The most interesting personality in this early group is the beautiful Mrs.[133] Margaret Blagge. She is the supreme example of a developed religious sense in the court of Charles II. She was not driven to a life of devotion through a grief-enshrouded heart. Religion was to her joy and ecstasy. John Evelyn recorded in his Diary a determination to consecrate the worthy life of Margaret Blagge to posterity, and when he died in 1706 he left a list of "things I would write out fair and reform if I had leisure," among them being the Life of Mrs. Godolphin. This manuscript was first published in 1847. It records a life of singular charm and interest. Yet the facts of Margaret Blagge's life are meager enough. She was born in 1652; was early in France with the Countess of Guildford; when scarcely twelve became maid of honor to the Duchess of York; and then on the death of the Duchess in 1671 entered into the same service with Queen Catherine; in 1674, after a nine-year courtship, married Sidney Godolphin; and in 1678 died in child-birth. It is her inner life that counts, and that life would have left small record had not the beautiful young maid of honor chosen the wise and religious John Evelyn as her friendly counselor in her difficult attempt to maintain a life of purity and piety in the most dissolute court of Europe. Evelyn recounts the success of her devout life in these words: "Arethusa pass'd through all those turbulent waters without soe much as the least staine or tincture in her Chrystall; with her Piety grew up her Witt, which was soe sparkling, accompanyed with a Judgment and Eloquence so exterordinary, a Beauty and Ayre soe charmeing and lovely, in a word, an Address soe universally takeing, that, after a few years, the Court never saw or had seen such a Constellation of perfections amongst all their splendid Circles."[134] But though she was regarded as "a little miracle" at court, her heart was never there. To no young woman of the time were the pomp and glory of the world more alluringly open, but she turned instinctively from all such joys. She counted her beauty a snare and would never "trick and dress herself vpp ... to be fine and ador'd." Lovers crowded about her, but she avoided the vain converse of gallants. Evelyn records her particular gift for mimicry, recitation, acting, but such talents she held in abeyance. At sixteen she acted in a court play, probably Dryden's Indian Emperor, with great success, but her growingly devout spirit came to abhor such recreations, so that when she was summoned by royal request to act in Crowne's Calisto, in 1674, even though the play was to be given all by ladies, and those the most illustrious in the land, it was a matter of almost tragic grief to her that her duty forbade a refusal. "To be herselfe an Actoresse ... cost her not only great reluctancy but many teares."[135] Though she was decked with jewels worth £20,000, though she "trode the Stage with a surprizeing and admirable Aire," and though the whole theater was extolling her, she felt no transport, but, when an interval came, "retired into a Corner, reading a book of devotion." Not even the fact that she played the part of "Diana, the Goddess of Chastity," consoled her.

She had one real calling and that was to a religious life. As a child of seven, in France with the Countess of Guildford, though often "tempted by that By-Gott proselitesse to goe to Masse and be a papist,"[136] she yet could maintain her own faith. Because of her spiritual precocity she was "admitted to the holy Sacrament when she was hardly Eleaven years of age." Though she disliked Catholicism, she praised nunneries, and would have chosen a retired life of devotion and good works, had not her love for Mr. Godolphin and the urgent advice of Mr. Evelyn restrained her. Nearly all her writing and reading were along religious lines. Mr. Evelyn says on this point:

Her Diary is a delightfully spontaneous document. Here is one Resolution:

Equally genuine and charming, but in more decorous and solemn fashion, is the letter in which she consecrated John Evelyn her friend. Indeed, the whole quaint and formal episode of the establishment of this remarkable friendship, seems incredibly pure and lovely when thought of as occurring in the court of which Grammont's Memoirs is a fair record. Evelyn wrote "a little master-piece of biography," partly because of his intimate knowledge of Mrs. Godolphin's spiritual experience and his personal affection for her, but also, in part, because his imagination was inevitably stimulated by the vision of a life so crystal clear in an environment so murky.

The versatility and intellectual energy of the Duchess of Newcastle, the quick wit and instinct for style in Dorothy Osborne's letters, the grave and sincere religious feeling coupled with considerable theological learning on the part of women in influential positions like Margaret Blagge, Lady Pakington, and Lady Warwick, the vivid social and political pictures in the biographies by Mrs. Hutchinson and Lady Fanshawe, the gay playing with belles lettres in Mary North's little society, and especially the extraordinary vogue of Mrs. Philips, are sufficient indications, as we look back over the period, that a new spirit was awake. It reads now almost as if there were a general and brilliant opening of literary pursuits to women. But it is also significant to recall that Mrs. Philips and the Duchess of Newcastle were the only two women whose ability or learned tastes were known at the time beyond their own small private circle. In reality the work was sporadic, secluded, uninfluential. And the fame even of the Duchess of Newcastle and Mrs. Philips is hardly established before 1660. It is with the Restoration that the more varied and public activities begin.

2. The Century following the Restoration

The period to be here presented in detail is the century following the Restoration. During this period the work of women spreads out in new directions. Not only is there a greater variety in the kinds of writing, but other forms of self-expression are entered upon. In this more complicated era the strictly chronological method becomes confusing. It seems more desirable to take up the work under different species, keeping to chronological development within each species.

Two kinds of new work by women, acting and painting, demand brief preliminary notice. Though possibly not within the category of learned occupations they must yet be recognized as of great importance in the new life opening before women.

Actresses

Charles II had in France been familiar with the custom of having women on the stage, and when he issued his two patents to Davenant and Killigrew he inserted the famous clause, "We do permit and give leave from this time to come that all women's parts be acted by women." Mrs. Coleman had taken the part of Ianthe in Davenant's Siege of Rhodes in 1656, but this was not a regular play. It was more of the nature of an opera or spectacle. The first woman to act on the public stage in England was probably the actress who played Desdemona, December 8, 1660. "J. Jordan" wrote a prologue to introduce her as "the first woman that came to act on the stage," but he did not give her name.[139]

The theatrical novelty initiated by this unknown actress was far-reaching in its effects. Through the ensuing years a constantly increasing number of women followed the lure of the stage. No other opportunity open to the ambition of women met with so eager a response, or could number so many aspirants, or could register success so unqualified. Yet as we read of these early English actresses we hardly think of acting as a profession or of them as artists. They were in no sense students of the parts they played. Beauty, youth, high spirits, a certain native endowment of wit or boldness, ability to sing a song or dance a jig, seemed to meet all the demands of audiences too much delighted with the mere fact of seeing women on the stage to be over-critical of their technique or interpretation. Moreover, the runs of plays were short, three days being about the average, so there was hardly time to work up finished productions. The stage tenure of most of the actresses was also brief, hardly more than a prelude to the social and domestic irregularities of their later lives. Cunningham names Mrs. Betterton as the only actress of Charles II's day who was not mistress to some man at court. "Frailties," as they were euphemistically called, became so normally associated with actresses that Anne Bracegirdle excited incredulous surprise by her reputed purity of life, and she was presented by the noblemen of her day with a purse of eight hundred guineas in recognition of her virtue.[140] The immorality of these early actresses, girls of no rigorous professional training and no professional standards, is quite intelligible. In appearing before the public at all they broke so many conventions, defied the feminine ideal so completely, that a few steps further in pursuit of flattery and luxurious living hardly seemed to count. As actresses they were at once under a moral stigma anyhow, so far as the soberer part of the community was concerned, and they naturally followed the path of least resistance and accepted the morality of the court of the merry monarch, a court where virtue with her "lean and scare-crow face" seldom intruded. The unfortunate outcome of the turpitude of the Restoration actresses is that they built up in the public mind a prejudice against actresses as a class, a prejudice which affected later even such women as Mrs. Betterton, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs. Cibber, or Mrs. Siddons. But it must not be forgotten that they served the cause of women by opening the way to a new and important profession, a profession in which women have no handicaps. The stage has been represented by more women of genius, and has given to women more unstinted recognition in fame and money, than have any of the other forms of public activity into which women have so far been admitted, except, possibly, in late years, administrative work in social service.

It is unnecessary, in this study, to carry the account of the actresses into further detail, or further down the century. The history of the part women took on the seventeenth and eighteenth century stage would make a volume of itself. And since it was many years before acting was connected with any critical or intellectual conception of the plays represented, it may suffice here to leave this portion of the new work of women with the mere announcement of its inception.

Artists

To acting we may add another new realm, that of painting. The earliest woman portrait-painter on record in England is Anne Carlisle, who died about 1680. In 1658 Sir William Sanderson, in his Graphice, commenting on the artists then in England, said, "And in Oyl Colours we have a vertuous example in that worthy Artist, Mrs. Carlisle." In the notes left by Vertue to Walpole was a statement that he had seen in about 1730 the portrait Mrs. Carlisle had painted of herself. Her chief work was in copying the paintings of Italian masters, or, according to a fashion of the times, reproducing them in miniature. It is said that Charles I admired her work so warmly that he presented to her and Van Dyck ultramarine to the value of five hundred pounds.[141]

Of more distinguished ability was Mary Beale (1637-1697),[142] who is said to have studied either with Sir Peter Lely or Robert Walker. At least she watched Lely paint and thereby gained some of his technique. She worked in oils, water-colors, and crayons. Through Sir Peter Lely she was given access to some of the best works of Van Dyck and in copying these gained a training somewhat similar to that given most artists by sojourns in Italy or Holland. There are in the English National Portrait Gallery portraits by her of Charles II and Abraham Cowley. At Knole is her portrait of John Milton; at Woburn Abbey, one of the Duke of Monmouth; Archbishop Tillotson, Henry, Duke of Norfolk, Dr. Sydenham, Dr. Croone, Bishop Wilkins, are among those who sat to her. No other English portrait-painter of the period had so distinguished a clientèle or is represented by so many canvases in English galleries. Her success may be measured, in part, by her financial returns. In a pocket-book kept by her husband in 1672 is this entry: "Received this year, for pictures done by my dearest heart, 202l. 5s." The receipts for 1674 were 216l. 5s.; and for 1677, 429l. She was still painting important portraits in 1691, for we find in the Term Catalogue for Michaelmas of that year the announcement of "The true Effigies of his Grace, John, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. Engraven by Rob. White on a large sheet of Paper, from the Original lately painted by Mrs. Mary Beale."

According to the manuscript of Mr. Oldys, Mrs. Beale was also celebrated for her poetry. He styles her, "that masculine poet, as well as Painter, the incomparable Mrs. Beale." Dr. Woodford included in his translations of the Psalms several versions by Mrs. Beale whom he eulogizes as "an absolutely compleat Gentlewoman," and to whom he wrote several poems under the name "Beliza."[143]

Anne Killigrew (1660-1685), a maid of honor to Mary of Modena, died at twenty-five, but she had already attained considerable repute as a portrait painter. There is a tradition that she studied with Sir Peter Lely. If so she must have taken these lessons before she was twenty, for Lely left England in 1680. Dryden says that her portrait of James II expressed "not only his outward part, but drew forth the very image of his heart," and that she was equally successful in depicting the bright beauty and peerless majesty of Mary of Modena. Her portrait of herself was engraved by Becket and prefaces the volume of her poems issued the year after her death. Other paintings were religious in subject, as in her portrayal of incidents in the life of John the Baptist; or mythological, as in her representation of Diana's nymphs. Of far more possible significance is her landscape work. During 1660-1685 Robert Streater is the only English landscape-painter of whom we have record. Charles II brought over a number of Italian and Flemish artists who painted English landscapes in the style of Ruysdael, Poussin, or Salvator Rosa, and their work would be the pictures chiefly known at court. It is not improbable that Miss Killigrew's landscapes were copies or imitations of these foreign artists. Dryden says she painted ruins of Greece and Rome, and forest glades in which were nymphs and shaggy satyrs. Such pictures must have been copies. But Dryden also enumerates sylvan scenes of herds and flocks; clear, shallow little brooks; deep rivers reflecting as in a mirror the trees on their banks. Such pictures are truly English in tone and whatever their intrinsic value such a choice of subjects would put her with Robert Streater at the very inception of English landscape art. And though the scanty records concerning her painting do not substantiate Dryden's description of her landscapes, it could hardly be supposed that he would have been so explicit in a poem written for the family and immediately after her death had there not been some pictures at least moderately correspondent to his lines.[144]

Other seventeenth-century names of less importance show an aspiration in art somewhat above that countenanced by the boarding-schools. Mrs. Pepys and Miss Margaret Pen may serve to indicate the sort of work being done in amateurish fashion in various homes. Both ladies were "learning to limn" with one Mr. Browne. Pepys was tremendously interested in his wife's progress. In the midst of terrifying accounts of the plague and the fire there come in 1665 and 1666 frequent notes on her pictures. Once after a week's absence on exhausting work he records, "To my wife, and having viewed her last piece of drawing since I saw her which is seven or eight days, which pleases me beyond anything in the world, to bed with great content, but weary." The next day, on being importuned to buy her a pearl necklace, he promises it, but only "if she pleases me in her painting." On one occasion he called on Lady Pen and says of the visit, "Talking with Mrs. Pegg Pen, and looking at her pictures, and commended them; but, Lord! so far short of my wife's as no comparison." A month later is the note, "I took my Lady Pen home, and her daughter Pegg and, after dinner I made my wife show them her pictures, which did mad Pegg Pen, who learnes of the same man." In September, 1665, Pepys had just seen his wife's picture of our Saviour and thought it so pretty that he boasted of it to Evelyn, at which Evelyn paid him in kind by telling him that "the beautiful Mrs. Middleton is rare (in painting) and his own wife do brave things."[145]

The Evelyn family seems to have been instinctively artistic. In Mr. Thoresby's account of a visit to Evelyn, he said he was shown "many drawings and paintings of his own and his lady's doing; one especially of enamel was surprisingly fine, and this ingenious lady told me how she wrought it." Both Mr. Evelyn and his son Draper were proud of Mary's work in painting. Sixteen years after her death Mr. Thoresby wrote: "He afterwards carried me in his coach to his son Draper's at the Temple, and showed me many curious pieces of his ingenious daughter's performances, both very small in miniature, and as large as the life in oil colours, equal it is thought to the greatest masters of the age. He gave me a specimen of some prospects he took in Italy, and etched upon the copper by his own hand."

At the end of the century is Sarah Curtis (d. 1743) who was married in 1701 to Bishop Hoadly. Before her marriage she had been a pupil of Mary Beale, and she is now represented in the National Portrait Gallery by three canvases, portraits of Burnet, Winston, and Hoadly. Mrs. Rowe's paintings were likewise highly prized by discriminating friends. Of greater interest is Mrs. Delany (1700-1788). She copied at least seventy-two pictures by old masters and painted many portraits. Her work is not represented in public galleries, but many of her pictures are still preserved in private collections. Susan Penelope Gibson was a successful miniature painter. Elizabeth Creed was also an artist of at least local repute. She did sacred subjects as altar-pieces for neighboring churches and she painted numerous portraits. She also gave free lessons to the girls living near her. Her daughter Elizabeth, who inherited her artistic tastes, is said to have ornamented a hall in a Tudor mansion near Oundle.

Short and insignificant as this list appears, it yet assumes real importance when we realize not only that these were the earliest English women to enter this field, but that the list shows up surprisingly well when compared with a similar list of the native English painters among the men of the period. Charles I was a great lover of art and he summoned many artists, some of the first rank, to England, and he bought pictures with a far-sighted munificence, and Charles II was ambitious of following along the same distinguished path. But a list of the pictures painted in England before 1700 shows hardly an English name. Hence the presence of any successful women artists is doubly significant.

The amateurish quality of the painting may be in part explained by the fact that in but one case, that of Mary Beale, was there any impetus or training such as are necessarily associated with work adopted as a profession. The painting was an accomplishment, a pleasant occupation for leisure hours, a resource, rather than a life purpose ardently pursued. The only external reward for the many hours at the easel was the praise of a small circle of friends. The real incentive was an inner demand for some form of self-expression, and the mere number of pictures painted, quite apart from the question of their excellence, is indicative of the eagerness with which women welcomed any sort of opportunity for the free play of their own individuality.

Authors

It was not, however, acting or painting that occupied most of the women whose natures craved something out of the ordinary routine. Writing was a much more natural and feasible resource. Acting implied a public, and even painting, especially portrait-painting, was likely to be semi-public. But writing could be carried on in retirement and the results submitted only to the partial criticism of a home or social circle. It did not bring women before a carping public or necessarily into competition with men, for even if plays were produced and books published, the name of the writer could be veiled, as it usually was, under a decent anonymity. Hence women who respected the obvious conventions could yet indulge themselves in authorship.

WRITERS ON PRACTICAL SUBJECTS

When women entered upon writing as a career, it might be thought that they would at first take up subjects familiar to them, but such was not the case. For instance, most of the books for children, before the venture of the Newberys about the middle of the eighteenth century, were by men.[146] It was James Janeway whose maxim, "A child is never too little to go to Hell," resulted in works so popular as A Looking Glass for Children and A Token for Children (1676); John Bunyan's A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rimes for Children; being Divine Poems on the Creed, Commonwealth and Several other Subjects (1690); Mr. Mason's A Little Catechism with little Verses and little sayings, for little children (1693). The Divine and Moral Songs for Children, by Isaac Watts in 1720, carried on the religious instruction. There were also various accounts of the "Life and Saintly Death" of children of tender years, which were published with the avowed purpose of influencing other children of like tender years, but none of these are by women. The first women I have come upon who wrote professedly for children are Sarah Fielding and Mrs. Collyer in 1749.[147]

In a somewhat less degree the same condition exists in relation to medicine, especially in the realms most definitely in the hands of women. Mrs. Pilkington tells us that her father was the first man midwife in England, but nearly all the books on midwifery were written by men. Two women, however, appear in print, in a discussion of their professional work. Mrs. Jane Sharp's book is entitled The Midwives' Book, or the whole Art of midwifery discovered, directing Child-bearing Women how to behave themselves in their Conception, Breeding, Bearing, and Nursing, of Children. In Six Books. By Mrs. Jane Sharp, Practitioner in the Art of Midwifery above thirty years.[148]

Mrs. Elizabeth Cellier, a second writer on midwifery, is known perhaps chiefly because she was supposed to have some connection with the Meal Tub Plot. After her acquittal from treason charges she wrote a pamphlet called Malice Defeated, in which she courageously expressed her adherence to an unpopular cause in the words, "I do not yet so much fear the smell of Newgate as to be frighted for telling the truth; nor is death so great a terror to me, but that I am still ready to seal the same with my blood."[149] She must have been a woman of substance as well as courage, for she was fined a thousand pounds because of certain passages in this pamphlet. She was also condemned to stand in the pillory three times, a punishment which, according to Lady Russell, she bore with intrepidity and nonchalance, protecting her head from missiles by means of a battledore which she held up with one hand, while with the other she gathered up and put into her pocket all the stones that fell within her reach.

In her profession of midwifery Mrs. Cellier was of high repute, but her interests were not circumscribed by her own practice. One of her schemes was the establishment of a "Colledg of Midwives" where the best possible training should be given. Though her pamphlet, entitled A Scheme for the Foundation of a Royal Hospital and raising a revenue of 5000 l or 6000 l a year by and for the Maintenance of a Corporation of Skilful Midwives, did not result in the establishment of her proposed college, the idea and the formulation of the plan do credit to her foresight and intelligence, and sound quite in line with modern forms of woman's civic enterprise.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could show a long list of interesting and elaborately worked-out books on housewifery in general and cooking in particular, but it seldom happens that one of these books is by a woman. It is, to be sure, not impossible that more of the material was furnished by women than is apparent on the surface. Very many of the books on housekeeping matters were anonymous and were probably mere publishers' compilations from unacknowledged sources, and in such cases the actual material may have come from various housewives. But during the century I have come upon but three women who published under their own names the results of their experiences as cooks. The earliest of these was Mrs. Hannah Woolley. She was born about 1623. Her mother and elder sisters are said to have been "very well skilled in physick and chirurgery" and they taught her in her youth. She was twice married, the first time to a schoolmaster named Woolley, and then to a Mr. Francis Challinor. She is known usually as Mrs. Woolley. One of her books, The Queen-like Closet, or A rich Cabinet stored with all manner of rare Receipts for preserving, Candying, and Cookery. Very pleasant and beneficial to all ingenuous persons of the Female Sex, reached its eleventh edition by 1696. Mrs. Woolley had been governess in two noble families and had acquired definite ideas as to polite behavior. This knowledge also she committed to the printed page. On manners, but especially on household management, she wrote as an authority and received due recognition.

Another book, by a woman whose initials I have not been able to expand into a name, is the following: The Cook's New Years Gift, Cookery refined, or The Lady, Gentlewoman and Servant-maid's Companion: containing the Art of dressing all sorts of Flesh, Fish, and Fowl, various ways, after the newest Mode; with their proper seasonings, sauces, Garnishes, serving up and carving, etc. By Mrs. A. M. a long practiser of this curious Art. (Term Catalogues, Mich. 1697. Mich. 1700.)

The work of Mrs. Woolley in the seventeenth century found its most worthy counterpart in the eighteenth century in Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, which far exceeds any Thing of the kind ever yet Published.... By a Lady. London. Printed for the Author; and sold at Mrs. Ashburn's, a China-Shop, the Corner of Fleet Ditch, 1747. The book was issued with about two hundred subscribers. A fourth edition in octavo came out in 1751, a ninth edition in 1759, and many later editions. In her Preface Mrs. Glasse said, "If I have not wrote in the high polite Stile I hope I shall be forgiven, for my Intention is to instruct the lower Sort, therefore treat them in their own Way. For Example: when I bid them lard a Fowl, if I should bid them lard with large Lardoons, they would not know what I want: But when I say they must lard with small Pieces of Bacon, they know what I mean." The new element in her book was this attempt to write out receipts that were simple enough to come into general use.

WRITERS ON RELIGION AND THEOLOGY

The Term Catalogues for 1670-1713 show how great was the preponderance during those years of books on "Divinity." That women should share in this prevailing interest is but natural, for religion came within the accepted canon of the truly feminine. And there are evidences of an even greater amount of devotional writing by women than might be expected. The period 1650 to 1750, and especially the first half of that period, could show a long list of women noted for lives of piety and good works.[150] The loose living characteristic of the court apparently had its reaction towards exceptional spiritual rigor on the part of many ladies of rank. And of these devout ladies no small number found in the composition of religious verse or prose the intellectual and emotional outlet denied them in other ways. Almost none of this writing was meant for a public. The reams of meditations, prayers, and reflections left in manuscript were merely a private resource, and often kept secret even from the author's family. Such writings were in their nature fugitive, and it would only now and then happen that some relative or friend would collect and order the papers and see them through the press. We accordingly get scattered hints through funeral sermons and casual notices of an amount of devotional writing greatly in excess of that published. But to tabulate even all the published material would be wearisome and to no good end. A few illustrative examples showing the chief characteristics may suffice.

One of the best examples of the persistent and prodigious industry shown by some of these ladies is the work of Lady Elizabeth Brooke. She began at thirty to make notes on sermons, to copy extracts from commentaries, and occasionally to write out some personal opinions, and she kept at this sedative occupation till her death fifty-two years later. It is painful to reflect on such a mass of undigested material, but the significant fact remains that she preferred such reading and writing to the ordinary interests of her sex. Some of her "Observations and Rules for Practice" were published as an appendix to the sermon preached at her funeral. Selections from her writings were published as late as 1828 in The Lady's Monitor.

Anne Murray, Lady Halkett, was even more industrious. Her father, who was tutor of Charles I and Provost of Eton, died when she was a child, but her mother, who was governess to the Princess Elizabeth, gave her "a complete education." Of her early life she says: "My mother spared no expense in educating all her children in the most suitable way to improve them ... and paid masters for teaching my sister and mee to write, speak French, play on the lute and virginalls, and dance, and kept a gentlewoman to teach us all kinds of needlework, which shows I was not brought up in an idle life." After several complicated and long drawn-out love affairs—fully described in her Autobiography—Anne married Sir James Halkett in 1656. As the years passed her interests finally centered on two subjects, divinity and medicine. In "physick and surgery" she gained great repute. She was consulted in difficult cases from the remotest parts of the kingdom and her fame spread even to Holland. It was quaintly said of her: "She was ever employed either in doing or reaping good: in the summer season she vyed with the bee or ant, in gathering herbs, flowers, worms, snails, etc., for the still or limbeck, for the mortar or boyling pan, etc., and was ordinarily then in a dress fitted for her still-house; making preparations of extracted waters, spirits, ointments, conserves, salves, powders, etc., which she ministered every Wednesday to a multitude of poor infirm persons, besides what she dayly sent abroad to persons of all ranks who consulted her in their maladies."[151] But it was religious themes only that employed her pen. The catalogue of her writings includes twenty-one volumes, or a total of about eight thousand pages of manuscript, some in quarto, some in folio size, and all bound. Some of these books were printed at Edinburgh in 1701. The title of one book of three hundred and fifteen pages will indicate the general character of her writing: Select Meditations and Prayers upon the First Week, with Observations on each Days Creation, and Considerations on the Seven Capital Vices to be opposed, and their opposite Virtues to be studied and practised.

All but nine of these books were written during Lady Halkett's twenty-eight years of widowhood when she had much leisure, but under any circumstances the task was a great one, and becomes the more amazing when we reflect upon it as really only a private recreation. To write so much with no urgency of fame or money shows some very strong inner demand for expression and a very facile pen.

Another type of religious book goes back for its inspiration to Elizabeth Jocelyn's famous Legacie. One of Lady Halkett's books was The Mother's Will to an Unborn Child, written in 1656 before the birth of her daughter Elizabeth. Books of advice from parents to children to be read after the death of the parents were not uncommon. Elizabeth Sadler (1623-1690), the wife of the Reverend Anthony Walker, was an exceedingly devout woman whose literary instinct and a prevision of death led her to write a large book in octavo for the instruction of her two daughters. Two other books will sufficiently illustrate the type: The Experiences of God's gracious dealing with Mrs. Elizabeth White, late wife of Mr. Tho. White of Caldecot in the County of Bucks; as they were written under her own hand, and found in her Closet after her decease: she dying in child-bed, December 5th, 1669;[152] The Legacie of a Dying Mother to her mourning children; being the Experiences of Mistress Susanna Bell, who died March 13, 1672. With an Epistle Dedicatory by Thomas Brookes, Minister of the Gospel.

Lady Russell is an example of a woman who definitely set out to be religious, and whose writings contain an analysis of her methods. The circumstances of her life give everything pertaining to her a particular interest. The execution of Lord Russell for treason in 1683 left her broken by the shock. She had, though without avail, set in motion every possible agency to avert his fate, and she had devoted herself absolutely to him till his tragic death. Then, after a period of the deepest despondency, she entered again upon the duties that lay before her. She conducted the education and arranged the marriages of her three children. She showed herself an excellent business woman in the management of her estate. And she steadily interested herself in securing benefices and other offices for persons of whom her husband would have approved. Her Letters as published contain a few during the first years of her happy married life; many written concerning the "judicial murder" of Lord Russell; and very many concerning family affairs and the candidates for whom she was seeking favor. As letters they are uninteresting. The subject-matter is generally too local and temporary to hold the attention of the modern reader, and the style is dry and hard. Even the records of her bitter grief and of her struggle to attain a mood of Christian resignation are less affecting than might be expected. A kind of apathy seemed to settle down over her spirit. She was too deeply hurt to find in words any balm for her sorrows. She answered condolences when she must, but briefly, and with no lightening of the gloom that encompassed her. Of all her letters the longest and most valuable as a personal revelation is one written to her children July 21, 1691, "a day of sad remembrances," for it was the anniversary of her husband's execution eight years before. In 1691, Rachel, the oldest child, was twenty years old, and Wriothesley, the youngest, was eleven. The five or six pages in which Lady Russell recounts, probably especially for the benefit of Rachel, her method of personal spiritual watch-care, has great value as a religious document, for she was not alone in her way of seeking salvation, in her heart-searchings, in her dependence on the external means of grace, in her sedulous striving after perfection. It was the devout habit of devout people of the time, but perhaps carried to a meticulous excess by Lady Russell. She says that she was always provided with a little piece of paper on which she wrote her faults and temptations as they occurred during the day. At night a careful review of this record contributed to a better watch and ward.

After this service she went over her faults of the week, making a summary of them. A similar abridgment for the month was entered in a book kept for that purpose, the incriminating little pieces of paper were torn up, and a new record entered upon. She found that a frequent re-reading of the book "saved much time in looking back" and contributed to humility. Evidently Lady Russell was as orderly in religion as she was in her business affairs. She finds her definite tabulations "hugely more satisfying to her mind, than a more carelesse loose way of living is, and no settled method." The letter closes with the admonition, "Be devout & reguler in your dutys to God—heaven wil be secure, and pleasures innocent."[153] Lady Russell's letters reveal a devout, difficult, over-burdened life, so much concerned with the means of grace as never to have any happy consciousness of grace itself.

Elizabeth Burnet (1661-1712), daughter of Sir Richard Blake, married at seventeen into a Catholic family. Her husband, Robert Berkeley, was a ward of Bishop Fell, through whom the marriage was brought about. The firmness and tact necessary to maintain her own views as a Protestant and hold her husband to that faith, and yet not antagonize the family, could hardly be expected of so young a girl. But Bishop Fell had judged her character well and she met all the demands of so delicate a situation. She took advantage of many leisure hours in the country to investigate fully the questions at issue between the Catholics and the Protestants. She did not know the learned tongues, but she studied the Scriptures, read commentaries, and conversed with clergymen. When she became a widow in 1693, at thirty-two, she employed her time in two characteristic ways. In the administration of her husband's charitable schemes she found congenial activity. And she gave way to her natural instinct for writing. In 1700 she became the wife of Bishop Burnet. His approval of her literary work and his request that it be published led to the production of her Method of Devotion. It was so popular that she revised and enlarged it and brought out a second edition. And it was republished in 1713 after her death. The book contained "Rules for holy and devout Living," "Prayers on Several Occasions," "Advices and Devotions on the Holy Sacrament." Mrs. Trotter said of her in 1701, "She has an extraordinary clear and solid judgment, the truest goodness and prudence, and the most charming affability in her behaviour; in short, I have met with no such perfection in any of my sex."