Rose Thurgood, who is the subject of the first chapter of the book. So I did a critical edition of her narrative for my postdoctoral research also many, many years ago. Now after that, as you say, I then extended my research into some slightly different areas. But there was always a common theme of looking at the nature of identity, particularly in relation to issues of gender, but also in terms of theological and religious framework. So the, the thematic link is there, even though the topics and the exact application of that may have changed. But I was thrilled to be able to go. It feels to me like a return home rather than a departure, because I'm going back to texts I studied many decades ago and now I'm able to revisit them. And I think I do have a slightly different perspective and it's been good to do it this way around, you know, to have studied them Very closely, many years ago, and then return after looking at other material and then really think about the wider significance of some of this material and get a bigger picture. And that's why it's been such a jo. The privilege to write this book and to come back to this material and try and present it within a slightly wider context than I may have done at PhD level.

[Yana Byers]

Excellent. In the 17th century. Before we really get into the book, let's talk about this. That in the 17th century, religion and politics are linked. There is no such thing as separation of church and state. And as scholars, we can't really talk about religion and politics in any kind of separate way. So what's happening in the 17th century in England that contributes to a time of unrest, shall we say, kind of an interesting time?

[Naomi Baker]

Wow, that's a huge question which can be answered in so many different ways. I think I'm going to choose to answer it in terms of ideas and beliefs, which is of course not the only way to approach that question. But I really, as I was writing this book, I really solidified in my mind the absolutely crucial role those played on the new emphasis played by the new emphasis on the individual conscience. I really feel that's at the heart of a lot of what I'm trying to write about. And also the radical movements of which these women were a part. Obviously the Reformation has swept through Europe in the 16th century and it swept away church institutions, it swept away church buildings and paintings, in church buildings and statues, all these physical elements, but it also swept away the kind of paraphernalia around people's individual belief. So now the Protestant woman or man stands alone before God and is accountable directly to God and has to answer to God in the form of their own conscience. And this is very heavily emphasized, of course, within all Protestantism, but particularly in the radical groups that began to emerge in the middle of the 17th century in England. So I, I see this emphasis on individual conscience, on being true to your own subjective convictions, your own beliefs, as being absolutely at the heart of the birth of these radical movements. Obviously there are many, many other factors in play, other factors, including the collapse of censorship at the beginning of the 1640s, of course, that played a hugely crucial role in the spread of radical ideas because then people were able to broadcast clearly their ideas to a much wider audience, ever widening reading public. And so that all those factors, of course come into play and all the factors that contributed to the Civil War in itself and the breakdown of certain forms of order in society, all of that created A landscape in which radical ideas could be expressed. But I really feel the driving force behind the particular people that I'm studying, the women and the men alongside them in the radical religious groups, I feel that they are being primarily driven by theological and religious ideas of. Well, just not so much religious ideas. As you say. It's not really religion as opposed to politics. It's just that it's a general idea of the importance of individual conviction and individual conscience. And the people that I'm studying take that to the furthest extent that they can really. They push the idea to an extreme. They are absolutely true to their conscience, even when that means standing up against all forms of mainstream, even Protestantism teaching, you know, orthodox teaching within the Church of England. But even within their own radical groups, they will not follow a line that's given to them unless they actually personally believe that to be the truth. So this, this emphasis on individuality, on individual accountability to God in the form of following your own conscience, just gives birth to all kinds of radical ideas. I don't know if that fully answers your question, but I see that as being a really crucial framework for what's happening here.

[Yana Byers]

No, that's perfect. So this. But I want to, you know, what I want to kind of stress here and I want to make sure is out is that we've got a religious reformation that allows for direct connection with God. And we'll talk more about that in a second. But then there's a political landscape where all of the guardrails are gone. So, right politically and in, like, theology and ideas of, like, what you're allowed to think, we have a space we can really flourish where you can have a religious counterculture or any religious cultures can flourish. So we've got, you know, this Protestantism, and Protestantism is. It never, never turns into a single idea. You know, there's. There's a brief flirtation for a few minutes, and they can't get along, maybe because Luther's such a jerk.

[Naomi Baker]

And.

[Yana Byers]

So we don't, we don't have a single Protestantism, so anything can happen. But so the, the, the people you're talking about are of really radical faith, right?

[Naomi Baker]

Yes. So the women in my book are members of the radical sectarian groups. Well, by and large, they are. That's already an overgeneralization because some of them are not officially members of these groups, but largely speaking, they're members of these groups which begin to emerge or come to kind of public visibility at least in the 1640s and 50s, such as, obviously the Quakers and the Baptists began earlier than that, but become more visible in those decades. And other groups like the Fifth Monarchists, who we may not be familiar with today, but were just radical millenarian groups who believed that the second coming was about to happen and that they had to do make changes in society to allow for that to happen. So they're radical political and religious groups. As you said, these two things can't be separated. And all of them have a very strong sense that the unveiling of God's kingdom that they're looking for is actually a social and political and economic revolution. These things are totally indistinguishable from each other. So their spiritual conviction is inseparable from a sense of social justice and from a commitment to a wider cause. And so that's what makes them radical. They're radical in their theology, but that also leads to a radical social outlook. And of course, they don't all share the same social outlook. And this emphasis on individual conviction means that by definition they're never going to share the same outlook. They're welcome to be accountable to their own sense of truth, but by and large, they are all advocating for greater forms of social justice, which to them is the same thing as the kingdom of God arriving on earth. So these things are two sides of the same coin. They're not is, they're not separable from each other. And that's what I really do believe. Of course, historians and critics debate the term radical. How far can you apply the term radical? What does it exactly mean? To my mind, these are women who stand up against the status quo. They stand up against the social order as it exists at the time, especially in the form of patriarchy, but in all forms of, you know, all forms of the status quo, hierarchical order of society, they just, by definition, the fact that they believe in spiritual equality, that they believe that God deals with them as an equal, alongside men, alongside people who are better educated, who have more wealth, just so that very principle in itself is radically leveling. So no matter what the exact nature of the social vision that they outline, they are already standing for principles of equality which go against some of the most cherished principles of 17th century society. And so I really do believe that these women are all radical, although of course they are all of different opinions and different positions, politically speaking, if you want to pin it down in those terms. But they are all, to my mind, radical.

[Yana Byers]

Right. Something you mentioned there that we also need to just get out on the table is all of this political unrest, social unrest, the demise of an organized, centralizing religion goes hand in hand with the people believe that they are living in the like end times. All caps, bold. End times. Yeah.

[Naomi Baker]

Very strong sense of apocalyptic crisis has gripped the nation. Of course, it's hard to say how much everybody bought into this, but there is a very widespread sense of apocalyptic crisis. It did seem as if the sky was falling. I. Everything was changing. The king was beheaded. You know, these are not normal times from anyone's perspective and lots of people. It's not a kind of, you know, marginal or strange position to at this point in time to believe that you're living in the end times and that, you know, history is winding itself up. And that of course, gives rise to all kinds of responses. I think we may assume that that would give rise to a certain fatalism, that the end is nigh and therefore what can we do about anything? But it really doesn't seem to work that way. The apocalyptic crisis that grips these radical groups but also grips the wider nation. It seems to galvanize people into wanting to kind of seize hold of the moment and be on the right side of history, however short the rest of history may be. Obviously there's a strong sense for most of the people in my book that there's going to be some kind of divine reckoning is around the corner, and they want to be on the right side of that. They want to be in line with God's plan as they understand it. So the apocalyptic crisis galvanizes not only their own religious convictions, but also their social and political agenda. And they want to bring about God's kingdom on earth. And when I say it's an apocalyptic time, it doesn't necessarily mean that they think the world is going to end and we're all going to go off to heaven or wherever, you know, that's. That's all that's going to happen. They actually think that God's kingdom is going to come on earth in a new form, that there is going to be a form of reconstruction on earth which will be social and political as well as religious or theological. So again, that galvanizes them to try and bring that about. And they really see themselves as God's agents, kind of the people who are going ahead of the apocalyptic in a finale. He kind of his God's agents on Earth to help bring this about. And I think that also contributes to them being radical. Although we might not assume it would make that move to make that connection, but I think that that connection is there.

[Yana Byers]

Right. And these are people who believe that they have a direct connection with God, however literal that may be to them. And like they're.

[Naomi Baker]

They.

[Yana Byers]

They have. They understand, they hear God in their heart. And God sees them as individuals without necessarily anyone in between. As an arbiter.

[Naomi Baker]

Yes, and that's absolutely crucial. This idea of direct divine inspiration is one of the things that made them so threatening. It's one of the things that their critics most hone in on and find outlandish about them and find really alarming. Because if you think about how dangerous that idea is that you can say that God has spoken to me. God has said this. It's very, very hard for anyone to then dismiss your ideas or to shut you down, because that's what you just keep reverting to. Well, it doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter that I'm not educated. It doesn't matter that I'm a woman. It doesn't matter that I'm a servant. As one women. One of the women in book is. It doesn't matter because God can speak to whoever he wants to. And so this. This claim or this very. Wasn't just a kind of convenient claim. It was a very deeply felt belief by these. These women and by the men in the same group says that. That God was speaking to them directly, that God was revealing new forms of truth to them. They really, genuinely believe this, and they articulate it strongly. And it makes them kind of immune to almost all forms of criticism or forms of control. But that applies to even within their own little groups. Because even within their sectarian groups, they aren't necessarily acting in line with. There's no official structure of leadership often. But even if there is, women don't feel obliged to follow that particular form of leadership. They want to. They follow what they think is God's voice within themselves, you know, within their own conscience and within their own belief system. So it makes them radical. It makes them insist on the importance of their own voice. It makes them insist on the importance of their own experience. That's another crucial aspect of this. Because God revealing his truth to them can take the form of the way their life has unfolded, the way things have gone for them. That's their. They look back on their life and they see God's hand in it. They see God, you know, acting in a certain way. This is the perspective from which they understand everything that happens. And so therefore, their lives, their experiences, things that may otherwise have seemed completely mundane or irrelevant or of no significance to anybody else suddenly become cosmically significant. Because they're all signs of God's hand at work. And that's why you find in these very early forms of autobiographical writing, you know, they're not writing because they want to make their own or because they think they're intrinsically interesting, but because they genuinely believe that God is at work in them individually. And so to show the story of their life is to show God's working more generally or, you know, to reveal God's hand in a wider sense. And so that's. That's why their lives, their voices, their beliefs come center stage in a way that they just was unthinkable within the wider society that people like this would have any kind of voice or that anyone should listen to this them. So that sense of directive and inspiration is absolutely at the heart of what makes these women radical. It's absolutely at the heart of why we have access to their lives and their writings. Without that sense, you know, they wouldn't have written what they've written. They wouldn't have said what they said. So that really is the driving force behind this writing.

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[Yana Byers]

So for me, one of the most enjoyable things about reading this book was meeting some religious women and hearing voices I've never heard before that I did not expect to hear from. So tell me about your sources.

[Naomi Baker]

The sources come from many different places. I completely agree with you. It's fantastic to hear these voices and to find them in the archive in a way that we just don't expect. I think perhaps some of the reasons that we haven't encountered these voices before is that you do have to know where to look. And often the voices have to be found in traces and they're distributed across a range of different types of documents. So some of the women in my book, although it is a minority of the women that I write about, we actually have nothing that they've written and it's only sources of people writing about them. And usually, or often in that case, it's hostile sources. So it's people writing about these women who are very disapproving of them. That's very clearly the case with Elizabeth Attaway, perhaps the first public preacher in 17th century England. There's nothing that we have access, we don't have any access to anything that she wrote. We'd only hear about her from very hostile accounts of her preaching because her preaching was so scandalizing. It caused such astonishment and dismay that people, her critics, did take to print to condemn her and to condemn what was happening. So in that example, we only have hostile accounts. And of course, that raises all kinds of issues about how much we can trust the accounts. We have to tread very carefully in what we take at face value, or we don't take it at face value. We have to read between the lines. But nevertheless, it does give us a glimpse because obviously they wouldn't be so scandalized if nothing had been happening. It gives us a glimpse of someone who is ruffling feathers, who is doing really outrageous things in the eyes of the wider society. Most of the women in my book, though, thankfully, have written their own accounts or about their own lives, or they've written prophecies or they've written sermons or that kind of, you know, those sorts of tracks. But sometimes writing their own diaries, in the case of Jane Laird, or of course, with Rose Thurgood, she's written her own autobiographical account, account of her life. So we have many texts from this era where women are writing themselves, and of course, that gives us a much better access to them. But even in those cases, it's one glimpse at one moment. Isn't it often, very often, we don't know what happened to them afterwards, you know, what ended up happening to them later. It's often very hard to find traces of them in the archive. When we get beyond their own writing, their writing is in the form of printed material. Many of these women did print work, which is one of the astonishing things. Many more women were publishing writing than we might expect from this era. In some cases, as in Rose Thurgood's example, it's only in a manuscript form, but many other women did publish their testimonies, talking about how they came to positions of true faith as they saw it, or they wrote their travel narratives describing their adventures all over the world, or they wrote theological tracts. So you can access most of those in printed form.

[Yana Byers]

Yeah, and really unexpected and wide variety of material with some depth. So let's just get in. Let's talk about a couple of them. How do you feel about talking. Tell me about Rose Thurgood, the woman with you. Open the book.

[Naomi Baker]

Yes, she's chapter one, for good reason, because I did my postdoctoral research on Rose Thurgood, and as I said earlier, she's the reason I'm actually at the University of Manchester, because of her manuscript. The manuscript of her conversion narrative is held in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. Manchester. And this is where I did my postdoctoral research so that I could work on that manuscript. It was discovered in an incredible story, really. A Cambridge academic came up to Manchester for a single day in the 90s, in the late 1990s, and he discovered this manuscript in. Well, he came. He accessed his manuscript in the library, which had a very nondescript title. But he discovered that within this manuscript there were two conversion narratives by women written in the 1630s, which is extremely early for this form of writing. And I was extremely lucky and privileged that he allowed me to work on this manuscript. He had many of the things that he was working on, so he allowed me to make the most of his find, if you like, and I was able to work on this manuscript for my postdoctoral research. So Rose Thurgood has written what we call a conversion narrative. For those who are not aware of what that means, it means an account of how she came to an authentic, subjectively experienced sense of faith. Obviously, everyone at this time in the 1630s, at least, is going to the, you know, is by law, attending church, is a part of the Protestant church in that legal sense. But that, to her, that's not the same thing as being a true Christian. She comes to this much more subjective, much more fervently held sense of conviction and faith, and that's what she terms her conversion. So she writes about how this happened. We became more familiar with this kind of conversion now, let's say from the 1650s onwards, especially in the 1650s, where there were several Volumes were published of these forms of testimony, of these forms of conversion narrative. But this is 1636. She's writing this account in 1636, so it's very, very early example, and it's in manuscript form. She's written it as a letter. It starts off as a letter to her mother, although quite quickly she starts saying, this is to her mother or her sisters or her friends or whoever is reading it. So she's obviously got a wider audience in mind and she writes about her experiences and her life and the struggles she's been having, extreme struggles, as it turns out, but then how God has intervened and how she's come to a sense of faith in all of this. This is already an incredible text because of how early it is, because it's written by a woman. But the really amazing thing about this document is that it was written by a woman who was incredibly poor. So Rose Thurgood was poor to the point of starvation, or she feared starvation. She writes in her account about lying in bed, hearing her four children crying for ill out of illness, but also out of hunger and fearing that they're not going to have enough food to survive. So this is the level of poverty that she's struggling with. She's living in Colchester. She says she has a bad husband. She says he sold his land and his living. So they've obviously lost the income for the family. They've lost all means of support. They only have her work to live on, essentially, not enough to even buy food, you know, not enough to survive. So she's struggling with extreme poverty. And even in the midst of all of that, she is able to write an account of her experiences and try to come to terms with them when she comes to terms, or she attempts to come to terms with this catastrophic fall into poverty in. Through believing that God is ultimately in control and that it's, you know, it's all going to work out in the end for her soul, as it were. You know, that this is all working to her spiritual benefit and that God is supporting her through it. But it's a very torturous process to get to that point. And she's very open and honest about the. The anguish that she's suffered, the, you know, the lack. Even to the point of thinking that God doesn't exist or that God is actively hostile towards her, expressing sentiments which are not easy for someone like this era, in this era to express, but she does express them. It's a very authentic, open, very raw account. That's one of the things I find really moving and also just so shocking about this document because you don't come across these authentic raw voices very often in 17th century writing, especially by women and especially from women of this social status. I do think this is a unique document, genuinely a unique document. Document, yeah. So they all, for all these reasons, because of the time that it was written, because of the way it was written, because of the person who's writing it. It's just an incredible text, it's an incredible document to work with. And that's why she opens the book, because I think she has to open the book for all those reasons. She's also the earliest woman that I write about, so she's actually in the 1630s, whereas most of the other women come a little bit later in the 1640s and 50s and onwards.

[Yana Byers]

You know, there are so many implications in her story for the personal nature of the way we think about religion, of, you know, what women are capable and the thought and like the education she's getting as someone who's terribly poor. Though not her whole life obviously, but you know, just ideas about how she thinks about herself. You know, this argument that the pre modern people perhaps didn't have an idea, a sense of self is just blown away by something like this, completely fell.

[Naomi Baker]

Out of the water by this. That's what you feel when you're reading it, that you're encountering this woman. And so the ways in which she expresses her anguish and her terror for her children. This is, you know, this is a woman with a very strong inner world and a very strong sense of self. But of course she is also framing her experiences through her particular theological beliefs. And she clearly has some unorthodox Protestant beliefs. She does not align fully with the mainstream Protestant teaching of the time. And that's why she's also radical in her position perspective. It seems as though she's part of this radical Puritan underground, as one historian has described it. This is the 1630s. It's obviously before the Civil War, it's before censorship has collapsed. No one can openly express dissent without extreme repercussions anyway. And so she is writing this document presumably to circulate amongst like minded people. But it was a very dangerous thing to be writing as she's aligned with these very radical, unorthodox figures who are spiritual influences upon her. You can see the traces of their influence in what she's writing. But as you say, the power of this is the authenticity of it. I mean, she's aligned with these different figures. She's positioned in Certain radical religious circles. But this is her account of her experiences, of her sense of guilt, obviously, massively misplaced sense of guilt with her own prophecy. Her husband has, from the way she writes here, her husband has led them into this position through. She says he's a bad husband. You know, he seems to have been living some kind of dissolute life. It's not clear exactly what he's been up to, but clearly no good. And, you know, he's been irresponsible and he's not supporting them. So if anyone's to blame, it's him. And yet she seems to initially at least blame herself. She thinks that God is punishing her for her sins. She thinks of all the ways in which she might have, you know, provoked this and brought this horrible state of being on the whole family. But then as she's writing, this is what's so fascinating. As she's writing, she works herself around to a different way of thinking about her experiences. And so you can see her thinking process, you can almost see that taking place in the act of writing. And you can see how the act of writing is assisting her in reframing what's happened. And I mean, don't mean to generalise it. She's come to terms with it. I don't know that she's totally come to terms with it, but she does work herself towards. Towards a more accepting position or at least a more spiritually. She's more spiritually at peace. At least she doesn't blame herself. She sees other factors in play here.

[Yana Byers]

Right. And so this is a very kind of personal story we get from her, from Rose Thurgood. But I mean, we have also. We've got women doing all manner of things. Right. So we have this group of women you talk about next who prophesied. So is there a particularly compelling figure you'd like to talk about from this section?

[Naomi Baker]

Oh, they're all compelling in my mind, but Anna Shrapnel, of course, she's probably the most famous woman in the book in terms of women who are. People who work on the 17th century may be more familiar with her than some of the other names. Anna Shrapnel is a prophet who speaks out very strongly against Cromwell in the 1650s and 1654 in particular. She falls into a trance and she speaks out very publicly, but she takes to her bed, she stops eating and she's in a trance like state. But this is not a private occurrence. This takes place in public and people come to visit her in this. In this chamber. Where she's. She's laid. And she speaks prophetic ecstatic speeches which are very clearly and directly aimed at Cromwell, against Cromwell, because she's aligned with the radical groups known as the Fifth Monarchist, the radical group who very strongly criticized Cromwell when he became Lord Protector. And they clearly saw him as standing in the way of the actual achievement of God's kingdom on earth. And so she's very, very stridently critical of him, speaks out very strongly against him. This is a young woman who is taking on the highest figures of the state from this prophetic position, from this apparently weak position of lying in bed and falling into a trance. But there's nothing weak about Anna Chapman, though she's speaking very strong and very obviously political. Political critique of the government of her day, which is something that no one should do lightly at this time, obviously, as we know. But she's totally unafraid. And then she travels. It's more than just one occasion. Then she travels off to Cornwall. She's accused of being a witch. She continues to speak on behalf of God as she sees it, continues to stand by her critique of Cromwell, is arrested, is put on trial, is accused of being a witch, is accused of all kinds of things. He's thrown into Bridewell in London, in the end, has to go in this horrible, stinking cell with rats running under the bed at night. All of this just because she has spoken what she sees as God's revelation to her. What she sees is the truth. But she sticks by her guns and she writes in this incredibly visionary style. It's strange in a certain way, but it's powerful and it's hypnotic and it's very sensuous, actually. She has a very sensuous sense of the supernatural world sort of infusing the physical world. And it culminates in this really, I think, beautiful and hypnotic and powerful form of visionary writing.

[Yana Byers]

You know, the sensual thing really brings to mind there's a tradition in religious writings of religious women who have, you know, a connection with God that is, if not in place of like, supersedes or runs alongside kind of traditional religious positions. And so they have. They fall into trance, they have, like, these mystical visions, and they're very sensual and they're very kind of leaning into female tropes and ideas about what a woman can say. And so, you know, in some ways this follows this tradition, but she also really isn't. She is far apart from a medieval mystic. Right.

[Naomi Baker]

It's so interesting because there are these really clear points of connection and at the Same time, as you say, huge departures. And I think that's what's so fascinating about Anna Chapman and the other female prophets like her, because she wasn't alone, totally alone in this. They are building on, as you say, essentially Catholic traditions. Going back into European Catholic traditions is that idea of the miraculous maid which had taken hold at the beginning of the 17th century. And even earlier than that too, going way back, as you say, to the medieval mystics. This idea of women being directly inspired, falling into these ecstatic states and then speaking in some form of kind of direct speech, speaking on behalf of God. And she's clearly following in that tradition. But. But as you say, also very much not. I mean her speech and her writing is so clearly political. I mean, there are other examples earlier in earlier Tudor times of women doing similar things, speaking out against Henry VIII in a very political way, you know, in the similar. From a similar prophetic position and adopting a similar kind of trance like state. So Anna Chapman is not completely alone in it, but the way in which she directs it towards the government of her moment and the way in which she keeps going with this message and the public nature of it and the way that it's brought into press, you know, printed almost immediately as soon as it's been spoken. There are very distinctively 17th century aspects to this. And also, as you say, the sensual nature of it is there, but it's not eroticized in the same way that it was in medieval mystical writing. I mean, she does see herself as, you know, it's a very intense relationship with God, but it isn't framed in quite those terms. And it is much more outward looking and it is. Is very socially and politically focused.

[Yana Byers]

Yeah, There's a fabulous image in the book of this engraving that has Hannah trapnell in this 17th century costume. That is a kid growing up in the U.S. that's what we put on in. We dressed up like this in November for the pilgrims to celebrate Thanksgiving. Like it's this very. It's a. Very recognizable to American children as a 17th century garb, even if we wouldn't have known how to make sense of that. But there's this horned winged creature behind that's clearly the devil. And I think the caption is a Quaker and pretend prophetess.

[Naomi Baker]

Exactly. She wasn't a Quaker. This, these are the, this is what we think. It's a kind of window into the way we have to deal with the sources which continually misrepresent these women, obviously demonize them literally. In this case, you've got A literal demon or satanic figure there. Clearly playing on the idea that she's a witch, that she's possessed, but also the misrepresentation of her religious affiliation and then pretended. Proper for Tess. Exactly. I have to say critics have not done much better with Anna Chapman. Although many critics write about her in not dissimilar terms, as though she's very kind of. Some people cast her as a kind of neurotic figure. Some people have cast her as very deliberately manipulative and sort of scheming. I don't read Alan Chaplin in either of those ways. I think she's sincere, I think she's taking part in this well known tradition, but she is sincerely speaking what she believes to be God's truth. And I think you have to take this writing on its own terms to try and make some sense of it. And that's. That picture is an example of how she's never been taken on her own terms. She's been mislabeled, she's been misidentified and obviously demonized. So it's time for her to have her own renaissance, I think.

[Yana Byers]

I love that. This is a really important point about writing about women in particular. All of our subjects, for certain, like when you're an historian or, you know, you do historical research, you have to, you have to respect this. But this we can't. We have to let go of like this modern cynicism about religion and these ideas of, you know, what, what the preachers we see on TV are like is this is not something that you can take back to the 17th century. You have to trust your subjects.

[Naomi Baker]

Exactly. Yeah. So that's partly why I was trying to show in the book that religion operates in very complex ways. Obviously on one level, these women are fighting against what we can call the patriarchy and clearly the religious institutions that they were departing from or even remained part of. Even within their own sectarian groups, there are forms of patriarchal oppression and hierarchy which are they do fight against and they do resist. But on the other hand, it's their very strongly held belief which enables them to do that. So, you know, religion is not one way of understanding this. Religion needs to be interpreted much more specifically. If you're talking about their own theological convictions, that's what leads them to raise their voices. You know, that's what leads them to resist forms of oppression. So I think we need to, as you say, be a little bit less sneering about this and try and just take it more on its own terms and try and work out what's actually happening here. Yeah, very much so.

[Yana Byers]

Let's talk about Hester Biddle, who for. Who features in the she preachers. She's another very well known figure in this era.

[Naomi Baker]

Yeah. Yes. And she was a preacher. She is a Quaker, unlike Anna Shapnel, and she was a Quaker preacher for many, many decades. So some of the women in the book had these kind of moments of not exactly glory, but, you know, fame or notoriety. But Hester Biddle is one of the very different kettle of fish. She's someone who preaches and keeps going with this for decades, despite the fact that she's imprisoned at least 14 times, one of the most heavily abused. I mean, all the women face huge backlash, a huge backlash for speaking out. Sometimes even within their own communities, they face a backlash, but definitely from the wider community. But in Hester Biddle's case, she's. She's imprisoned 14 times, she is physically abused. There's accounts of her being punched in the face, put on trial on numerous occasions, accused of all kinds of things, slurred in all kinds of ways. Because she is not only a very outspoken Quaker preacher, which in itself is horrifying and unnatural in the eyes of many in society, including judges, but she also has a very, very strong and passionately articulated sense of social justice. So she tends to, she's an interesting character. She tends to take aim not at individuals but at whole cities, which makes her seem quite, it's a unique take on. It makes it seem like an Old Testament prophet. You know, she speaks to the whole of London instead of identifying individuals that she's particularly attacking. But she'll write tracks, you know, woe to the city of London or woe to the city of Oxford. And it's the whole city. She's taking aim at the whole of the social system, the society that she's part of. She sees people coming out of their wealthy London homes, literally stepping over the poor on the pavements of London, seeing people who are begging for food and just being indifferent to them. And she's really extremely angry about this state of affairs, particularly when it's done by so called Christians who she likes to take aim at for not having any true faith. And she speaks up very passionately on behalf of the poor, the disinherited, the homeless. And she identifies Quakers who are also being heavily persecuted in her time with those other figures. So she's a very angry, very vocal woman who speaks out against social systems as well as kind of religious structures. And for all those reasons, she's Heavily abused and persecuted, but she doesn't ever stop. She travels and she keeps going wherever her conscience calls her. Even when the Quakers themselves, they were one of the most radical groups of this era, even they get a bit fed up with her at times. I think she's pushing things a little too far. But she will always answer to her own conscience. She's a classic example of a woman who's not going to be ruled by anyone. She doesn't ask permission, really. She just does what she thinks God is telling her to do and she takes the consequences for that. Yeah.

[Yana Byers]

Which are severe. Which, you know, brings us to say Catherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers, who also have a very tough road.

[Naomi Baker]

Yes, two Quaker women who set out because they believe God has told them to testify to the light of God within. That's, of course, the Quaker belief that God's light is within everyone and it makes this very global vision. They have a sense that God has revealed his truth to everyone on earth, and so they have a very strong sense of wanting to travel around the whole of the globe and encounter the God's light everywhere in the globe. And the Quakers were particularly global in their approach. And so the Catherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers, both women who were not young for their time, one was in her 40s, one was in her 50s, take off. And what they both got husbands and children at home. They leave the children at home with their husbands, off they go on the boat and they end up in Malta. They're only meant to be stopping off briefly in Malta, but the Roman Inquisition has a seat in Malta at this time and they're quickly arrested because they're openly on the streets of Malta preaching the Quaker truth. They're arrested, they're throwing in an Inquisition cell. Inquisition cell. And that's one of the only accounts we have from this time, is their account of what it's like to live in the cell in the Roman Inquisition. So it's an incredible text, just from a historical perspective of the describing in vivid detail the quite terrifying experience of being locked in one of these stiflingly hot cells. The cells, amazingly enough, are still there in the Inquisitor's palace in Malta. So you can see the actual cells where they were held, just these bare stone wall cells with tiny little windows, clearly. And they describe how hot they are, how they can hardly breathe. And they keep being told that they're going to be taken and be tortured, they're going to be executed, they keep being threatened with that. So there's a lot of psychological torture going on. And the Roman Inquisition clearly is trying to get them to convert to Roman Catholicism, but they are up against the two very strong willed Quaker women who are totally unafraid of what they're facing. I mean, they just say, okay, you know, do your worst. Nothing is going to make us change our mind about what we believe to be the truth. And so in the end, after more than three years of this, they are actually released, which I think, I think they just wore down the Inquisition because Inquisition could not get any purchase on them. No matter how much you tried to terrify them, they just were never terrified and they were just, we're not going to shift. And so in the end they were released. But they're. Their account of this horrific, but in their own eyes, triumphant, spiritually triumphant experience is smuggled back to England and is published while they're still in prison. So it's a live document of their experiences. That's one of the incredible things about it. So it's like an adventure story. It's really quite mind blowing. But in the end they do return to England, but then they just continue as before, traveling again, being in prison, you know, they don't, they don't take it easy after that point at all. So they continue to testify to what they see as the truth, rampant to the point that they die. So they're another example of women who are driven by a very powerful sense of conviction.

[Yana Byers]

Also these women who, who seem, none of these women, or it seems almost very few of these women are not already accustomed to hardship, abuse, mistreatment, largely from the men in their lives or just the world around them. I'm thinking about, you know, Anna Wentworth who has this tragic story, absolutely horrific.

[Naomi Baker]

And also, as you were saying earlier, completely unexpected for a 17th century account. You do not expect to find a detailed account of a woman talking about domestic abuse in 17th century England. We think this is a modern phenomena, don't we, that women are able to speak out now and confront their abuses. Well, Anne Wentworth did this in the 1670s. Yes. She identifies her husband who is a pillar of the community, so called, you know, appears to be leading member of a Baptist community that they're both part of. With many friends. She talks about how charming he is and how everyone likes him and everyone respects him and only she knows the truth about him, which is that he's been abusing her for 20 years by that point. So the entirety of their marriage, she says there's been physical and mental, clearly emotional abuse going on. And so in the end, she almost dies. She becomes ill and almost dies, and then she recovers. And she believes that God has saved her life so that she can tell the truth. That's how she understands what happens next. You know, she thinks she's being obedient to God, to God's command to speak the truth, which involves identifying her husband as a violent bully, which she does in no uncertain terms as she publishes numerous. Well, not numerous, but full accounts, which is quite a lot of text in a very short space of time. Full published texts identifying his abuse, identifying him as a hypocrite, as she sees it, as a. As a corrupt figure, not someone who should be seen as an upstanding member of the community. Clearly, this does not go down well with her husband, obviously enough, but also with the wider Baptist community of which she's a part, whether she was a part, and she's excommunicated from that community. She speaks out against this man that they all side with, that they end up sheltering, and they take his side, they believe him, and they denounce her. And so she's cast out of her own community. This is an example of how not all of the women in the book are shielded and protected by their sectarian context. Some of them have to really go out against. Against the oppression within that community itself. She does seem to have a few friends around her, at least for a while, who stand by her. So she's not totally alone, but she's. You know, she's cast out of her community. But never does she seem to doubt the decision, even though it's had huge consequences for her. I mean, he literally shuts her out of the house at one point, takes away the key, sells away. Sells all her furniture. Takes away all means of survival, really. I mean, of course, there's no safety net, obvious safety net for her in the form of the welfare state at this point. You know, she's out on her own, and she's. That's really, really dangerous situation for her to be in. The amazing thing is, I mean, obviously she knew. I mean, she says openly that she knew this would be the consequence. She knew that they would side with her husband. But it was more important to her that the truth was known. Even if people chose not to believe it or not to side with her, that wasn't so much the goal. It was just the principle of speaking the truth and letting her testimony be out there. And so she stands by what she's done and in her own eyes, at the end of the accounts that we have she has a happy ending in the sense that she does manage to get back into her house by what she sees as a miraculous series of events. She ends up back in her house and she carries on writing. So she thinks in the end it has all come good. But I wish we knew what happened next. You know, it's. It's very hard for us to know what ultimately happened. And I don't think he would have gone away quite that easily. Unfortunately, she was brave enough to face those consequences again, as you say, severe consequences.

[Yana Byers]

Yeah, I can't imagine he just let it go. Although, I mean, who can? I mean, her, her community maybe finally after this wild mistreatment, maybe recognizes that maybe he's not a great guy.

[Naomi Baker]

Let's hope so. But I don't, you know, you just don't know, do you? Didn't seem to be heading that way at the point that she was writing.

[Yana Byers]

No, not at all. I mean, so I think, like, that is probably a nice place to bring this conversation to a close. So, you know, I'm trying to figure out some of, like, my, my answers about, you know, my questions about these women. Like, like what's happening? Are women allowed to speak? Are they speaking directly with God? Like, what's my takeaway from this study?

[Naomi Baker]

That's an interesting question, isn't it? What's the significance? Also what's the lasting significance of their voices? It might be interesting to encounter them, but what's the actual significance of this? Yes. In terms of your question about, you know, what are they actually hearing from God? Of course we can't ever answer those questions. We can just take them on their own terms and talk about the way in which their sense of that drives them and motivates them and shapes their writing. And that's all we can do, isn't it? But in terms of their lasting legacy, I think it's more powerful and more long lasting than it might appear to be. Obviously they've been largely erased from the official historical record, which is why they need to be known about and we need to reverse that erasure. But nevertheless, their testimony, the fact that they did do these things, I really do believe that that has had power that's been, had a lasting impact. You know, the genie was out of the buckle in some senses. Not just in terms of these particular women that I write to write, but the radical groups as a whole. They lived and behaved in ways which were totally confronting to ideas of social hierarchy, to ideas of injustice as they saw it anyway. And they confronted those forms of oppression they did speak out openly and bravely. And of course, the lid can. You know, society can try and put the lid back on those voices or can try and silence those voices, but once they've been spoken, they are there in the record, and they are there for us to rediscover. And I think they have had a legacy inspiring later movements. They may not have a direct line to later movements such as feminism, but the influence is there in the sense that these are women who are. Have. Who have confronted similar issues, similar battles, have undertaken similar battles, albeit framed in different terms. And I think that the fact that they existed and they spoke inevitably has had a lasting impact, but it is certainly the case that they need to be better known. We need to know more about them because it raises all kinds of questions about our own legacy, our own history, the legacy of our own ideas, and also where our ideas have come from, the inheritance that we have as feminists, as women who want to discover our own voices. Maybe, you know, who has tried to do this in previous centuries. How has that happened? I think it's important to connect historically with the way this has happened in previous contexts, in previous places, and think about our own voice as part of this long tradition. Even if there's not a clear direct line and even if this has been shrouded in silence, these women were there and they have undertaken similar. So I think we can take some inspiration from that. Yeah, yeah.

[Yana Byers]

And I think. I mean, it's important, I think, to remember that a lot of their erasure is not about their impact so much as the way people wrote about the past 100 years ago.

[Naomi Baker]

Exactly, exactly. Yes. That's so true.

[Yana Byers]

Yeah. This is very much. All right, one more question. What are you working on now?

[Naomi Baker]

That's a very good question. I'm working on some spinoffs from the book. I mean, the book, because it's quite. It looks. Looked at more than 12 radical women, and I wanted to cover a wide range of women, but of course, I wasn't able to go into enough depth about each of them. In this particular book that I would like to, I uncovered all kinds of things which I want to investigate further. So I'm investigating some of the more specific ideas, particularly the theological ideas and the way that women interpret apocalyptic writing. I'm doing a little bit more work into that and some more in depth research. So I'm still working on this material just in a slightly, Slightly different and maybe slightly deeper direction in relation to particular issues. But I don't want to let these women go just yet. So. So I'm staying with them for the time being.

[Yana Byers]

All right. Fantastic. Naomi Baker, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about Voices of Thunder, radical religious women of the 17th century. There is a link to purchase it on our website, and I hope our listeners will check it out. It is a beautiful, fascinating and really fun book. I mean, yeah, I loved it. It was super fun to read. Super interesting. I was sad a few times because it's the past and it was it's a sad country. But anyway, thank you very much for joining me today.

[Naomi Baker]

Thank you so much for having me on.