Psalms in your pocket

First of all, I would just like to apologise for the lack of posts from me over the last 5 weeks or so. As some of you may know, I started my MA this October and unfortunately my deadlines rather got in the way of me being able to blog! Things settle down now for a couple of weeks, though, so I will do my best to make up for it.

This is just a quick post on an App that I happened to hear about via an academic discussion list that I thought some of you might be interested in / amused to hear about. Now, whilst I know that the idea of carrying a Psalm book around in your pocket is by no means a new idea (given the manner in which the book itself was usually published), someone has brought the Bay Psalm Book kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century by making an App!

The App is free to download, and you can either get to a Psalm by selecting your current mood (yes, really!), or you can just shake your iPhone to be given a random Psalm. There is also a short piece on the history of the Bay Psalm Book. I'm by no means suggesting that this is a new scholarly resource, but it is rather fun!

This is the link to the App, although you can just search 'Bay Psalm Book' in the App Store:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/baypsalmbook/id733258140

Photo courtesy of BBC website

© Jenna Townend 2013

Cutting and pasting: 'Mikrokosmographia', anatomy, and the tools of dissection

In just a slight contrast to last week's post on the art of courtship, today I am sharing some wonderful information on seventeenth-century anatomy, dissection and the necessary tools for which to perform the task. The extracts are taken from Helkiah Crooke's text, Mikrokosmographia (1615), who was the physician of James I.

Taken from the frontispiece of the 1615 edition

Mikrokosmographia certainly forms part of the increasingly large body of medical texts, with a particular focus on anatomy and dissection, that emerged during the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth- centuries. Anatomy and its study had finally becomes much less of a thorny religious or ethical issue (as it had been during the time that Leonardo Da Vinci was conducting his studies, for example), and had widely become accepted as an important component of medical study and practice. This is certainly evidenced in the following extracts, since Crooke sees it fit to even include meticulous detail about the tools needed to conduct anatomical investigation.

As ever, the text and its later editions can be found on EEBO, and I have preserved the early-modern spelling of the original text.

'Now there is amongest Physitians, a double acceptation of Anatomy; either it signifieth the action which is done with the hande; or the habite of the minde, that is, the most perfect action of the intellect. The first is called practicall Anatomy, the latter Theorical or contemplatiue: the first is gained by experience, the second by reason and discourse: the first wee attaine onely by Section and Inspection, the second by the living voice of a Teacher, or by their learned writings' (D1r).

'We may define anatomy thus: An Artificiall Section of the outward and inward partes. I call it Artificiall to distinguish it from that which is rash and at aduenture which Galen calleth Vulnerary Dissection. For oftentimes in great wounds we obserue the figure, scitua|tion, magnitude, and structure of the outward and inward parts; but that obseruation is but confused, for we cannot distinctly perceiue the branchings of the Nerues, the Serpentine and writhen Meanders of the Veynes, nor the infinite divarications of the Arteries' (D1r).

'This Section cannot artificially bee accomplished, unlesse the Ministers haue convenient Instruments, as are these; Razors of all sortes, great, small, meane, sharpe, blunt, straight, crooked, and edged on both sides; Sheares or Sizers; round and large long Probes of Brasse, Siluer, Lead; a Knife of Box or of Ivory, Pincers of all sorts; hooks, Needels bent rather then straite, Reeds, Quils, Glasse-trunkes or hollow Bugles to blowe up the parts, Threds and strings, Sawes, Bodkins, Augers, Mallets, Wimbles or Trepans, Basons and Sponges; the Figures of all which wee have heereunder delineated, together with a Table whereon to lay the dead, or binde the living Anatomy, with the rings, chains, cords, & perforations fit for that purpose' (D1r).

References:
Helkiah Crooke, Mikrokosmographia: a Description of the Body of Man (London: William Iaggard, 1615), in EEBO.

© Jenna Townend 2013

Freshers and 'The Art of Courtship'

It's freshers' fortnight here at Loughborough. I'm not entirely sure where the last year has gone, but here we are again! While things are settling down, and everybody is getting into their new routines, I thought I would share with you this rather lighthearted post.

Inevitably, during freshers' week, one will witness (whether one wants to or not) the blossoming romances in the new intake of first years. (Please note that I use the term 'romance' rather loosely!) Whilst I was doing some research and searches on EEBO in my department this afternoon, I had a moment of serendipity and stumbled across an anonymous work entitled The Art of Courtship, and this got me thinking about how much the idea of 'courtship' has morphed and altered over the centuries. Gone are the days of escorts, suitors, exchanges of letters, sequences of love poems, and in, at least during freshers' fortnight (although even that might be a little optimistic!), are the quick snogs over an alcho-pop in the Students' Union. 

Whilst I am certainly not looking back on seventeenth-century courtship with any sort of hazy nostalgia, seeing as there were certainly some pretty binding restrictions on women's conduct, I did think that tonight it would be fun to share with you all a few of my favourite extracts from this wonderful work! The text is essentially a compilation of poems, sequences of letters and short meditations on love and courtship, so below you'll find the three that I have picked out and transcribed. 

'Posies' (A7r)
My love shall be,
Forever free,
Naught shall devide,
The knot we've ty'd
By Death alone,
It is undone.

My joy thou art;
Till life is past,
My love shall last,
My love I place
On thy sweet face.
'Tis thou in me,
Shall happy be,
And hast my heart.

From 'The Delights of Marriage' (A8v)
How happy Celia is it, now we are
In wedlock joyn'd and made a happy pair
'Tis true, my Strephon, we have joys,
That few the like can find;
A passion that no time destroys,
Is fix'd in eithers mind

'Loves Power and Cruelty' (A8v)
Lightning is swifter then the glance, of charmin beauty, for 'tho seen by chance it penetrates the Soul, and fires the mind, that wretched Lovers no contentment find; but cruel torments, a tormenting grief, seizes the wretch that's void of a relief.

References:
Anon., The Art of Courtship: or, The School of Delight (London: I. Back, 1686), in EEBO.

© Jenna Townend 2013

EEBO-TCP Conference: Digital Methods and Methodologies

As some of my readers may know, last week I attended the 2013 EEBO-TCP conference at Lincoln College, Oxford. It was the first academic conference that I had attended (not counting the ones that I have worked at!), and it really was a fantastic experience. Everybody was so welcoming, and I learnt an awful lot! 

Apart from learning an awful lot about digital humanities that, as the old adage goes, I didn't know I didn't know, I also picked up a wealth of useful information that I will be able to use in the coming years. There was news of new and exciting databases that are up and running (what early-modern undergraduate knew that there was a vast electronic world outside EEBO?!), projects that will be completed in the next couple of years, and lots of incredible work that would not have even begun without the use of electronic databases. 

Not only that, but the two keynote talks from Dr Jane Winters and Professor Ian Gadd were incredibly interesting. It is thanks to Jane that I am about to start my MA armed with an enormous list of little-known early-modern databases that she has been involved in creating (I will cover some of these in another, separate post soon). And it is thanks to Ian that I will never look at the dog-eared corner of a book in the same way again. In his talk, he pointed out that, in the seventeenth century and earlier, dog-earing the corner of a text was considered the mark of a devout reader: fold over the page that interested you, and you were cementing a very personal and tactile relationship with your book that was unique to you. However, as is ever the case, the significance of this act morphed over the centuries. By the nineteenth century (and up to the present day - just look at the definition of dog-ear in the OED), dog-earing had become the hallmark of a clumsy and careless reader who handled their books too roughly. Really fascinating stuff.

If my little snippets of news from the conference have whet your appetite for all things digital, I would encourage you to go and have a look at the Storify feed from the conference to catch up on all the wonderful goings-on that I haven't covered! It can be found here:

http://storify.com/pipwillcox/early-modern-texts-digital-methods-and-methodologi?utm_content=storify-pingback&utm_source=t.co&utm_campaign=&awesm=sfy.co_fReo&utm_medium=sfy.co-twitter

Below I have just shared a few of my favourite tweets from the conference that were really valuable:

 © Jenna Townend 2013

Roman Relics Part 3: Pompeii

And, finally, we come to possibly the most famous of the three sites that I visited: Pompeii. 

I had been to Pompeii once before in 2003 but, I'll be honest, I didn't really appreciate what I was looking at. Yes, I knew it was nearly 2000 years old, but it wasn't until I visited this time that I had that 'WOW' moment where the significance of the site suddenly hit me. 

Although Pompeii is, of course, just as busy as many of the central sites in Rome, there were still plenty of moments during the day where you are suddenly and startlingly reminded of the miracle of the city that you are looking at. Nowhere did this hit me more than when I was stood in one of the quiet side streets near the House of the Faun, gazing up the street to the peak of Vesuvius. That night in 79AD must have been genuinely terrifying, and it came to life for me more in that moment than it has in any of the dramatisations that I've watched over the years.

2000 year old cart tracks running through the streets

Takeaway food, Pompeii style: storage containers in the counter

A lion painted onto a wall fresco

Mythical beast painted onto the same fresco

The rather extravagant entrance steps to the House of Julia Felix. They were built up over the usual pavement to illustrate her wealth to passersby

The atrium of the House of Julia Felix (sadly closed to the public currently)

Another angle on the atrium

View through one of the house's rooms into the courtyard beyond

The beautifully preserved black and white mosaic floor

The mosaic sign on the street outside the House of the Faun. 'Have' means 'greetings' (see also the new header of my personal Twitter page!)

The ubiquitous 'beware of the dog' mosaic at the House of the Tragic Poet': 'Cave Canem'

I was trying to find a quotation on which to finish the last of these three blog posts that would sum up the awe-inspiring power of Pompeii and Vesuvius, and found this incredibly moving extract from Statius's Silvae, written in the AD 90s:

'In a future generation, when crops spring up again, when this wasteland regains its green, will men believe that cities and people lie beneath? That in days of old their lands lay closer to the sea? Nor has that fatal summit ceased to threaten' (4.4.78).

 © Jenna Townend 2013

Roman Relics Part 2: Ostia Antica

Next stop on my tour of the key Roman sites of Rome and its surrounding countryside was Ostia Antica. This is, without a doubt, my new favourite archaeological site.

Only discovered and excavated in the last century, the site is yet to be over-run by tourists and site-seeing tours. Because of this, the whole area is still virtually totally un-fenced and, although there is a free basic map and a visitor centre, you are still free to go and explore wherever you choose in relative peace and quiet. Provided you have a reasonable working knowledge of the layout of Roman towns (if you don't, all you need to do is watch Mary Beard's 'Meet the Romans'), you can spend, as I did, an entire day wandering around and stumbling across some truly magnificent finds.

If anyone is taking a trip to Rome in the near future, I would definitely recommend Ostia to you. It really is the most incredible place.

Roman takeaways: produce display area in a shop selling hot and cold food just off the forum

Counter facing out onto the street at this shop

Part of a beautiful fresco in a private residence 

The street that many of the food shops and stalls face onto

The infamous 20-seat public latrine!

Me with the forum in the background

The entrance to a family's mausoleum, where the urns of both family members and their slaves were kept

One of the rooms of this mausoleum. Significant family members, such as the husband and wife, would have been placed in the larger alcoves, with children and slaves taking up the smaller alcoves

A mosaic advert for a stall dealing in exotic animals. This is in the marketplace that lay behind the ampitheatre (see below)

The beautiful ampitheatre

 © Jenna Townend 2013

Roman Relics Part 1: Gladiatorial scrawls

If you are a reader of my blog that is unyielding in terms of what 'early modern' means, then I'm afraid that you will have to excuse the content of the next few blog posts! Before I get back into my normal early-modern-themed posts, we are taking a brief trip back to around 50-80AD...

As some of you may know, I recently went on holiday to Italy: Rome and Sorrento to be precise. Now, apart from eating my own body weight in pasta, pizza, and gelato, I did actually manage to fit in a fair bit of sight-seeing. First on the list was the Rome's Colosseum. 

Rather than bore you with the standard photos of its exterior and interior (which are, nonetheless, absolutely stunning!), I wanted to share with you a little collection of photos that I took of some sections of marble that have been removed from the walls of the Colosseum's 'corridors' - for want of a better word - and have been placed as part of the exhibition that sits on the upper floors.

I really can't get these images out of my head. They are something that at once struck me as unmistakably antiquarian (they are, after all, accompanied by a card telling you the likely date that they were engraved), but also incredibly modern. Engravings and scrawlings in stone, wood, even modern school tables, are surely as common now as they were around 80AD.

A gladiator, with armour, spear and shield

A big cat used in gladiatorial competitions

Two gladiators fighting. Both wearing armour, with the left-hand gladiator holding a shield, and the right-hand gladiator brandishing a sword

Gladiator with wonderfully detailed armour on his lower body, carrying a spear

 © Jenna Townend 2013

Beautiful Bibles

Happy September everybody! Am I the only one who doesn't know where that summer went?

About a week ago on Twitter, I stumbled across a link to MS 19; a sumptuously illustrated Bible from the 14th century that was given to the University of Edinburgh in 1680. The entire manuscript is digitized, and can be found here: http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/view/search/what/Ms%2019?q=bible%20historial

It really is an absolutely beautiful thing. The craftsmanship of medieval texts such as this never fails to astound me, so I just had to share three of my favourite images with you all! I have cropped the original facsimiles so that you can really see the incredible detail of the illustrations.

f.5v

f.89v

f.145v

I am going to be away for a couple of weeks now on holiday, so won't be able to do much other than tweet about any beautiful early modern things that I stumble across in Rome (my Twitter is @MyEMWorld in case you aren't already following). I do, however, have another couple of posts planned for when I return, one of which will be a write-up of the EEBO-TCP conference that I will be attending at Oxford University in two weeks' time!

© Jenna Townend 2013

FWSA Blog post

Recently, I had the pleasure of writing an article for the FWSA blog. Their theme for August's posts was groundbreaking women or feminists, and so I chose to write an article on Jane Sharp - the groundbreaking seventeenth-century midwife who wrote and published The Midwives Book.

If you didn't see the lovely tweets the the FWSA's Twitter account (@FWSAuk) posted about it, or simply would like to have a read of it, please click below and check it out!

http://fwsablog.org.uk/2013/08/23/mrs-jane-sharp-a-pioneering-midwife-discovered/

However, if nineteenth-century literature is more your thing, there is also a brilliant new post by Lynn Shepherd that has just been added entitled 'Was Mary Shelley a feminist?':

http://fwsablog.org.uk/2013/08/26/wasmaryshelleyafeminist/

Holinshed, the body and Marlowe's 'Edward II' - Part 2

The cell in which Edward was reportedly held at Berkeley Castle

Firstly, I apologise for the delay in uploading this second post. I have been stuck on jury service for a couple of weeks! In the first part of these two posts on Marlowe's Edward II, I outlined the account of Edward's murder from Holinshed's Chronicles. In this post, I will now consider how Marlowe uses the corporeal and physical focus of Holinshed's material within the most significant speeches of his murder scene that occurs in Act V Scene v. 

In his celebrated account of Marlow's play, Charles Lamb concluded that 'the death scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted'. This is certainly something that I would agree with. The transformation of Edward from arrogant monarch to degraded and tortured prisoner is just as shocking each time I come back to it.

This is one of my favourite speeches of the murder scene, spoken by Edward:

'And there in mire and puddle have I stood
This ten days' space; and lest that I should sleep,
One plays continually upon a drum.
They give me bread and water, being a king,
So that for want of sleep and sustenance
My mind's distempered and my body's numbed,
And whether I have limbs or no, I know not.
O, would my blood dropped out from every vein,
As doth this water from my tattered robes' (V.v.58-66).

In this speech, what the audience sees is a focus on the disorder of Edward's body. He is no longer the monarch in total control of his own self, or with the authority to dictate the existences of other beings around him (although this was clearly affected by Gaveston's control over Edward). Instead, Edward appears in symbolically 'tattered robes' and is tortured through his sense of hearing and taste, causing a great disparity between, and separation of, his immaterial and physical self: 'my mind's distempered and my body's numbed'. As though this unbearable feeling were not enough, Marlowe takes it one step further, as Edward states that he does not even know 'whether I have limbs or no', thus becoming totally dissociated from his physical being.

By creating such highly emotive speeches, I would suggest that the corporeal focus of Marlowe's text goes beyond what Holinshed achieves in his account. By having such torturous images and expressions spoken by his protagonist, Marlowe makes it even harder for his audience to ignore the cruelty of Edward's imprisonment and murder. Hence, what I think Marlowe achieves by including these speeches as a pre-amble to the actual murder, is that he succeeds in increasing the audience's sense of Edward's extreme suffering, causing them to re-consider the justice that is apparently achieved by killing him in such a disturbingly retributive and medieval manner.

A depiction of Edward II's death 

 References:
1. Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, ed. by Martin Wiggins and Robert Lindsey (London: A & C Black, 2006)
2. Cell at Berkeley Castle: http://allkindsofhistory.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/they-dont-like-it-up-em-revisiting-the-sordid-deaths-of-edmund-ironside-edward-ii-and-james-i-of-scotland/
3. Depiction of Edward's death: http://www.glreview.org/article/article-1403/

© Jenna Townend 2013

Holinshed and Marlowe's 'Edward II' - Part 1

This blog post is going to form the first part of two pieces that I want to do on Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. In this first one, though, I would like to briefly highlight one of the primary sources for Marlowe's play; in particular, the scene of Edward's death that occurs in Act V Scene v. 

It is well documented that Marlowe's dominant historical source for his portrayal of Edward's death was Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles. The Chronicles are a text that I know from experience is consistently bandied around in lectures on early-modern British drama, but sadly we do not always, or are not able to, take the time to look at how it informed those that used it as a primary source in their work. It was, of course, from this source that Marlowe extracted the gruesome details of Edward's murder, and the following passage is the account of Edward's death taken from Holinshed:

'they came suddenlie one night into the chamber where he laie in bed fast asléepe, and with heauie featherbeds or a table (as some write) being cast vpon him, they kept him down and withall put into his fundament an horne, and through the same they thrust vp into his bodie an hot spit, or (as other haue) through the pipe of a trumpet a plumbers instrument of iron made verie hot, the which passing vp into his intrailes, and being rolled to and fro, burnt the same, but so as no appearance of any wound or hurt outwardlie might be once perceiued. His crie did mooue manie within the castell and towne of Berkley to compassion, plainelie hearing him vtter a wailefull noise, as the tormentors were about to murther him, so that diuerse being awakened therewith (as they themselues confessed) praied heartilie to God to receiue his soule, when they vnderstood by his crie what the matter ment' (p. 342).

The extraordinary, medieval nature of Edward's murder in Holinshed's account is impossible to overlook. He is guilty of buggery, and so at the moment of his death he too is buggered by a 'hot spit'. However, what is equally remarkable about Holinshed's account is its sustained corporeal focus. Not only are we given this information about what would be referred to today as the murder weapon, but Holinshed also treats us to more gruesome physical details about the murder. The 'hot spit' passes 'vp into [Edward's] intrailes', and is 'rolled to and fro', presumably to cause the most excruciating amount of pain. For Holinshed, it would seem, this is the supposedly accurate account of a murder in which his readers are to be left in no doubt as to the level of its brutality.

So, having outlined this source material that Marlowe undoubtedly used when formulating the action of the scene in which his Edward II is murdered, in my next post I will explore how Marlowe uses Holinshed's material, with all of its corporeal and physical focus, within the most significant speeches of his murder scene. 

References:

1. Raphael Holinshed, The Third volume of Chronicles (London: Henry Denham, 1586), in EEBO.

2. Frontispiece of Holinshed's Chronicles, as above.

3. Image of Edward II: http://kinemage.biochem.duke.edu/panther/scarborough/html/index.edward.p.html

© Jenna Townend 2013

Giovanni Bracelli: early modern Cubist?

Giovanni Battista Bracelli was, by all accounts, an Italian engraver and artist based in Florence in the early part of the seventeenth century. It was during this time that he compiled his little-known work Bizzarie di Varie Figure, which was published in 1624. It contains what are certainly some of the most highly inventive drawings of human-like figures of the period, which were sadly lost to the world until the re-discovery of the text in, or around, 1950.

As Sue Welsh Reed indicates, the Bizzarie shows characteristics of the artistic style called Mannerism,
which originated in Italy in the sixteenth century: 'the term derives from the Italian word maniera, meaning style. It is applied to a way of working that was developed to oppose the idealized naturalism of the Renaissance as practiced by Raphael and others'.

Below I have shared three of my favourite engravings from Bracelli's work. As several other scholars working on Bracelli have indicated, the figures in the Bizzarie certainly seem to be a kind of prescient for the modern artistic trend of Cubism.

Stumbling across these wonderful drawings were a welcome break from the rather gory reading that I've been doing this week, and certainly gives me a different slant on considering the early modern body!

References:
1. I owe the origin of these images from the Bizzarie (which are sadly not available on EEBO), to this article on Bracelli that was written in 2005: http://www.spamula.net/blog/2005/08/bracelli.html
2. For a more detailed commentary on Bracelli and his work, as well as a more comprehensive biography, see this pdf file: http://mail.nysoclib.org/Braccelli_Bizzarie_di_varie_figure/BCLBZR.PDF

© Jenna Townend 2013

Vlog: dream dinner party guests from history

So over the last few days I decided that I would get a little creative with my posts, and this is the result! I've chosen to do a video blog on the five historical figures that I would invite to my fantasy dinner party, and have given a little explanation as to why I have picked each one. I realise that this isn't the most academic of blog posts, but I thought that it might make a nice change from the ordinary.

I definitely still have a lot to learn about editing videos and splicing them together, so please excuse me if this video is not the smoothest in terms of its editing, or indeed my presentation! I promise that if I decide to do another vlog I will brush up on my technical skills.

I hope you enjoy watching the video, and I would love to hear some of the historical figures that you might all choose too!

Birth, babies and midwives

In light of the birth of the Royal baby on Monday and the newly breaking news that he will go by the name of George Alexander Louis, I thought that now is a particularly apt time to reflect on how our ideas, and indeed experiences, of birth have changed (or not, as the case may be!) over the centuries from the early-modern period.

Much medical and gynecological knowledge available in the seventeenth-century stemmed from translations of classical sources, including Galen and Hippocrates. In a culture dominated by male translations and reflections on these works, such as those of Nicholas Culpeper, Jane Sharp's achievement in The Midwives Book (1671) is perhaps one of the most remarkable in terms of helping our understanding of labour and birth in the seventeenth century. Though her treatise is an amalgamation of voices since she essentially cuts and pastes sections from other midwifery manuals and classical sources, her own voice and tone is often unmistakable.

Though midwives (thankfully?!) do not now 'annoint [their] hands with Oyl of Lillies, and the Womans Secrets' (p. 153) and instead favour latex gloves for internal examinations, much of what I have transcribed below certainly still has echoes with the modern practice of midwifery.

In Book IV of her text, Sharp sets out 'Rules for Women that are come to their Labour':

- 'When the Patient feels her Throws coming she should walk easily in her Chamber, and then again lye down, keep her self warm, rest her self and then stir again, till she feels the waters coming down and the womb to open; let her not lye long a bed, yet she may lye sometimes and sleep to strengthen her, and to abate pain' (p. 145).

- 'Take notice that all women do not keep the same posture in their delivery; some lye in their beds, being very weak, some sit in a stool or chair, or rest upon the side of the bed, held by other women that come to the Labor' (p. 153).

- 'The danger were much to force delivery, because when the woman hath laboured sore, if she rest not a while, she will not be able presently to endure it, her strength being spent before' (p. 156).

As we can see from these excerpts, though our medical knowledge surrounding labour and its complexities has of course changed dramatically, some of this most basic, yet credible, advice for a woman giving birth is really not so different to what mothers are told today.

Whilst here I have spoken about the intrapartum element of childbirth, if you are interested in what Sharp recommends for the postpartum care of new mothers, I would definitely recommend that you head over and have a read of Jennifer Evans's blog on this very subject! Take a look at it here: http://earlymodernmedicine.com/beyond-birth/

1. Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book, ed. by Elaine Hobby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
2. Frontispiece image taken from the electronic edition of The Midwives Book on EEBO.
3. An engraving of a pregnant woman on a birthing stool, surrounded by her midwife and gossips. Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449803/

© Jenna Townend 2013

Review: 'This I Warn You in Love': Witness of Some Early Quaker Women

The world of female Quakers who lived, operated, and preached in the seventeenth century is still a relatively untilled field of early-modern research. A couple of weeks ago, I did a post on Dorothea Gotherson, and her firm belief in the necessity of female modesty and decorum. I was pointed to Gotherson's work from reading 'This I Warn You in Love': Witness of Some Quaker Women, a booklet that was written by two of my lecturers at Loughborough, Elaine Hobby and Catie Gill, and published this year by The Kindlers. The booklet was so insightful and thought provoking, that I thought I would give an overview of it here!

The booklet is set out with an introduction to the fundamental principles of Quaker women, and an account of the movement's progression during the seventeenth century. One of the most significant things that the introduction notes is that Quaker writers, and thus Quaker women, believed their relationship with God to be intensely personal, and that God was working with them. This is something that is explicitly present in several of the extracts transcribed in the booklet. Furthermore, the introduction explains the fact that Quakers had a great dislike of the strict formalities that had come to dominate religious worship. Quakers firmly believed that these practices had distanced Christians from the dedication seen in early Christianity, and were keen to encourage worshippers to re-engage with it. This, too, is shown to be a recurring theme throughout the excerpts in the booklet.

There are six excerpts in the booklet, focusing on the work of the following Quaker women: Sarah Blackborow, Margaret Abbott, Priscilla Cotton, Mary Cole, Katherine Evans, Sarah Cheevers, Dorothea Gotherson, Margaret Killin, Barbara Patison, Hester Biddle and Dorothy Waugh. As well as these prose extracts in the booklet, an audio recording of them is also included on a CD. Hearing these accounts being read aloud really brings them to life, and the words of these Quaker women take on a new resonance. 

Below I have picked out a couple of my favourite sections from the work of Sarah Blackborow and Margaret Abbott that highlight the potential for a highly personal relationship with God, and the dislike of highly-organised and formal worship or religion.

1) Sarah Blackborow, A Visit to the Spirit in Prison (1658):
'A love there is which doth not cease to the seed of God in you all; and therefore doth invite you everyone, priest and people, to return in to it, that into Wisdom's house you may come, where there is a feast provided of all things well refined'.

2) Margaret Abbott, A Testimony against the False Teachers of this Generation (1658):
'You shall be made anew by the power of the pure spirit of the Son of God. It will teach you to deny all ungodliness. You shall need go to no man to be taught. It will bring you out of all the ways of the world, fashions, customs and traditions...'

The tenacity, self-belief, and sheer determination of these radical women is remarkable, and I would urge anyone with an interest in religious writing to get hold of a copy of this booklet; it will certainly open your eyes to this fascinating world.

'Male and Female Quakers at their Assembly', French School, 17th century

Source: http://firstyear.barnard.edu/americas/puritans/images

© Jenna Townend 2013

Hardwick Hall: 'more glass than wall'

In light of the sudden spurt of summer over the last few days, I confess that I have rather been neglecting my reading and writing of blog posts. The combination of being at home in West Cornwall, blazing hot sunshine and beaches are not especially conducive to work!

I did, however, just want to share with you a few photos that I rediscovered on my iPhone this week. For my birthday in May, my parents came up to Loughborough for the weekend and one day we went over to Hardwick Hall. The house is truly one of the most magnificent things I have ever seen: the adage that it is 'more glass than wall' is certainly true! Of course, in the early-modern period, glass was extremely expensive, and so the amount of window glass on display at Hardwick functions as an external symbol of wealth, class, and social status. Along with the initials of Bess of Hardwick (E. S. - Elizabeth Shrewsbury) that are set atop the Hall's roof, its external facade is certainly something to behold, and this was clearly Bess's intention! There would have been no mistaking the wealth of the Hall's owner as visitors drew close to it. I think that there is something really exciting about being able to literally walk in the footsteps of those who lived and breathed in the period that you are researching, and if any of you have the opportunity to visit Hardwick Hall, I would highly recommend it. I would also recommend the restaurant's fine selection of cake, particularly if you happen to have a penchant for Guinness cake, or beetroot and chocolate cake (yes, really)!

The first two pictures are of the original Hardwick Hall, Bess's childhood home. Eventually, with her accumulated wealth, she returned to the site and re-built the Hall in the place where it stands today (see bottom picture).

© Jenna Townend 2013