Not Just the Tudors – "Voices of Thunder: Radical Women of the 17th Century"
Host: Professor Suzannah Lipscomb
Guest: Dr. Naomi Baker (author, Voices of Thunder)
Date: October 13, 2025
Episode Overview
This episode centers on the often-overlooked stories of radical women in 17th-century England, exploring the ways in which they challenged religious, social, and political orthodoxies. Professor Suzannah Lipscomb welcomes Dr. Naomi Baker, whose new book Voices of Thunder investigates women who, through prophecy, preaching, pamphleteering, and public defiance, pushed against the limits imposed on their gender and social standing—often at great personal cost. The conversation highlights not only their faith and conviction but also their enduring relevance to contemporary struggles for women’s voices to be heard.
Key Discussion Points and Insights
The Religious and Political Landscape of 17th-Century England
Emphasis on Individual Conscience and Social Upheaval
- The English Reformation introduced an emphasis on individual conscience and a personal relationship with God, bypassing traditional ecclesiastical and social hierarchies.
- This new spiritual autonomy prompted radical questioning and the emergence of sects like Seekers, Ranters, Levellers, Baptists, and Quakers, which—though not fully egalitarian—sometimes allowed for increased female participation.
“The Protestant Christian stands alone before God… So just as an aspect of the new theology… you get people questioning, asking where they personally stand, what they personally believe to be God’s truth.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 04:56)
Limits and Backlash
- Radical sects weren’t fully egalitarian; many, like the Baptists, prohibited women from preaching in formal contexts.
- Women who spoke out risked legal prosecution, imprisonment, accusations of witchcraft, and severe ostracism.
“They were very often accused of being witches, they were very often accused of being vagabonds… All those kinds of laws were brought out to silence them, to shut them up, to send them back home.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 08:35)
Notable Women and Unique Historical Documents
Rose Thurgood: Voice from the Margins
- An extraordinary early conversion narrative (1636-7), found in a Manchester manuscript.
- Thurgood, from desperate poverty, recounts spiritual struggle and embraces faith as solace and redefinition of her life circumstances.
“We hardly ever come across a woman from this level of society writing her stories, talking about her experiences. It genuinely is a unique document.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 11:54)
- Her narrative is personal, therapeutic, and biblical in inspiration, while also reflecting the new Protestant push for literacy.
- Despite ongoing poverty, her story is only a fleeting archival trace—one of many such “lost voices.”
On Social Status and Women’s Experiences
- Differences in education and geography could be outweighed by religious conviction.
“...their theological beliefs, their faith, overrides everything else. The level of fervency of their faith and commitment… overrides the other differences between them.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 17:55)
Prophecy, Publishing, and the Apocalyptic Age
Prophecy as Political Power
- Prophecy was not just about foretelling but about transmitting God’s insight for the present; it was highly political.
- The collapse of censorship in the 1640s allowed rapid publication and fame for both men and women making radical claims.
“Someone could become famous for an outburst in public and then a few weeks… their work would be in print and would be circulating.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 21:27)
Risks for Female Prophets
- Speaking out, especially against patriarchal structures, drew imprisonment (e.g., Hester Biddle imprisoned 14 times), abuse, slurs, and social isolation.
“Most of the women in my book were imprisoned… Most of those imprisonments were purely for speaking out.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 21:59)
The Intertwining of Spiritual and Social Justice
Hester Biddle and Social Critique
- Biddle, a Quaker, linked religious vision with a cry for social justice. Distressed by poverty and inequality in London, she denounced the city’s elite.
“To her mind, the kingdom of God coming is the writing of this injustice… Her spiritual vision is totally inextricable from her vision for social justice.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 24:09)
The Physical and the Spiritual – Miraculous Maids
- Some women prophets (like Anna Trapnell and Sarah White) engaged in extreme fasting and trances, part of a broader European tradition of “miraculous maids.”
“I see it as a very dramatic pose… it was done in this very particular way… their body becomes a thing that everyone’s looking at.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 29:30)
- Such public performances of prophecy were both authentic spiritual acts and strategic, gendered ways to capture attention.
Female Global Evangelists: Unlikely Travelers
Mary Fisher and the Sultan
- Yorkshire maidservant Fisher traveled through England, America, Barbados, and even to the Ottoman Sultan—to whom she bore witness.
- Her aim was not conversion but to demonstrate that “the light of God was within every single person,” challenging Euro-Christian parochialism.
“She comes back to England triumphant… more that she wanted to prove that the light of God was within the Sultan, just like it was within her and within everyone else…” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 33:31)
Catherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers
- Quaker women imprisoned for three years by the Inquisition in Malta, resisting all pressure to convert and eventually released—extraordinary for the time.
“Even the Inquisition was worn down by these women and let them go in the end.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 38:33)
Radical Interpretations and Personal Justice
Apocalyptic Hermeneutics
- Many women appropriated apocalyptic biblical texts like Revelation, reinterpreting them metaphorically and as a personal or immediate struggle between good and evil.
“It becomes a much more internalized, metaphorical symbolic discourse which they think is unfolding in the here and now.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 42:54)
Anne Wentworth: Private Suffering, Public Battle
- Survivor of decades-long spousal abuse, Wentworth used writing and print to expose her husband’s cruelty and the hypocrisy of her religious community, framing it as a biblical and apocalyptic struggle.
“She absolutely stands her ground… in all of that… she frames this as an apocalyptic battle.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 45:50)
The Enduring Significance of 17th-century Women's Voices
- Women were speaking out centuries ago on issues—violence, exclusion, interpretation of scripture—that still resonate.
“Women have been fighting these battles for hundreds of years… The female voice was not invented in the 1960s.” (Dr. Naomi Baker, 49:04)
- The progress marked by, for example, the appointment of the first female Archbishop of Canterbury is at once cause for celebration and reflection on the slowness of social change.
Notable Quotes
-
On the liberating—yet dangerous—potential of radical faith:
“You can’t say to anybody, no matter what their sex, no matter what their social status… that what they’re saying is not valid, because they can claim that it’s God who’s told them the truth.”
(Dr. Naomi Baker, 06:05) -
On societal resistance to women’s voices:
“The backlash against the women within those groups who were seen to be undermining essentially patriarchal order… was severe.”
(Dr. Naomi Baker, 08:00) -
On the importance of historical perspective:
“These things… we think of as recent battles, but actually women have been fighting these battles for hundreds of years.”
(Dr. Naomi Baker, 49:28)
Key Segments and Timestamps
- Setting the scene: Religious landscape and individual conscience: 04:42-07:05
- Rose Thurgood’s narrative and the Protestant literacy push: 09:15-13:06
- Social status and faith as an equalizer: 17:42-19:14
- Prophecy and political turbulence: 19:14-21:17
- Risks facing radical women: 21:53-23:50
- Justice and the spiritual-political connection: 23:50-26:19
- Miraculous maids and physical performance of prophecy: 28:25-32:06
- Global evangelists and remarkable travels: 33:21-40:53
- Radical biblical interpretation and apocalyptic struggle: 42:33-48:45
- Reflecting on women's voices, then and now: 48:45-51:24
Conclusion
In this engrossing discussion, Professor Lipscomb and Dr. Baker draw a vivid portrait of 17th-century women who, armed with individual conviction and new religious freedoms, became prophets, preachers, and pamphleteers. Their struggles against poverty, patriarchal authority, and communal ostracism illuminate both the power and the peril of claiming a voice in a hostile world—a story that still echoes today. Voices of Thunder, and indeed this episode, demand that we reconsider both the past and the persistent silencing of female voices across history.