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Not Just the Tudors
Voices of Thunder: Radical Women of the 17th Century
00:46:58
How radical women of the English Revolution reshaped faith, gender, and political power
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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit with a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:32]
Jacob Goldstein
This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive and when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting. All linked and talking to each other. Check out odoo@o d o o.com that's o d o o.com Are you a.
- [01:17]
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- [02:07]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the tutors. Sometimes history surprises us by asking the wrong kind of questions. If you were a woman in the 17th century, for example, people didn't ask what you believed or what you thought God was saying to you. They asked instead if you were being obedient to your husband, to your father, to your king, or to the church. And yet in the middle of the Civil war and revolution, there were women who pointed towards the right sort of question and answered not with silence or submission, but with prophecy, pamphlets and preaching. Take Catherine Chidley. She insisted that no magistrate, no minister, and certainly no husband could rule a person's conscience that was God's alone. It was a dangerous claim, but also a liberating one. And it opened the door for women across the country to step into spaces that that had never before been open to them. This was an age of radical religion seekers. Ranters, Levellers, Baptists, Quakers. Sects that unsettled the old order and often gave women more of a voice than anywhere else in society. And those voices could be loud. Elizabeth Paul spoke out against executing the king. Sarah White became famous for her ecstatic visions and miraculous fasting. Others traveled across oceans and confronting priests, magistrates, even sultans. What unites these women is not only their boldness, but their conviction that God's truth could come to and through them. Whether they were poor, rich, young, old, educated or not, they unsettled the patriarchy, defied expectations and reimagined what faith could look like. Joining me is Dr. Naomi Baker, whose latest book, Voices of Thunder, explores the radical 17th century women who stood up to power and made themselves heard. I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and this is not just the Tudors from history hit. Dr. Baker, welcome to the podcast.
- [04:41]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Thank you so much for having me on.
- [04:43]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Can you start by giving us a bit of an impression of the religious and political landscape of 17th century England and why we see the birth of so many new Protestant sects?
- [04:57]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Well, this is a time, as you've said in your introduction, when there was a huge emphasis on the individual conscience. So the Reformation has swept through Europe in the 16th century, of course, and come to England as well. And this has unleashed a whole new approach to faith within the Church of England on English shores. And there's a huge emphasis on the individual conscience as part of that. So the Protestant Christian stands alone before God. They relate to God directly. If their relationship with God is not mediated through a priest or through an institution in the same way that it was under Roman Catholicism. And so, just as an aspect of the new theology of the new emphasis on an individual relationship with God, you get people questioning, asking where they personally stand, what they personally believe to be God's truth, and what they personally think God has said to them. And I do think that emphasis on the individual conscience, on individual accountability to God, it was really at the heart of a lot of new Ways of thinking and the ways of acting, including the ones that we see in the women of this era.
- [05:54]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I suppose that sense that actually it's about the individual conscience, the personal direct communication with God has the potential to challenge existing religious and social hierarchies.
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Dr. Naomi Baker
It's a hugely dangerous idea. I mean, it comes down to very subjective conviction of your belief of what you believe to be true, of what you believe God has said to you. And of course, that is a powerful idea. And it's a very potentially socially leveling idea. Especially when you emphasize the fact, as the women in my book do so strongly, that God treats everyone equally, that God is just as likely to speak to someone who is, in society's eyes, unworthy or not of a high social status. In fact, God may be more likely to speak to those people. It therefore has an implicitly levelling effect because God's truth is being revealed in ways that don't respect the hierarchies of the social order. And therefore you can't say to anybody, no matter what their sex, no matter what their social status, you can't say to them that what they're saying is not valid or is not worthy, because they can claim that it's God who's told them the truth and they're only speaking on behalf of God. These ideas of the individual conscience, of being true to your conscience above all, do have a very powerful effect in this era. And it does have a liberating effect to some extent at least.
- [07:05]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And for these radical groups do we see women playing a role. And how is this viewed by society at the time?
- [07:15]
Dr. Naomi Baker
It's open to debate. And it's definitely worth emphasizing that women did not operate as fully equal citizens alongside men. Of course, at no level of 17th century society did women operate as fully equal citizens. And that, unfortunately, is reflected in the sectarian groups I discuss in the book. I wouldn't say that the female members of those groups are operating in a fully equal way with the men. Many of the groups, for example, the Baptists, are radical in all kinds of ways, but not radical in the sense that they still did not allow women to preach in a formal capacity in their meetings. They held onto certain lines in the Bible which they thought was teaching that women shouldn't speak in church. So there were still restrictions in place and women were not operating fully equally. And yet there were individuals within those groups, within the country as a whole, who held fast to this idea of spiritual equality and really pushed against those restrictions. So it wasn't a case of all the restrictions being lifted by any means, not even within these radical sectarian groups. But it was a case of ideas being unleashed with some individuals really latched onto and really took to their fullest extent. The backlash against them was severe. The backlash against the sex as a whole. You know, they were questioning ideas of society which most people cherished, ideas of hierarchy, ideas of order. And that was very, very threatening. And there was a huge backlash against all the sectarian groups and specifically against the women within those groups who were seen to be undermining essentially patriarchal order, which they were impersonally, at least just through the fact of standing up and speaking out as spiritual equals with men that was hugely threatening to patriarchal structures. So they were very often accused of being witches, they were very often accused of being vagabonds. Any law that could be thrown at them was thrown at them. If they traveled to speak elsewhere, for example, they would be arrested and thrown into prison as vagabonds. All those kinds of laws were brought out to silence them, to shut them up, to send them back home.
- [09:04]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Let's talk about some of the specific examples of women that you have in this book. Let's start with your first chapter, which examines a really remarkable document.
- [09:16]
Dr. Naomi Baker
This document is incredible. It's a manuscript that's held in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. Jeremy Maule, the academic in Cambridge, came up just for a single day. That's part of how incredible this story is. He's only in Manchester for a day. He knew how to look at library catalogues there, and he was looking through the catalogue and he found this very interesting or potentially interesting manuscript. And within it were these. It's actually not just one, but two narratives written by women in this manuscript, which contains eight documents overall, it's very blandly titled English manuscript 875. So there's nothing given away in the title of the manuscript, but within it, it has these incredible documents copied into the volume in around 1637 or 8, around then, and Rose Thurgos is one of them. It is a conversion narrative. It's essentially her account of how she came to what she sees as true faith. And she wrote it a year before it was written into the volume. So she wrote it around 1636-7. Now, these conversion narratives became very much more popular in the 1650s amongst these radical Protestant groups, where to join an independent church, to join an independent congregation, you would have to give your testimony. That would be the phrasing, where you would stand up before the congregation and tell that congregation how you became a Christian, how you came to a true faith in God, and therefore why you were worthy to be admitted to the congregation. That happens a lot in the 1650s, and collections begin to be published in the 1650s. But this is 1636 and it's in a manuscript form, so it's an extremely early example of an English conversion narrative. It's one of the things that's really fascinating about it. It begins as a letter to her mother, but it's clearly written for a much wider audience because she begins addressing her mother later on, she talks about her sisters or her friends or whoever is reading this document. She clearly has a wider audience in mind. There was a whole network in the 1630s, a manuscript network of texts circulating amongst radicals, amongst what one historian has called the Puritan underground, because obviously 1630s, this is before Civil War time, people couldn't openly dissent without extreme repercussions. So it's very dangerous territory that she's on to be questioning mainstream Protestant teaching. She's obviously written a document to circulate amongst like minded people, perhaps talking about how she came to be converted. The really incredible thing about this document, I've already said some exciting things about it, but Rose Thurgood was incredibly poor. She was poor to the point of starvation. She genuinely was terrified that she and her four children were going to starve to death. And she writes in detail, in really terrifying detail about the experience of lying on her bed, hearing her children crying. They're ill and they're starving and she's absolutely terrified that they are going to starve to death. Now we just do not have voices like this that have survived from the 17th century, or we do now. We have Rose circles, but 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. So it's incredible for all of these reasons, and it was an incredible find and I was hugely privileged to be able to work on it for my postdoctoral work.
- [12:12]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I mean, that is incredible. I suppose one of the reasons we don't have this sort of document up until this point is because so few women who were of that level of society could read and write. But one of the things about the new Protestant faith is that it presses the importance of literacy, being able to read your Bible. And therefore a woman like Rose Thurgood could write.
- [12:35]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Yes. And she speaks about the practice of going to listen to sermons, or Puritan lectures, as they were called, often sermons that were given outside of mainstream churches in the midweek and a midweek setting somewhere the people would go and listen to this sermon, and they would go home and recite the sermon from memory. So even that's kind of the oral culture rather than the reading culture. But nevertheless, there's emphasis on learning, on remembering, on understanding what's being taught to you. And then, of course, as you say, reading the Bible for yourself and discussing it in small groups, all of these practices drastically encourage literacy amongst women as well as men.
- [13:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And by the time of the 1650s, this starts to become, as I understand it, this is a distant memory. But from my reading, there's sort of a kind of quality about conversion narratives, you know, an expected set of conventions. Do we have that in this, or is it just too early for that?
- [13:23]
Dr. Naomi Baker
That's a very interesting question. It's written, as I say, it begins as a letter. So it begins as a very informal and very personal document. Although, as I say, I think she has a wider audience in mind. She's clearly not conforming deliberately to any kind of model that's been given to her. It nevertheless copies biblical models of conversion to some extent. She talks about this dramatic moment where God suddenly reveals his truth to her, and it's got echoes of Paul on the road to Damascus, clearly taken from the Bible. So to the extent that conversion narratives imitate biblical models, she's so immersed in the Bible, so many biblical verses are kind of woven into her own style, into her own prose. So I would say she's very much imitating those models, but not ones that have been given to by any formal church setting.
- [14:04]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And how does she understand her poverty in the light of her faith?
- [14:08]
Dr. Naomi Baker
She really struggles with it. It's one of the really fascinating and poignant things about the document that she's clearly trying to come to terms with this catastrophic fall into poverty. She didn't begin life quite as poor as she ends up. At the time that she's writing, she says that she used to associate with people from the king's court. So that also may play into the fact that she has had a little more education than other women may have had of her social studies. But she has married someone. She doesn't name him, but she calls him a bad husband. And he has sold his land and his living is the way she puts it. But she frames it in the sense of him being a bad husband. Perhaps drinking was not living a responsible life in the way that she expected him to, at least. So she has fallen into poverty because of his actions. So she knows it's because of what her husband has done. And yet initially, she really does fear that this is God's punishment, and specifically to her, for her pride. And she struggles a lot with a sense of guilt, clearly a misplaced sense of guilt, for the poverty of the family. But as she's writing, I read this document as a kind of an attempt to come to terms with her poverty or to make sense of her poverty. And I would argue that her act of writing this narrative actually helps her to frame her experiences in a more positive way. And she begins to emphasize very strongly the biblical theme of God choosing the poor over the rich. And in fact, she stresses her so strongly that it becomes a theme in the narrative that the rich are being prepared for the day of. Of judgment. In other words, to be rich and wealthy is to be complacent and spiritually complacent above all. And to be poor almost becomes a virtuous choice that she's made or that is part of her spiritual virtue. And therefore she rescues herself from the sense of shame. She rescues herself from the sense of guilt that she has attached to her poverty. And she begins to present it, at least in this document, as something which is actually a blessing because it helps her to focus on the really important things, as in her spiritual life and her development of her virtuous self.
- [15:58]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So without taking away anything from the spiritual quality of what she has written, it's very interesting to see it as a kind of therapeutic exercise, working through some of this sense of shame in order to actually handle the emotional burden of being poor.
- [16:15]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Very much so, and especially because she's so anguished about the fate of her children. A lot of it is guilt towards their children and what experiences they're having, whether they're going to survive. That's why it's such a poignant document, because you see this woman struggling with the reality of her life, the extreme hardship of her life. And yes, as you say, I think the acts of writing the way I read her document very much could be framed in therapeutic terms. Of course, it's the theology, in some sense, that gives her the guilt in the first place, the idea that God has punished her. But nevertheless, she's able to reinterpret that and to impose a different interpretation of her experiences.
- [16:48]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And I suppose I fear that we know Rose Thurgood in this moment through this conversion narrative. But I imagine my listeners saying, but what becomes of her? Do we know, or do we lose her to history?
- [17:02]
Dr. Naomi Baker
I am so attached to Rose Thurgood. I would love to know what happened to her at the end of her document, I know for a fact she was still living in extreme poverty. She says right at the end of the document that her and her children have still got what she calls hard and hungry stomachs. So they're still actually haven't got enough food. But nevertheless she has achieved a sense of peace of mind and that's what she conveys in the document. And yes, I'm afraid there's no further trace of her in the archive. That's true of nearly all the women that I write about in the book, that these are momentary traces in the archives. Often when they write their own account, that's all we have. Sometimes there are a few little things around the edges, but hardly anything else to draw upon. So we can only speculate about what happened.
- [17:42]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Now, thinking about Rose's case, but also about the other women that you look at, how did you find that their experience differed depending on their social status or on their geographical location?
- [17:56]
Dr. Naomi Baker
That's a very interesting question. I would argue as a whole, this is obviously speaking in very general terms, but I really do think that their theological beliefs, their faith, overrides everything else. So there are some women have slightly higher social status in the book. Some of the Quaker women come from a slightly better educated background. Not all of them by any means. One of the Quaker women in my book is a maidservant, but there are women from some more educated backgrounds, such as Hester Biddle, who grew up in Oxford, moved to London, clearly has been relatively well educated, although by no means wealthy. But nevertheless, these women, Mary Fisher, who was the maidservant, and Hester Biddle, who was from a more well educated background, they're not particularly distinguishable in those terms. I think the level of fervency of their faith and commitment to the cause overrides the other differences between them. So I wouldn't say that geographical birthplace or social status is the key factor about any of these women in this position. It can be in different contexts, but in the context of these women rising from an intense position of individual conviction about their faith, that becomes the overriding factor that determines the way they write the subjects they're interested in, the way they present themselves and the way they conduct their lives, that's what's so powerful about the theological ideas in the book, that it has such a leveling effect and that even has a leveling effect between some of the women in the book. You know, it levels out those differences between them to some extent.
- [19:15]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Now there's a series of women who claim to be prophets in the 1640s and 1650s. So how can we connect this to the turbulent political situation in England at the time?
- [19:26]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Prophecy was an incredibly political genre. It may not seem obvious that that would be the case. I think we think of prophecy as predictions about the future. It doesn't really mean that in this era it can include that, definitely. But prophecy just means anything spoken that has been given to you by God. It just means that you're passing on the words of God. So it doesn't have to relate to the future. It can be an insight into the current events. It can be anything that you think God is saying. And I think most people living through the 1640s and 50s believe they were living well. I'm generalizing that most people believe this, but it was certainly a very widespread idea that they were living in the last days of history. This is by no means a new niche idea. At the time. It did seem as if the world was falling apart. They did feel like they were living at the end of history. And so they believed that God was on the move or that he was doing things that he had never done before in society. And so it wasn't a far fetched idea to think that God would be revealing his truth in new ways that people hadn't experienced before. And therefore it didn't make you a nutcase to say that you had a message from God. That was fairly widespread and it was by no means eccentric in and of itself. Of course, it depended what the message was, and it depended who was speaking it. And for very young women, some of these puppets were adolescent girls. That of course was very unusual and was very striking and confrontational to patriarchal society. But nevertheless, the idea that God was speaking or that God had messages or God had something to say was perhaps people were more open to that idea in that very turbulent era because it did seem as if God was doing new things in society. And people, generally speaking, wanted to know what God had to say about that. And so therefore people claiming to be speaking on behalf of God was not necessarily so far fetched.
- [21:04]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And I suppose we have to think about the relaxation of print censorship during the Civil War and thereafter, perhaps contributing to the idea of these radical prophetic ideas, especially those expressed by women, absolutely crucial.
- [21:17]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Because for the first time people get the opportunity to broadcast their ideas through a much wider readership. In a sense, it hadn't been possible before because of the heavy censorship. And it would never have been possible to publish many of the ideas that are in the text. I look at in the book. Absolutely crucial that censorship collapses in the early 1640s years, and these ideas begin to circulate widely and very quickly as well. Someone could become famous for an outburst in public, and then a few weeks or months later, their work would be in print and would be circulating. So texts were coming out very quickly, circulating very widely into an ever growing and ever widening readership. And that was very important in the spread of radical ideas for women and for men, as you say.
- [21:54]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And what was the risk for women? What were some of the risks that came with claiming prophetic power?
- [22:00]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Well, there was a very strong backlash from nearly everyone. Every woman claimed to be speaking from God. And if she didn't say what they thought God should be saying, in other words, if she was in any way confrontational, if she questioned societal order, especially if she questioned patriarchal authority or order. Most of the women in my book were imprisoned. Hester Biddle, who was the Quaker preacher, was imprisoned 14 times, for example. Most of those imprisonments were purely for speaking out. She was a Quaker. She believed that she had the light of God within. And so everything she said, in some sense, was prophetic in her mind. And so she would speak out. Whether you call it preaching or prophesying, the distinction didn't really apply to her. She would believe she was speaking on behalf of God at all times, really. So she would speak out publicly. She would speak out in front of judges in the courtroom. She would speak out in public marketplaces. She would go into churches and confront ministers. Very confrontational behavior, clearly. And she would be thrown into prison, was physically abused multiple times. And so that's a clear, obvious risk that women were facing the, you know, the full force of the law. If they were breaching public decorum in this way, Even if they were more reticent and took a slightly less confrontational approach, they would still very often be derided as witches. They would often be called whores, they would often be called vagabonds. If they traveled from home, all of those sorts of terms and slurs were used against them, not only to literally imprison them or to silence them, but just to shame them, to shame them into silence. Some of the women in my book were ostracized and alienated from their own communities. So even the radical groups that they were part of couldn't quite cope with how radical they were, and they would ostracize them. So there's a lot of loneliness, ostracism, but they were very, very brave women. I look at over 12 radical women and all of them incredibly brave, true to their conscience above all, and just stuck to what they thought to be the truth and as to what the consequences were for them.
- [23:50]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And let's go back to that idea of the relationship between the spiritual and political. You've mentioned Hester Biddle there. This preacher and the prophets and preachers together do seem to have had a profound vision for the reordering of society. This is about justice as much as anything, isn't it?
- [24:10]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Absolutely. They believed, many of the women in my book believe that Jesus was about to return in some sense to earth. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the world was going to come to an end and everyone was going to go up to heaven. That wasn't really the way they understood it. They believed that the kingdom of God was about to arrive and that that's why everything was falling apart in society as a whole. That's why the civil wars were happening, and that there was therefore going to be some kind of reconstruction. But it was imagined for most of these women in very specifically social and political terms. It wasn't an abstract spiritual idea at all. Women like Hester Biddle, as you mentioned, very, very motivated by what they saw as the incredibly bad treatment of the poor in London in particular. She lived in London. She was born in Oxford. She moved to London fair her adolescence, as she was very exercised by the growing inequality of life in London. She has very long and angry and eloquent, but also angry outbursts about against the city of London as a whole. Talking about how it's beautiful, how it's this cultural center and yet it's indifferent to the poor. The wealthy citizens step out of their beautiful houses in all their beautiful clothes and literally step over the poor on the pavements. She has all these different descriptions of life in London in this era and emphasizing the inequality, the injustice. And to her mind, the kingdom of God coming is the writing of this injustice. It's life and help being given to the poor. So many of the women in the book very much equate God's chosen people with the poor, with those who are marginalized in society. So it includes women, but also very much lower social groups and the poor, which unfortunately were, you know, increasing in this era, and the homeless and the people who were begging for food on the streets of London. So Hester Biddle wanted these people to be treated better. She wanted justice for these people. And she's very, very angry at the indifference of wealthy citizens of London to the people in their midst who don't have the means to survive. And so her spiritual vision is totally inextricable from her vision for social justice. And that's a big part of why she was imprisoned 14 times, because she was coming up against wealthy citizens who didn't want their way of life being Question.
- [26:19]
Jacob Goldstein
This is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? Business software is expensive, and when you buy software from lots of different companies, it's not only expensive, it gets confusing. Slow to use, hard to integrate. Odoo solves that because all Odoo software is connected on a single affordable platform. Save money without missing out on the features you need. Odoo has no hidden costs and no limit on features or data. Odoo has over 60 apps available for any needs your business might have, all at no additional charge. Everything from websites to sales to inventory to accounting, all linked and talking to each other. Check out odoo@odoo.com that's O D O O.com NetCredit is here to say yes.
- [27:07]
Evergreen Virtual Academy / NetCredit Announcer
To a personal loan or line of credit when other lenders say no, apply in minutes and get a decision decision as soon as the same day. If approved, applications are typically funded the next business day or sooner. Loans offered by NetCredit or lending partner banks and serviced by Netcredit application subject to review and approval. Learn more@netcredit.com partner netcredit credit to the.
- [27:29]
Jacob Goldstein
People.
- [27:35]
Tristan Hughes
Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Colosseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History hit twice a week. Join me Tristan Hughes as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the Ancients from history Hit.
- [28:07]
Dr. Naomi Baker
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- [28:26]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Can we also talk about some of the ways in which some of your prophets, for example, seem to experience a connection between physicality and spirituality? There are visions, there's fasting in some instances. Sometimes it's even sensual. Is there something specifically female about this connection between the physical and the spiritual, you think?
- [28:50]
Dr. Naomi Baker
That's a very interesting question. It's a very hotly contested question amongst historians and critics of this era. Some of the prophets, Anna Shrapnel and Sarah White, as you mentioned, had a very distinctive way of prophesying which was to take to their bed, essentially, and to stop Eating often for weeks on end, apparently. And to lie in this ecstatic sort of trance and to speak the words of God, as they would claim while they were lying in this trance. And this does take part in a tradition which goes back into the previous century and early in the 17th century across the whole of Europe, actually known as miraculous maids. So there were many adolescent girls who did something similar, you know, who stopped eating essentially, and would start prophesying and would go into these ecstatic states and would prophesy. So these women who were writing in the 1650s, Anna Trapnell and Sarah White, speaking professor in the 1650s, are coming at the tail end of that tradition, which is actually quite a Catholic tradition. Interestingly, as I say, coming from Europe and clearly imitating it to some extent or another word would be, you know, taking part in a similar tradition. The reasons for that and the link to gender is of course, open to our interpretation, and people take different views on that. But it is something that's distinctive to, not only to women, but to quite young women, often adolescent women. It seems to be the way in which they are able to get an audience. I see it as a very dramatic pose because they would take to their bed, but it was by no means a private event. They would be lying in their bed, but it was kind of like holding state. You know, they were be hundreds of people coming to visit them, coming to hear them. It was a public and very dramatic act, but it was done in this very particular way. You could argue that they were imitating women who had gone before who similarly got a lot of attention for doing something similar. I try and steer away from speculating about individual motivation because obviously there's no way of knowing that. I don't think they're inauthentic in the sense that they're deliberately staging this. On one level, I think it's how they understand spiritual inspiration to work. But where those ideas have come from and why they understood it to happen in that way is interesting. I mean, there are biblical models. This is not purely a female tradition. If you go back to the Bible in the Old Testament, there are many male prophets who. Who adopt a similar pose when God speaks to them. So it's a biblical precedent, but it seems to take hold in the 17th century amongst young women in particular. They imitate that particular model of prophecy. You could argue that they're kind of. They're trying to deny their bodies. They're trying to fast and kind of eradicate their bodies so that the spirit can be revived or can be More prominent in some way. I'm not fully convinced by that argument myself because I think it's a very performative act. So their body is still at the center of their prophetic display, if you like. Even though they're lying in their bed and they're fasting, their body becomes a thing that everyone's looking at. One of the things about these women is that they're supposed to be miraculously sustained, so they don't eat any food and yet they don't get weaker and they don't die because they would argue God is sustaining them. So it's not just a performance of a weak body, it's a performance of a kind of miraculous body that they're putting out there. And that's their way of authenticating what God is saying to them, that they're chosen as a prophet, that God is sustaining them in this miraculous way. There's a very performative element to it and I think their body is crucial in their way of gaining an audience and in their way of being heard. And clearly gender is part of that mix. But it's a very intricate, an intricate web of multiple influences and factors at play.
- [32:06]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
We've talked a bit about how men critiqued these women. What was the defence used to support them?
- [32:14]
Dr. Naomi Baker
The defence by the women themselves and by the men who supported them, of which there were many men in their own communities is that God didn't care what your status was in society, that God could choose to speak to whoever he wanted to. And therefore, if God has spoken to you, you know, who is anyone else to say that you're not worthy? That's clearly a biblical idea, that God chooses the weak over the strong and that God can use any instrument of his choosing. So that would be the ultimate argument in defense of them speaking in defense of what they had to say, that it came from God. So it was never about self assertion. These women do incredible things. They break down all kinds of barriers. They travel the world, they do new theological interpretations of the Bible, they publish new kinds of writing, but none of it is to make their own name. It's all as they see it, to glorify God. So all of it is to do with God speaking through them, God using them as his instrument. That's the way they would put it, it. And therefore it doesn't matter that they're just a maid servant from Yorkshire, if you want to put it like that, or, you know, just this young woman with no, no education. It doesn't matter because it's God who's speaking through them. So no one can really argue with that at the end of the day. And that is their ultimate claim and their ultimate defense.
- [33:22]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Let's talk about that maidservant from Yorkshire you mentioned there about women traveling the world. Tell me about the female global evangelists of this period.
- [33:31]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Yes, well, they tend to be Quakers, because the Quakers had a really global vision, more so than any of the other groups at this time. And it wasn't so much that they were going around the world trying to convert people. It was more that they had a belief that the light of God was within every single person. So they wanted to travel the world to testify to that light, as in to find other examples of that light. So they weren't really trying to convert people. They were trying to prove their point that God reveals his truth to everyone and that it's not a national thing, it's not a local thing, it's a global thing. But as a result, they do travel the world. And Mary Fisher, as you mentioned, the Yorkshire Maidservant, is one of them absolutely incredible stories, kind of. It beggars belief, this story, really, that she was almost 30 years old, working as a servant in Selby in Yorkshire, where she became a Quaker and her life completely turned on its head almost from the moment she became a Quaker. She travels all over England, then she starts to go further afield. She sails out to Barbados, she becomes one of the first Quakers to America, and then ultimately she travels to Turkey to meet the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Now, we only have her account of this. It's very hard to know exactly what happened in this very bizarre encounter, but her claim is that she effectively walked hundreds of miles to where the Sultan was encamped, and that he received her very nobly, with a lot of respect, treated her very considerately, allowed her to have her say, as it were, and saw her on her way. And so she comes back to England triumphant. Not that she thinks she's converted him or was even really trying to con. It's 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 who's alive, you know, all of humanity. And so that was Mary Fisher's story. An incredible broadening of horizons for someone who you wouldn't expect to even leave their local town, really, given her social situation and her sex at the time. It was incredible achievement.
- [35:17]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It wasn't, however, without suffering. And I wondered if in some of these stories that you have about Mary Fisher going to New England for Example and the sort of imprisonment and humiliation there. Do you think that for Quakers, for Mary Fish in particular, the sufferings they underwent were a kind of confirmation of their righteousness?
- [35:39]
Dr. Naomi Baker
I'm not sure that they saw it like that, but they certainly believe that God was helping them through that. And the way that they would kind of endure those sufferings in a noble way, or they wouldn't have used that word, but, you know, in a way that testifies to God, God's help. I think that was a form of them testifying to the fact that they did know the truth and that God was with them. So they would see it as a trial in which they could prove that their faith was genuine. I don't think they would have said that those trials were necessary to prove their faith, but they became a means of proving their faith. I mean, they genuinely believed that they were living in the end of times. I suppose battling the forces of evil is inevitable part of living in the end times. So it was not any surprise to them that they were going to get a harsh reception. Other people didn't want to hear their message. So in that sense, they were ready and waiting for it. And they were very confrontational, many Quaker women at this time. So they were almost asking for it, not asking for the treatment, but they were deliberately provoking a response on some level. They were going to churches, disrupt services, call the minister, all kinds of names. They weren't shying away from confrontation. And they believed that God sustained them in all things. So I think that was how they would have understood it, that it was a trial, but I don't think it was a necessary aspect of their faith, but it was one that they saw as a part of living in the end of times, a part of the ultimate culmination of the battle of good against evil, which they very much saw themselves as being part of.
- [36:56]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And given 17th century ideas about somewhere like the Ottoman Empire. Could Mary Fisher's experiences change English perceptions of civilization and barbarism? Did they have the power to inform the kind of cultural narrative?
- [37:11]
Dr. Naomi Baker
I think so. Well, Mary Fisher's account is very interesting because really, she's writing about how the Sultan received her so respectfully and with such courtesy as a way of shaming the Christians nearer to home. For example, in Cambridge, where she went and she was treated very harshly, she was stripped to the waist and whipped in the marketplace in Cambridge in England. But also when she went to Boston, she was thrown in prison and was humiliated and assaulted there, too. And so her message is that just because you're a so called Christian either in New England or in England itself. It doesn't mean that you're actually operating according to God's truth. And God's truth is something other than that. And so our conventional, own orthodox ideas of what is barbaric or what is civilized and needs to be rethought and the lines of truth and good and evil needs to be redrawn. And she very much would have believed that God's light was within all people. It wasn't restricted to English Christians, as they called themselves. In fact, it's quite likely that it wasn't very much there at all because they weren't really practicing what she saw as authentic faith. Whereas around the world, in other global settings, perhaps people were closer to what she saw as the truth. So she very much would have argued that we need to rethink what is barbaric and what is civilized. Whether or not people listen beyond their own circles is a different matter. But that certainly was a big part of her agenda to get people to rethink where these lines should be drawn.
- [38:26]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It's so interesting. And you have a couple of other women in your book who are also traveling, also Quake women, Catherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers.
- [38:34]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Tell me about them. Well, they were locked away in the Roman Inquisition in Malta. And their document, their very vivid and striking document of their more than three years in an Inquisition cell in Malta Altar is one of the only documents from the time from someone who survived the Inquisition and wrote about it. So purely as a historical, highly interesting account. So they were two Quaker women. One was in her 40s, one was in her 50s. They're by no means young women for the time at least. They traveled independently of their husbands. They left their husbands at home with the children in England. Off they went, part of this Quaker move to go around the world to testify to the light within. So off they went. And they, they were only going via Malta on the way somewhere else. But they were arrested and, and thrown into the Inquisition in the Roman Inquisition, which had a seat in Malta at this time. And they had three years there, as I say, more than three years in a cell where they experienced really extreme suffering. They were extremely hot at times. They didn't have proper food, they struggled to even breathe in this really stifling cell. They were psychologically tortured in the sense that it kept being said to them that they were going to be executed, that they were going to be tortured. So it was extreme conditions. And of course they were under huge pressure to convert to the Roman Catholic faith, which was the object of the exercise. That's what the Inquisition were trying to get them to do. But they were up against two very strong willed women and these women were not going to back down. And their text, their account of their experiences is really incredible. They wrote it in the cell and they smuggled it out of a tiny window of the cell to another Quaker who'd managed in extreme danger and managed to get to the outside of their cell and he took it back to England and it was published while they were still in prison in Malta. So it was kind of a live document of their suffering and incredibly a real unique document of what it was like to be living in an Inquisition prison. Ultimately they were released the following year after the document was taken back to England. Because I think the officers of the Inquisition just realized they were never going to beat these women down. And I think they got sick of them, to be honest, because they had an answer for everything. They were absolutely unbending in their allegiance to the Quaker faith. They were forced to go to mass and do other things that they didn't want to take part in and they would just turn their back on the altar. They were really, they would not be cur. And so the Inquisition, even the Inquisition was worn down by these women and let them go in the end. And they carried on. They weren't in any way deterred by this experience. They carried on traveling afterwards, carried on testifying.
- [40:53]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Isn't that extraordinary? The women who cowed the Inquisition, quite remarkable.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And several radical women, you've alluded to this already were reinterpreting biblical texts, particularly apocalyptic ones like the Book of Revelations. Can you tell me a bit about their way of understanding them? And you know the extent to which we know the popularity of these new interpretations?
- [42:54]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Yes, it's a really striking feature of the writing of these women as I was researching, that many of them turned to apocalyptic texts and the Book of Revelation in particular. And that was perhaps surprising because it's often perceived, I think, that that's one of the books of the Bible which is not particularly favourable to women in the sense that it can appear to present a very stereotypical view of women. There's a Whore of Babylon character in Revelation, then there's the Bride of Christ, there's that kind of poor bride binary going on there. And Revelation might not seem an obvious text or women's identity, but there are other figures in the Book of Revelation, such as the woman clothed with the sun, who's another female character described in that very visionary book of the Bible. And many of the women in my book are clearly fascinated by this other apocalyptic woman who they think breaks the mold and shows a different way forward in which women can play a more active part in the cosmic drama of the end times. Because that's what Revelation is concerned with, of course. And these women very much identified with that time. They believe that these end times were unfolding in their own historical moment. And so they do tend to this book. They're by no means alone in doing so, of course. It's an apocalyptic era, in all senses of the word. Many, many people believe they were living in the at the end of history. This was not unique either to the radical groups or to the women in my book. But I do think there's something distinctive about their particular interpretation, interpretation of people within these groups, and I would say women in particular within these groups. Groups. Of course, I don't want to overgeneralize or overstate that, but there's seems to be a willingness and an openness to a more radical interpretation of apocalyptic theology, which certainly is reflected in several of the women who are actually in my book, for example, reading it much more metaphorically than would have been the case in mainstream Protestant teaching. Again, this is not unique to the women. There will be men within the radical groups who would also interpret Revelation in that way. But certainly some of the women in my book interpret the end times in very metaphorical terms. So when Revelation Talks about judgment coming and the rare earth burning. This kind of apocalyptic idea. They would say, yes, that's true, that God has said that, but he doesn't mean the actual earth is going to burn. He means that bad ideas are going to be burned up or, you know, wrong ways of thinking are going to be destroyed. So it becomes a much more internalized, metaphorical symbolic discourse which they think is unfolding in the here and now. They're not waiting for the end of time. They think the Apocalypse is already unfolding, but it's often within those interpretations seen as a much more internal process. I don't want to overgeneralize because one thing I was doing emphasize in the book is that these women all have different perspectives. As I've said already, they're very much answerable to their own sense of God's truth. And so it means by definition they're not all going to agree on everything by any means. So I'm not speaking for all of the women, but there are women within the book who take those very radical, symbolic, interiorized interpretations of Revelation in a way that was not mainstream within Protestant thinking at the time.
- [45:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, let's look at one example then. How about Anne Wentworth? She seems to use the book of Revelation to frame her personal experiences, doesn't she? And how does she use it to articulate calls for justice?
- [45:50]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Anne Wentworth was a victim of spousal abuse. Her husband psychologically and physically abused her, she claims, for more than 20 years. So a long term victim of abuse, survivor of abuse, who ultimately decides that the time has come that she needs to speak out about this. And this is an incredible thing to encounter in 17th century England for a woman to have the bravery to speak out against a man who was seen as a pillar of the community. He was a leading figure of the Baptist community that they were both part of and she knows full well. And so it becomes the case as well that the community will not believe these accusations and they will side with her husband, that they will ostracize her, that they will try and find ways of discrediting her testimony. And that's exactly what happens. So she knows that in advance, but she believes that God is requiring her to speak the truth. Again, it's about being true to your own conscience. It's not so much about just shaming her husband, it's about testifying to what she thinks is the truth and that the truth needs to be known. And she sees it not only as a matter of him being an abusive figure and a bully, which he is. But it's also a matter of corruption within the Baptist community because they're shielding him, because he presents as this great, upstanding, charming individual. And she wants the truth about him to be known as a kind of part of a wider bringing to light of the truth of the situation. So she does speak out, not just in terms of actually saying what's happened, but publishing accounts of what's happened. And the backlash against her is severe. As I say, she's completely ostracized from the community. She retains a few friends. I'm really glad to know that there were some people who stood by her, but the majority of her congregation, her community, turned against her. Her husband, surprise, surprise, turns violently against her. He actually throws her out of the house. He locks her out completely. He also runs off with all her manuscripts and burns them at one point. And she thinks that's the worst of all of his crimes. He burns six years of her writing because this writing indicts him and has evidence against him. She details all these forms of abuse and crime against her. She absolutely stands her ground. Even though she's shamed, she's ostracized. And clearly that was very severe for her era. She has no obvious means of earning her own income, of getting her own house. I mean, these are drastic measures he's resorted to. And she's really at the mercy of people around her to keep her, her allied, essentially. But she nevertheless keeps to her story, publishes four tracts, all of which detail his abuse. She does not in any way accept that she needs to be silent. She doesn't back down. But in all of that, to come back to your points about the Apocalypse, she frames this as an apocalyptic battle. So in her mind, her husband and the Baptists who shield him represent the Antichrist. They represent hypocritical forces of religion, which in her mind is the same thing as the Antichrist I spoken about in Revelation. And she, of course, is on the side of truth, on the side of goodness. She's God's agent to reveal this corruption. So to her mind, that is an apocalyptic struggle. Even though it is about her and her husband, it has this cosmic, this eternal significance because it's a much wider battle of truth against evil.
- [48:46]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So you've told us about some remarkable documents and incredible stories, extraordinary women. Voices of Thunder is a good name for the book because these women have voices that carry through time to us. Why is it important that we hear these women's voices again?
- [49:05]
Dr. Naomi Baker
I think it's really striking to know that women were Speaking out this many hundred years ago, you know, the 17th century, at a time when we really wouldn't necessarily expect to hear accounts of spousal abuse, for example, or accounts of women traveling the world independently of men men, or accounts of women theologians who are interpreting the Bible in completely radical ways. I think this is often news even to people who are fairly familiar with the era. They wouldn't necessarily know that women were doing these things or that they were writing these things. And I really do feel it's important to acknowledge the fact that this was happening. I suppose there are bigger questions to be asked then about why it has taken so long for some of these ideas which were already being voiced in the 17th century. I would argue that we still perhaps struggle over some of these issues today. The backlash against women who speak out against abuse, the backlash against women who preach in certain church communities. These things we've 17th century women experience and in some contexts, still being experienced today. And that's quite a sobering thought, I think, because I think we can sometimes maybe assume that these are relatively recent battles and that, you know, we're only just getting going with these battles. But actually, women have been fighting these battles for hundreds of years. And so it's worth thinking about why it does actually take so long and why these battles actually recur at different times in history. That's one thing that really strikes me as I study these women, that they were speaking out. They did have voices. The female voice was not invented in the 1960s. None of these women, of course, would call themselves feminists. They weren't conforming to what we might see as an overt feminist agenda, but they were very much speaking out. They were fighting some of the battles that became feminist battles later. And I think it's crucial to have a historical perspective, both to inspire us, but also almost as a warning that just speaking out on its own may not achieve change, or it may take a long time for change to be achieved. But I think we can be inspired to be part of such a long tradition of women in this country who have been fighting those battles. And I think it's worth acknowledging that.
- [50:56]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And how pleased the women that you've worked on would be to hear, although probably dismayed. It took so many centuries, but we have now, for the first time ever, a female Archbishop of Canterbury.
- [51:08]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Yes, exactly. That women were preaching in the 17th century and getting a huge backlash. And now, at last, the Church of England has acknowledged the women in that world. Yes, but also, how long has it taken? Well, having said that, they weren't fans of the Church of England, I have to say, although that they would actually be too interested. But yes, on a different level, maybe they would be.
- [51:25]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I suppose the Church of England today and the Church of England in the 17th century are quite different. Well, we shan't get into that, but Dr. Naomi Baker, thank you so much for your time today and for bringing to our attention these wonderful stories of women who were activists and who had a voice that demands to be listened to in the 17th century. Thank you.
- [51:48]
Dr. Naomi Baker
Thank you so much.
- [51:50]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors From History Hit. Thanks also to my researcher Max Wintle and my producer Rob Weinberg. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line@notjusthetorshistoryhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tudors From History Hit Foreign.
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