Chapter 1 ‘She much delighted in that holy Book’: women’s religious reading habits

Her Bible: women’s religious books

Religious reading material was, as conduct book writers wanted to emphasise, the most popular type of literature for early modern book owners. The most common books referred to among inventories of women’s goods are Bibles or books of common prayer, with little other information given, such as in the case of Francis Pawley, whose 1681 inventory includes ‘one old bible’.³¹ Similarly, the inventory of Katherine Perceval (née Southwell), recorded, ‘I ffrench Comon prayer booke’ held in a ‘Black Leather Trunk’, but no other books.³² Frequently this is the only reference to be found to books owned by women. Some, however, left much longer book lists, and even these tend to reveal a majority of religious literature. In 1647, when Lady Margaret Heath died, an inventory of the over eighty books kept in her closet was produced.³³ At least fifty-eight texts out of the eighty listed can be categorised as religious, including scripture, devotional literature and theological treatises. Heath’s reading tastes do not appear to have been sectarian – the list includes works by Puritan, Protestant, Jesuit and Catholic authors. The mainstays of seventeenth-century religious polemic, such as Bishop Hall and William Gouge, are there, but there are also works by Jeremias Drexel and St Francis de Sales.³⁴ The inclusion of these books in the collection shows a desire to develop knowledge of other denominational positions. Heath’s husband, Sir Robert Heath, was a Royalist judge who is known to have been intolerant of other religions, having supported the persecution of Catholics.³⁵ Perhaps Heath was using these books to shore up her own contradictory religious beliefs; or perhaps she genuinely disagreed with her husband’s position.

Alongside book lists, annotations or marginalia are one of the best records we have of women’s literary consumption – better, in fact, as they often give the most tangible evidence we have of actual reading, as opposed to just owning. Sometimes women’s annotations are extensive, providing notes on the text and their own interpretations, or even adding details about their lives outside of the book, as in the case of Susanna Beckwith, discussed in this chapter. More common, however, are lone autograph inscriptions, where a woman has written her name in the book and not much else. This certainly indicates an ownership claim; whether it is a sign of reading, we do not know. These inscriptions are still useful when thinking about the interplay between books and identity, however. Rebecca Laroche has examined women’s signatures in printed medical texts, arguing that a woman’s signature ‘claimed her ownership of an expensive volume and the knowledge that it held’.³⁶ Laroche focused specifically on medical knowledge, and the way women’s signatures acted as a claim to this knowledge, allowing them to mark out an area of intellectual authority. She has argued that this was in some ways a subversion of patriarchal authority, as these printed volumes tended to speak broadly to male medical practitioners, with select entries aimed at gentlewomen readers – but by inscribing their name at the beginning of the volume, women were staking a claim to all the knowledge contained therein, not simply that which was deemed acceptable for them.³⁷

The act of writing a name in a book, whether to indicate ownership, to stake a knowledge claim, or simply as a form of writing practice, reveals various relationships with a book, either as an object or as a source of information and ideas (or both). These inscriptions tell us not only about this relationship but also about interpersonal relationships in which books become an actor; for example, in the case of gift inscriptions, or in competing ownership claims. They also demonstrate some aspect of performative self-fashioning, as women laid claim to the positions, beliefs or opinions held within the books.

Dedications, therefore, were both performative and performed.³⁸ Women signing religious texts, be they devotional or theological, demonstrates a lot about how they wanted to situate themselves in a world where religion was highly contested and central to most people’s lives. The margins and title pages of books can be seen as an at least semi-public space; Jason Scott-Warren suggests that all annotations are to an extent ‘outward-facing’ and that books were therefore ‘adjuncts to everyday sociability’.³⁹ Signatures, particularly those which are accompanied by longer inscriptions, or where more than one person has left their mark, are indicators of social relationships, intended for an audience of some kind, and the margins of a book become a space in which a person can present themselves to that audience. Therefore, in Scott-Warren’s words, ‘the sociable space of the book is a place for marking yourself out’, and as books were passed between family, friends and acquaintances, ‘aspects of communal life – the negotiation of relationships, the debating of reputations – rubbed off on them’.⁴⁰ The identity produced through inscription and annotation is therefore often sociable or relational.

This is particularly evident in early modern Bibles, which were often repositories of annotations by both men and women.⁴¹ The sixteenth-century introduction of the Geneva Bible, with its reading aids, contributed to the developing practice of writing on scripture.⁴² The printed marginalia and glosses that were included in the Geneva Bible encouraged private reading practices and, as Femke Molekamp has argued, it ‘was a book which owners regularly styled to conform to their tastes and needs’.⁴³ One particularly good example is the Bible of Susanna Beckwith, now held in the British Library.⁴⁴ Biographical details about Beckwith are scant; what we know of her comes from her annotations on her family Bible. Given her level of literacy and the dates of her annotations (which were largely made in the 1610s and 1620s), she was probably a Jacobean woman of the gentry or similar social rank. Beckwith wrote extensively in her Bible, not only inscribing her name and dedicating it to her daughter but also adding family memoranda and some notes on the text.⁴⁵ Her annotations give an insight into the place of the book within the family, its use for devotional and theological matters, the practical lessons Beckwith gained from reading and the relationship between reading and the passage of time within a religious household.

Beckwith established her ownership of the book by inscribing her name and initials at several points throughout the text. These appear to bear no relation to the adjacent passages, and it is not clear why Beckwith chose to inscribe her name within the body of the text rather than on or near the title page or end pages, as was more common for such inscriptions. Moreover, she wrote a dedication in the book, addressed to her daughter, which was again, unusually, placed within the main body of the text. At the end of the Apocrypha, Beckwith wrote:

Susanna Beckwith my deare childe I leaue the this booke as the best Jewell I haue, Reade it with a zealous harte to understand truly, and apply all thou readest either to confirme thy faith, or to increase thy Repentance: Bee not ouercombd with evill: but ouer come evell with goodnese: Bee not wearie of well doing for in due season, thou shalt reape iff thou fainte not. Bee not high minded, but make thy selfe equale unto them of the lower sorte. Now our Lord Jesus Christ himselfe, and god euen our father, which hath loued us, and hath giuen us euerlasting consolation and good hope through grace: comfort thy harte, and stablish therin euerie good word, and worke: to the praise of god, and patient waiting for our Sauiour Christ his coming: come, Lord Jesus, come quickly, for thy servant cometh I ame willing, help my unwillinges 5:23.⁴⁶

This dedication is revealing in the advice given about reading and the relationship with religion that is suggested. Beckwith referred to the Bible as ‘the best Jewell I haue’. The spiritual value of the scripture has also been given material value, in the object of the book, and this reference gives an indication of the way in which such books might have been treated within households such as Beckwith’s.⁴⁷ Beckwith was advising her daughter how to read the book to get the most spiritual benefit from it, creating a conversation between mother, daughter and the text. She was using the book to give advice for her daughter’s conduct in life, with the reading of the scripture as a way into this.

Beckwith’s reading of the Bible was ‘extensive’; it relied on interactions with and input from other texts to produce the best understanding.⁴⁸ The question of how to read the book was obviously an important one to Beckwith. On the page facing the translator’s address to Queen Elizabeth, she entered a poem beginning with the lines

Heere is the well where waters flow,

To quench our heat of sinne,

Heere is the tree, wheer truth doth grow,

To lead our lines therein.⁴⁹

This verse, comprising seven stanzas in Beckwith’s version, was commonly printed in editions of the Geneva Bible after 1578.⁵⁰ It was usually placed immediately after the title page, in a similar position to where Beckwith has chosen to write it out. There are some small differences in her version: for example, where she used the word ‘well’ in the first line, this was traditionally ‘spring’ in the printed versions. She also swapped two lines from the sixth stanza. The original version read:

Pray still in faith, with this respect,

To fructify therein,

That knowledge may bring this effect,

To mortify thy sin.⁵¹

However, Beckwith’s version became:

Pray still in faith, with this respect

to mortifie thy sinne

that knowledge may bringe god effort

to frutifie therein.⁵²

Beckwith’s addition of this verse shows her awareness of theological paratexts, specifically other printed versions of the scripture. The verse was not printed in the 1597 edition Beckwith owned, despite being included in other editions from the same year.⁵³ Whatever the reason for its exclusion, Beckwith’s use of this verse demonstrates an awareness of other versions of the Bible beyond her own copy. The mistakes in the manuscript verse, moreover, imply either that she was writing it from memory or at least not copying it line for line from an original, or possibly not reading the original very carefully.

Furthermore, this addition indicates an ability and willingness to adapt a text to give an improved reading experience – evidently, she felt a need to include this verse for future readers, either herself or others in her family. The poem includes the lines:

Reade not this booke in any case

but with a single eye

Reade not, but first desire Gods grace

to understande thereby.⁵⁴

The fact that the verse specifically deals with reading advice shows the way in which she was shaping and controlling the reading experience; presumably the advice contained therein was meant to be followed when dealing with the text. This is backed up by its similarity to the dedication to her daughter; Beckwith emphasised the need to read scripture in a certain way, both to herself and any potential readers, and very specifically to her daughter.

There is more evidence of the ability to extract and adapt devotional material in Beckwith’s marginal annotations. Beneath I Samuel 25:29, Beckwith wrote:

Wisdome openeth the mouth

of the dumbe, and maketh the

tongues of babes eloquent.⁵⁵

This is a line from the Apocrypha: the Wisdom of Solomon 10:21. The chapter of Samuel, beside which Beckwith wrote this extract, tells the story of the relationships between David, Abigail and Nabal. It is unclear exactly why Beckwith felt this verse was relevant to the chapter, if that was why she wrote it there. It may be that she had heard a sermon or read commentary connecting the two, or that she personally felt that the sentiment was appropriate. Whatever the reason, it demonstrates her capacity to assess scripture and make connections, and to shape the reading experience through the margins of her Bible.⁵⁶

There is one other occasion where she added verse to a chapter of the Bible, in the form of a short prayer by John Norden. Underneath Isaiah 66, she wrote:

Doe nothinge but see first thou craue,

Aide from the Lord good end to haue;

Soe shalt thou haue success alwayes,

As thou shalt wish and happie dayes.⁵⁷

This prayer was entitled by Norden ‘a praier for the helpe and assistance of God in all our doings, and that we doe nothing but in his feare and due obedience’, and appears in the collection of his prayers, A Pensive Mans Practise.⁵⁸ This was a very popular book in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, going through multiple editions and contributing to a form of ‘household Protestantism’.⁵⁹ Mary Hampson Patterson argues that Norden probably used the Geneva Bible for most of his scriptural references, which may be why Beckwith transcribed it into her copy.⁶⁰ Isaiah 66 tells of God’s gifts to his followers and punishment for those who disavow him, a sentiment that seems to be echoed by Norden’s prayer. This demonstrates Beckwith’s ‘extensive’ and ‘active’ reading, drawing together different texts to provide context for or to interpret the scripture. These three verse annotations are all written in the same style, likely with the same pen. The two latter stanzas also have decorative detail surrounding them. They are all neater and perhaps more carefully written than the rest of Beckwith’s notes, which have slightly thicker pen strokes and darker ink, and which display less care taken over the form of the letters and the placing on the page. This may be due to the difference in content. Beckwith’s other notes were more personal in tone, either relating to her family or making short notes indicating the usefulness of certain passages. This more practical, familiar and quotidian use of the Bible appears not to have warranted such careful annotation as the paratextual devotional additions.

Beckwith’s reading was a temporal and repeated practice, integrated into the structure of daily life in the household.⁶¹ Throughout the Psalms, she wrote notations marking when different entries should be read, heard or used in worship. Next to around sixty Psalms, Beckwith has written either ‘Mor’ (or ‘Morn’) or ‘Even’, signifying whether they were to be used in the morning or the evening. This follows the pattern recommended by the Book of Common Prayer, which allocated Psalms for morning and evening prayer.⁶² This demonstrates the practical use of the Bible within the household, and the fact that devotion was reliant on habitual and repeated readings of the text. The Psalms would be returned to frequently, and the reading of them both shaped and was shaped by the practice and timetable of devotion in the Beckwith household.

There is another temporal aspect to her annotations, one less connected to devotion. Beckwith recorded the birth dates of her children in the margins of her Bible (specifically the books of Genesis, Exodus and Isaiah), revealing its use as a family memorandum as well as a book of devotion. The entries are in roughly chronological order, except for two instances where the children are recorded in books of the Bible from which they got their names (Matthew and Ester, her third son and third daughter). However, there is a missing entry. Beckwith made note of how many sons or daughters she had in each annotation; for example, the entry ‘William Beckwith the fifth sone of Susanna Beckwith was born the 7 February Anno Dm 1623’ in the margins of Isaiah 66.⁶³ However, the birth of her second daughter was not noted, indicating that perhaps she died in infancy or before birth. The other notable absence is that of Beckwith’s husband; he was never mentioned, not even to note their marriage. Instead, maternal relationships took precedence in this book, from the dedication to her daughter to the records of her children’s births. Annotations show the Bible being passed between generations of women. One hand, not the main annotator, noted above the printer’s address that the book was ‘Given to me by my deare Grandemother M^rs Susanna Beckwith’, indicating another instance of gift-giving beyond that of the inscription addressing Beckwith’s eldest daughter.⁶⁴ Through these annotations, Beckwith was centring herself in a familial structure and using the Bible to mark the passage of time throughout her life.

Beckwith’s use of her Bible extended far beyond the devotional, allowing her to create a sense of familial identity but also to understand the domestic and political world around her. There is evidence of Beckwith using the text in her own daily life, for example when she wrote beside the first few lines of Isaiah 44, ‘are a comfort to your servants’.⁶⁵ The chapter is speaking to Jacob, referring to him repeatedly as ‘my servant’ and outlining God’s blessings to him. She was taking passages from scripture and making them applicable to her daily life, and the annotation makes it clear that she wanted a reminder of the lesson, either for her future self or for other readers. This is a very practical use of marginalia, one which she repeated to varying degrees throughout the text. She did not always make her interpretation of verses clear, but her desire to note and return to passages is evident. By the side of several verses and printed annotations Beckwith wrote ‘nota’, indicating her intention to remember particular sections. On one page, she wrote this three times, beside printed marginal annotations that instruct the reader on how to view misfortune and welcome it as a test from God.

Beckwith’s reading blended the political and the personal.⁶⁶ Beckwith wrote ‘nota’ beside an annotation to I Kings 6, which reads, ‘There is nothing harder for them, that are in authoritie, then to bridle their affections, & folow good counsel.’⁶⁷ There are many possible reasons for this note but, as we know that Beckwith wrote at least some of her annotations in the 1620s, she could have been thinking about George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, the controversial favourite of both James I and Charles I.⁶⁸ It is difficult to know when Beckwith wrote most of her annotations, but her notes regarding the birth of children give at least approximate dates, placing some of her readings in the 1610s and 1620s (her eldest child was born in 1613; her youngest in 1623). Buckingham was embroiled in scandal in the early 1620s, with his brothers and his mentor, Sir Francis Bacon, being accused of abuse of monopolies and accepting bribes, respectively. He was also involved in negotiations for Prince Charles’ marriage, played a key role in the escalating conflict with Spain and was blamed for various failed expeditions to Cadiz and the Palatinate. In 1626 Parliament began impeachment proceedings against Buckingham, accusing him of nepotism and holding too many offices, amongst other things, but Charles I dissolved Parliament before the motion could pass through the House of Lords. Buckingham’s influence over both James and Charles was deeply suspect in the eyes of the populace, and it is not hard to see how the passage warning authority figures to be careful with their affections and ‘folow good counsel’ could apply to the situation. If this was Beckwith’s thinking, this annotation is clear evidence of her engagement with contemporary politics, and active use of her reading in order to understand the wider world around her.⁶⁹ The passage in the Bible related to crises she observed in the political world, and she was able to make links and apply her reading to broad real-world concerns. This complicates the domestic image of the family Bible, demonstrating multiple readings and uses of the text, depending on the reader’s focus at the time of reading.

Beckwith’s Bible, therefore, reveals the various ways in which she read and used the book. It functioned as a memorandum, noting the important household events such as the births of her children; as a spiritual comfort and guide; as a treasured material object; and as a dispenser of more practical advice for daily life, such as interactions with servants. This in turn suggests different levels and types of reading. The activity described in Beckwith’s note to her daughter, where she instructed her to ‘Reade it with a zealous harte to understand truly’, indicates a different engagement with the text than might occur in the reading of the marginalia about Beckwith’s family. The Bible moreover situated women, particularly Beckwith, within her family. The heartfelt address to her daughter and the references to her other children portray Beckwith as an exemplary pious mother, according to contemporary ideals of femininity, which suggested that a woman’s primary duties were to take care of her children and watch over household devotion. If we follow the idea that annotations provide a space to mark out identity, as was discussed earlier, then we can see Beckwith’s positioning of herself more clearly. Through these marginal notes, Beckwith portrayed herself as embodying commendable feminine traits, underlining her piety and constructing an identity both for herself and for any other potential readers of the text.

Books also functioned as important objects in relationships beyond close family circles. Giving or receiving books could serve to make political alliances or intellectual connections, securing a person’s place in a more formalised network of acquaintances. Anne Sadleir (née Coke), literary patron and daughter of the jurist Sir Edward Coke, wrote on the flyleaf of her thirteenth-century Apocalypse manuscript when trusting it to the care of a Bishop, and thereafter Cambridge University.⁷⁰ She made reference to the political and religious upheavals of the time:

I commit this booke to the custodie of the Right Reverend Father in god, Raffe lo: Bishop of Exon; when times are better settled (which god hasten) it is with my other booke and my coines, given to Trinitie Colledge Librarie in Cambridge, god in his good time, restore her with her sister Oxford to there pristine happines, the vulgar People to there former obedience, and god bless, and restore Charles the second, and make him like his most glorious Father Amen.⁷¹

This inscription is dated below ‘August the 20^tie 1649’. Sadleir’s Royalist position and view on the Civil War conflict is made clear, and the fact that she chose to write this so explicitly indicates a desire on her part to advertise her views to future readers. This is different from inscriptions on books that were so often aimed at family members or friends; Sadleir knew that this manuscript was going to Cambridge University, and therefore to an unknown audience. Her declaration of ownership, patronage and political opinion therefore gave her a position of authority and suggests a desire to make her ownership and beliefs known to posterity. Sadleir’s inscription made her political and social identity very public, difficult to hide from view or detach from the book itself.⁷²

Other inscriptions can reveal women’s engagement with theological issues, showing their understanding of and position within the politicised religious climate of the seventeenth century. This demonstrates a direct counter to Whately’s instructions that they should not read ‘Tomes of Disputations’ – clearly, women were reading religious texts in order to enter into contemporary debates. Margaret Hoby, a devout Protestant and member of the Elizabethan gentry, left behind evidence of her reading habits in both her diary and various books owned by her.⁷³ Three theological polemics belonging to Hoby are now kept in York Minster Library, and various levels of marginalia can be found in the texts. These annotations have often been attributed to Hoby, notably by Andrew Cambers.⁷⁴ However, the annotations are in a neat secretary hand, which looks very different to the italic hand in which Hoby’s diary is written. It is not necessarily possible to prove that Hoby did not write the annotations, but it seems unlikely – more probable is that they were written under her instruction by a male servant or secretary, possibly even the family’s chaplain, Richard Rhodes. She did annotate some books herself: there are numerous entries in her diary which allude to this practice, such as when she recorded, ‘I wrett in my testament some notes.’⁷⁵ However, it seems that this does not include the books now often identified as bearing her marginalia.⁷⁶ This introduces a complex perspective on the interplay between gender and intellectual authority in annotations. If Hoby was directing the marginalia but not writing them herself, or if the scribe was interpreting her responses to the text, then her analysis of the text is mediated through a male hand. Moreover, it raises questions about the assumptions surrounding marginalia, namely that it was largely a male activity. Even if the writer was male, this does not mean that it was a solely masculine intellectual act of interpretation; instead, the gendered dimensions could have been complicated and multifaceted. If we assume that Hoby’s record of writing notes in her ‘testament’ refers to her directly inscribing them, then perhaps the genre of the book was relevant to the practice of annotation.

Hoby’s reading notes demonstrate the extent to which her religious understanding was politically infused. Her copy of John Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr bears her name on the title page.⁷⁷ There is only one marginal note in this book: at the end of the epistle, under the name of John Donne, the scribe has written ‘Hangman’.⁷⁸ There is no clear explanation for this – whether it indicates Hoby’s personal opinion of Donne (in which case it is interesting that she caused it to be signed, and possibly purchased the book) or something else. The lack of annotation in this book has led Cambers to claim that it is hard to know if she actually read it.⁷⁹ However, as we have little evidence that she or the scribe habitually wrote extensive notes on all her books, apart from the Bible that is mentioned in the diary, this is perhaps unfounded. Hoby may well have read the book and left it unannotated; or she may have decided against reading it because of its subject matter (which begs the question of why she owned it in the first place). Donne’s work contributed to the religious pamphlet wars, arguing that Roman Catholics should take the Oath of Allegiance to King James.⁸⁰ Hoby, as a staunch Protestant and known proselytiser, may have objected to Donne’s belief that Catholics could take the Oath without converting, accounting for the note in the epistle. Her annotation, therefore, serves to indicate her religio-political identity. Despite her owning a book that could be considered controversial, the one-word notation emphasises her own position, in relation to that of Donne.

The evidence of Hoby’s annotation shows her engaging with politicised theological questions and debates. Her marks of ownership of certain Protestant texts set out her religious position clearly. She owned, for example, two books by Philippe du Plessis-Mornay, a French Huguenot writer and politician:⁸¹ A Treatise of the Church, Wherein are Handled the Principall Questions Mooued in our Time Concerning that Matter⁸² and Fowre Bookes, of the Institution, Use and Doctrine of the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist in the Old Church.⁸³ Of these, the former only bears her signature on the title page, but the latter is extensively annotated. This difference could be connected to the physicality of the books. Sherman, in his survey of marginalia habits, has demonstrated that larger books were much more likely to be annotated in the early modern period, possibly due to the larger margin size.⁸⁴ The copy of Fowre Bookes is a folio, whereas A Treatise of the Church is a quarto, thus following the pattern identified by Sherman. Both texts were attacks on Catholicism, and were influential in the development of English Protestantism – Du Plessis-Mornay was connected to Philip Sidney and James I, united by a desire to form an international union of Protestants, and many of his works were translated into English.⁸⁵ In owning and perhaps reading these books, therefore, Hoby was again indicating her understanding of key religio-political debates of the time, this time on an international scale.

Her method of annotation and the parts of the text she chose to highlight also demonstrate Hoby’s desire to mark her theological knowledge and understanding, making this a part of her identity. Fowre Books is heavily annotated. Her name and the year 1600 were inscribed on the title page, leading Cambers to suggest that this may be the year she acquired the book.⁸⁶ Then, throughout the main body of the text (but excluding the prefatory materials), there are written notes in the same hand. These annotations cover topics such as communion, image worship and the history of the church, and are most copious in the first two books. Around 40 per cent of the pages in books one and two are annotated, compared to 11 per cent in the third book and 6 per cent in the fourth book.⁸⁷ The annotations were often used in combination with underlining certain parts of the text; Cambers has suggested that Hoby may have read the book and underlined passages of interest first, then later added (or instructed the scribe to add) the marginal notes.⁸⁸ He suggests that these notes may have been used in compiling a commonplace book.⁸⁹ Although Hoby’s commonplace book has not survived, we do know that she wrote one, as she records it in her diary, therefore this usage is likely.⁹⁰ This gives clear evidence of her use of the methods and practices of active reading. However, it could also be, as Smith suggests, that the different forms of marginalia reveal different types of engagement with the book.⁹¹

The marginalia in Hoby’s books function in a variety of ways. The annotations expand on or summarise points of interest in the text or in the printed notes; they act as a textual guide allowing the reader to parse the text more quickly and effectively. One marginal note reads, ‘Allegations agaynste images and the Adoringe of them’, neatly summarising the lengthy discourse within the main text.⁹² Another function of the marginalia appears to be to make note of passages for a specific extra-textual use. For example, one note reads, ‘a good place to prove, that the sayntes know nothing done upon earth’.⁹³ This implies use of the book in non-textual encounters. Julie Crawford has argued this based on Hoby’s diary; she suggests that Hoby’s reading has a goal and that it was ‘deeply imbricated with her religio-political activism in Yorkshire’.⁹⁴ Hoby was active in trying to combat recusancy in the region, and Crawford suggests that she often read in order to debate with her Catholic neighbours.⁹⁵ Hoby lived in the remote parish of Hackness, a largely Catholic area of the North Riding of Yorkshire. Both she and her husband, Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby, were known for their zealous Protestantism and disputes with their neighbours.⁹⁶ Fowre Bookes, a Huguenot religious polemic, therefore may have been used in order to find arguments and evidence for her Protestant beliefs. Moreover, she mentions similar attempts in her diary: in one section, she writes that she ‘reed and talked with a yonge papest maide’, implying that she was trying to convert her.⁹⁷

Hoby’s annotations (whether she was the scribe or not) on books inscribed with her name served to create an identity for herself that was visible to anyone who picked up the texts. She situated herself within a specific religious and political sphere, demonstrating her religious position clearly. Women could use the pages of religious texts to demonstrate their piety, their politics and their theological beliefs, publicly constructing an identity for themselves.

Theology, devotion and gender

Many self-authored documents, such as letters and diaries, reveal a pattern of repeated reading, showing a clear connection to the patterns laid out in conduct literature and funeral sermons. These texts recounting reading were not passive records. To a greater or lesser extent, they were part of process of self-fashioning. By emphasising the central place of devotional reading in their daily routine, women could underline their conformity to the feminine ideal presented by both conduct book writers and the writers of funeral sermons, and make themselves into godly women. They engaged in a performance of gender, acting out their femininity through repeated reading and the recording thereof.

One of the most common references to reading of any kind in these texts took the form of women noting their daily religious exercises. In these passages, reading was included as one form of devotion, alongside prayer and listening to sermons. This was frequently in list form, in a rote-like expression of religious routine. Hoby’s diary exemplifies this. It is the earliest-surviving example of an Englishwoman’s diary and is a rich source for scholars of early modern reading. In almost every entry, when Hoby recounted her day, it revolved around prayer, reading and household duties. For example, in the entry for August 3, 1600, she wrote:

After priuat praers I did read and went about the house, and, after I had broken my fast, I went to the church: when I Came home I praied: after, dined: and then I talked and reed to some good wiffes that was with me: after, I walked with Mr Hoby, and praied, and then I went againe to the church, and, after, I reed of the testement: and then I talked with Mr Rhodes [her private chaplain] and, after, went to priuatt examenation and praier, and then to supper: after, to publeck praers, then to priuatt, and lastly to bed.⁹⁸

This was a Sunday, so her religious activities would have taken precedence, but most days followed this same pattern, although on weekdays Hoby did not attend church so often. Reading in one form or another was part of her religious observances. Hoby’s diary gives an image of her following the recommendations for a good woman practically to the letter, with her descriptions of her daily routine reflecting that advised in godly advice literature and described in funeral sermons.⁹⁹

The way in which women recorded devotional reading reflected the way in which they read scripture. The method of reading in which texts were read and re-read daily is echoed in the presentation of reading in diaries as part of a catalogue of daily activities. In Hoby’s diary, the entries are repetitive, following a similar written structure each time. As Sharon Cadman Seelig has noted, one can practically pick a date at random and find evidence of this routine.¹⁰⁰ For example, the entry from August 29, 1599 was strikingly similar to that of a year later, quoted above. Hoby wrote that

After priuat praier I reed of the bible and wrought tell dinner time, before which I praied: and, after dinner, I continewed my ordenarie Course of working, reading, and dispossinge of busenes in the House, tell after 5:, at which time I praied, read a sermon, and examened my selfe.¹⁰¹

Many of her entries over the first two years of her surviving diary followed this pattern, with little variation. From about mid-1601 this changed, with Hoby providing less and less information in each entry. On April 9, 1601 she simply wrote: ‘thes day I Continewed my ordenarie exercises, I praise god, without sicknes or trouble: and so, like wise, the 10 and:11: day’.¹⁰² These ‘exercises’ were clearly the normal activities she undertook as part of her household routine, as an earlier entry made clear: ‘this day, for prainge, readinge, and workinge, I Continewed my ordenarie exercises’.¹⁰³ She used the phrase ‘my accustomed exercises’ often thereafter, demonstrating the repeated and habitual nature of the activities.

This repeated reading was evidently common practice, but the different ways in which it was recorded show slightly different, individual efforts at self-fashioning. Hoby did not give many details about the specific sections of the Bible she read or the pattern of her re-reading. Other women’s texts provide a more detailed explanation of what they read and when. Grace Mildmay (1552–1620), the Northamptonshire gentlewoman medical practitioner and memoirist, began her autobiography by declaring:

I have found by experience [and] I commend unto my children as approved, this to be the best course to set ourselves in from the beginning unto the end of our lives. That is to say: first to begin with the scriptures to read them with all diligence and humility, as a disciple, continually every day in some measure until we have gone through the whole book of God from the first of Genesis unto the last of the Revelation and then begin again and so over and over without weariness.¹⁰⁴

Mildmay’s recommendation to her children reflected the ideal that women should try to meet. She very clearly set out a course of reading that ran from Genesis to Revelation and then started again, whereas Hoby never revealed how she read, not specifying the individual passages or whether she read the text continuously from beginning to end. Instead she wrote, much more vaguely, ‘I reed of the bible’.

Sarah Cowper (1644–1720), the diarist and pious Anglican, also noted her repeated reading practices in one of her religious miscellanies:

In the month of May 1700, I began to read two Chapters a Day in the Holy Bible, one out of the Old, and one out of the New Testament taking Notes and Observations entirely from my own Memory and Meditation, without looking into the interpretation of others, or any comentator whatsoever. This I say because mistakes or Errours there found, may be imputed to my own weakness and Ignorance, to which indeed they will wholly belong.¹⁰⁵

The structured and habitual nature of her reading was strikingly similar to that of Hoby and Mildmay, despite Cowper writing nearly 100 years later. However, many of Cowper’s specific methods of reading were different. Cowper read the Old and the New Testament simultaneously, taking notes as she went. Hoby and Mildmay both mentioned note-taking as a tool to reading and comprehension, although Cowper was much clearer about the specifics of this practice. Cowper’s reading curriculum, however, bears resemblance to Frances Hobart’s reading, as described by Collinges, when she set out to read the New Testament, Old Testament and the Psalms a certain number of times a year. Cowper’s record of her reading was not as repetitive as Hoby’s, but this reference to the pattern of her reading life reveals the similarities. Godly women diarists and autobiographers may not always have chosen to outline their routine in the detail Hoby did, but they probably still followed, or aspired to follow, similar devotional patterns.

This sets the practice of devotional reading apart from that of other printed books. Repeated use of religious texts was envisioned as a lifetime effort, even if in reality the dedication to this task may have varied over time. Reading was not seen as an activity for its own sake, or even on its own: it was part of a series of habitual devotional behaviours. This complicates our idea of how women read in the early modern period, and suggests that perhaps we should be distinguishing between different types of reading that are practised for different genres, something which is rarely considered in studies of early modern reading habits.

The self-fashioning of women readers could take different forms. Hoby’s diary reveals a process of self-making and self-accounting, which continually created the self as she wrote. As Seelig has argued, ‘Hoby’s is a spiritual diary, not in the sense of recording the content of her spiritual exercises but rather their very existence. In other words, it was a form of self-monitoring, of record keeping undertaken apparently as a spur to devotional observance.’¹⁰⁶ Hoby was hard on herself when she did not live up to the task she had set herself. On one occasion she noted her failure to read, and condemned herself for it: ‘nothinge reading nor profiting my selfe or any, the Lord pardon my ommitiones and Commitions, and giue me his spiritt to be wacthfull to redeme the time’.¹⁰⁷ Hoby was participating in a form of self-fashioning whereby the presentation of the self and of identity was continually developing, and was formed by the act of writing about reading on a regular basis. Mildmay’s autobiography, however, reveals a different construction of identity. She wrote it between 1617 and 1620, when she died at age sixty-eight. The document was therefore looking back at her life, and she used reading and writing as a way of crafting a pious identity for herself, shaping the ‘self’ within the text into a certain form.

This self-construction was not a purely private exercise. These texts were also modes of self-presentation in which women crafted an identity for others, and with others. Reading was often done in company. Anne Clifford, for example, wrote in her diary in 1624 that ‘Mr Grasty said Common Prayers and read a Chapter and sung a Psalm in my chamber to mee and my family (as usually is done upon Sundays)’.¹⁰⁸ Not only was reading tied to the structure of her week here (it is ‘usually’ done on a Sunday) but the importance of communal reading was also made clear. Clifford’s aural reading was aided by ‘Mr Grasty’, the local parson, and his reading was heard by both Clifford and her family, demonstrating the shared nature of the family’s devotions.

Similarly, Hoby’s diary reveals that reading was an important component of her relationships with local women and members of her household, including her chaplain Richard Rhodes.¹⁰⁹ Mary Ellen Lamb has characterised Hoby’s reading practices as essentially relational.¹¹⁰ As Lamb has argued, ‘the centrality of her chaplain Mr. Rhodes to her reading, and even to her writing of her diary, breaks down any simple binary between communal and private reading’.¹¹¹ Hoby’s diary roughly corresponds with the period of Rhodes’ residence in her household, and begins to lose direction after he left, becoming sparser from mid-1601.¹¹² Hoby’s reliance on this communal mode of reading and interpretation was central to her portrayal of her devotion. Hoby’s accounting and presentation of herself was not solely for her, but also for Rhodes. The expectation of him as an audience no doubt directly influenced the identity she was fashioning.

So far, we have focused on women writing about devotional reading, usually the reading of scripture. This could be presented firmly within the private sphere, divorced from the world of politics and sectarian conflict. Rainbowe created this distinction in Clifford’s funeral sermon, separating devotion or spiritual reading from controversial religious polemic. He did, however, acknowledge that ‘Authors of several kinds of Learning, some of Controversies very abstruse, were not unknown unto her [Clifford]. She much commended one Book, William Barklay’s Dispute with Bellarmine, both, as she knew, of the Popish perswasion, but the former less Papal’.¹¹³ This refers to the dispute between the Italian Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine and Scottish Catholic William Barclay concerning the Oath of Allegiance and the temporal power of the papacy.¹¹⁴ There was a distinction made between the two texts, suggesting that Barclay was ‘less Papal’ than Bellarmine. Clifford read several Catholic texts, including François de Sales’ Introduction to a Devout Life.¹¹⁵ Leah Knight has argued that this was evidence of her critical reading, and ‘her willingness to read works infused with risk and challenge might confirm the untroubled state of her faith’.¹¹⁶ In the sermon Rainbowe ended with Clifford’s pious devotional reading and made it clear that this is the most praiseworthy aspect of her conduct. However, despite the rhetorical privileging of devotional literature, there is in fact plenty of evidence of gentry women reading these other types of religious texts, usually theological or polemical. They were used by women to engage with the important debates of their day and to understand the intense and at times violent political climate.¹¹⁷

Not all women read against the grain of their faith, as Clifford did, but there is evidence of them using their reading very deliberately in order to engage in theological debate. Many books mentioned in Margaret Hoby’s diary underlined the nature of her religious persuasion and demonstrated her connection with the religio-political culture of the Elizabethan period (as mentioned in the previous section). She both used books, particularly records of books in her diary, to demonstrate her allegiances and read in order to form and support her ideas. In one passage she recorded: ‘I kept Companie with Mr Hoby who reed a whill of Cartwrights book to me.’¹¹⁸ According to Hoby’s editor, this was likely to be Thomas Cartwright, the religious controversialist who was involved in the Presbyterian attack on the Elizabethan church in the 1570s and advocated a parliamentarist mixed constitution.¹¹⁹ While this conflict occurred several years before Hoby’s diary was written, it nevertheless demonstrates the intertwining of religion and politics in the period. Through her reading, therefore, Hoby carefully constructed her religious position as a devout Protestant in Catholic Yorkshire, as well as emphasising her devotion and piety, and used her books as tools in theological debate.

Again, this reading and performance of identity was sociable and relational. Hoby’s main source of theological discussions and biblical exegesis probably came from Rhodes, her chaplain. The relationship between Puritan clergy and lay women was common in seventeenth-century England. Diane Willen has argued that women ‘were much more likely than men to develop strong, perhaps intense, and long-lasting relationships with their clergy’.¹²⁰ She goes on to suggest that ‘emotionally or intellectually satisfying relationships with clergy were one of the few legitimate male-female friendships open to respectable married women’.¹²¹ Willen has noted that the relationship between the clergy and these godly women was reciprocal, and that the women did not always defer to male clerical authority, using the examples of Joan Barrington, Brilliana Harley and Mary Vere.¹²² Similarly, Peter Lake has examined the relationship between Jane Ratcliffe and John Ley, the Chester widow and cleric who engaged in what Lake calls a ‘genuinely reciprocal’ intellectual exchange.¹²³

The role of men in women’s religious lives becomes clear when they discussed theology. Debates around theology were almost always presented as an exchange with a male figure. Clifford, for example, related an instance when ‘My Lord found me reading with Mr Ran & told me it would hinder his Study, so as I must leave off reading the Old Testament till I can get somebody to read it with me. This day I made an end of reading Deuteronomy.’¹²⁴ This passage not only made it clear that her husband’s reading takes precedence over hers but also that she needed help to read certain sections of the Bible, but not others. Barbara Lewalski has pointed out that we cannot tell who decided that, as a woman, Clifford should not read unaided; or whether indeed it was Clifford herself who wanted the benefit of an expert.¹²⁵ However, it does indicate the culture of biblical exegesis that was a significant part of religious reading and that this often relied on a male figure of authority.

Elizabeth Delaval, the memoirist, also made this point when discussing how and when she read scripture:

I will also when I have an opertunity of doing it ever red along with the scripture the paraphrase of that learned good man Doctor Hamond, or some other learn’d pious man of our church, rather then trust to my own interpretations.¹²⁶

Delaval was referring to Henry Hammond’s A Paraphrase and Annotation upon All the Books of the New Testament and A Paraphrase and Annotation upon the Books of the Psalms, published in the 1650s.¹²⁷ Hammond, the clergyman and Anglican divine, was a leading figure in the Anglican Moralism that developed during the mid-seventeenth century and set out to define a Church of England theology.¹²⁸ This movement emphasised human responsibility and moral duty; it was staunchly Royalist and dedicated to the Book of Common Prayer.¹²⁹ Delaval clearly valued his interpretation above her own, and implied that to truly understand scripture it was necessary to read one of the many paraphrases or works of biblical exegesis being published in the seventeenth century. She created a hierarchy of readers, with the ‘learn’d pious m[e]n of our church’ at the top. This is in contrast with the later example of Cowper who declared that she would follow only her own interpretation of scripture, although she did suggest that the absence of exegesis might lead her to make interpretative errors.

The practice of discussion between men and women becomes even clearer in some women’s correspondence. Some women, such as Anne Sadleir, showed a clear willingness to participate in theological debate, mediated through reading. This may have been a product of the Civil War era. While there is evidence of women engaging in these issues pre-1640, for example with Hoby entering into disputes with her neighbours, the range of topics and intensity of debate were probably a product of the 1640s, and would continue into the 1690s with the Rage of Party.¹³⁰ Sadleir corresponded at length with male intellectuals and relatives about thorny theological issues, but showed none of the hesitancy about expressing her own opinion and position that we see in diaries and remembrances. Whereas godly women’s diaries and autobiographies highlighted certain qualities, women such as Sadleir used very different textual techniques in debating theology. She used her reading, both of letters and of printed texts, to form and back up her own ideas, often in opposition to her male correspondents. This was a different form of self-fashioning, not accounting to God or another reader but instead forming an identity in opposition to others.

Sadleir’s letters show her negotiating complex religious issues. She was not using her religious reading as evidence of her personal, feminine piety but rather to support her theological position. This becomes clear in an exchange with her Catholic nephew, Herbert Aston, in which she engaged in a debate with him partially through reference to her reading:

this advantage I must tell you our Religion have over yours … wee have the liberty to read all bookes as well as yours thou you must read none of ours, but you must confess it as a sinn, and I have read most of all yours that I could git, and I thank allmighty god they have bin soe far from converting me, that they have more confermed me in my owne sum I have read that I must tell you I stand Amased at, one of them is called the flowers of the English saints, which I take to be but the Romances of those times.¹³¹

Sadleir’s conception of Protestantism as a religion of reading was clearly key to her religious identity, and is a remarkable insight into her relationship to her faith. The letter was part of an ongoing debate between Sadleir and her nephew. Aston wrote to Sadleir, presumably in response to the above (although the letter is undated, and is placed earlier in the letterbook):

the Protestants liberty of reading all bookes & further freedome of being their owne carvers & directors in spirituall matters & our restraint I confess, but y^e advantage by it I cannot yeald to, y^e effects of it in our litle kingdome are sad proofes of the contrary.¹³²

This discussion is reminiscent of Hoby’s attempts to convert her Catholic neighbours. Sadleir emphasised that she had done her research on Catholicism, as was permitted by her religion (in direct contrast to Aston’s religion, which by implication was portrayed as strict and confining). The literate culture of Protestantism was made clear, and Sadleir stated that despite reading so many Catholic texts (‘most of all yours that I could git’), she found this only served to confirm her own beliefs. It is particularly interesting that she used the term ‘Romances’ when describing Jerome Porter’s ‘the flowers of the English saints’.¹³³ Considering the cultural condemnation of romances (see Chapter 2), this was at best dismissive, and portrayed the Catholic culture of saints as fanciful and a fiction, implying that Aston was foolish to have been taken in by it. Sadleir’s efforts to read Catholic texts show her intellectual and theological curiosity, but she used the books as a way of criticising Aston and his religion, as well as affirming her own beliefs. Aston’s response, however, made the political nature of the discussion clear. His reference to the Civil War, and the apportioning of blame to Protestant ‘liberty of reading … and further freedome’, was a sharp rebuke to Sadleir’s claims and demonstrates the political underpinning of their theological discussion. Both used reading as a way of framing their dialogue and supporting their views, and Sadleir showed no reticence in debating such thorny issues.

Sadleir clearly read biblical exegesis and theological texts widely. She listed some of her preferred religious texts in another, undated letter, saying:

I have given over reading many bookes … those that I now read, besides the Bible, are first the late Kings Booke: Hookers Ecclesiasticall Politie: Reverend Bish: Andrews sermons, with his other devine meditations: D^r Jer: Taylors works, and D^r: Tho: Jacksone upon the creed: sum of these my dear father was a great admirer of and would often call them the glorious lights of the church of England.¹³⁴

She was writing here to Roger Williams, the founder of the colony of Rhode Island. Williams had been a protégé of Sadleir’s father before leaving for the New World in 1631. He was respected for his godliness in New World Puritan circles, but was controversial for his support for separation from the Church of England.¹³⁵ Sadleir was evidently familiar with an impressive range of religious and theological texts, and the writers that Sadleir mentioned, which she called ‘the glorious lights of the church of England’, demonstrate her Royalist Anglicanism.¹³⁶ The ‘late Kings Booke’ was Eikon Basilike, supposedly Charles I’s spiritual autobiography, which perpetuated the cult of Charles as a martyr.¹³⁷ Richard Hooker was considered to be one of the ‘founding fathers’ of Anglicanism after the 1660, and his Ecclesiastical Polity was seen by many as a statement of reformed orthodoxy in England.¹³⁸ Thomas Jackson’s commentary on the Apostle’s creed, in Sarah Hutton’s words, ‘amounts to a learned defence of the Church of England’.¹³⁹ Lancelot Andrewes, the Jacobean Bishop of Winchester, moreover, was an affirmed anti-Puritan and a proponent of the divine right of kings, which no doubt clashed with Williams’ ideas for the separation of church and state.¹⁴⁰ Sadleir’s letter, then, did not shy away from their theological differences. Indeed, she ends this passage by saying that ‘these lights shall be my guide, I wish they may be yours’. Many of the books mentioned here and later in their letters were published in the late 1640s, making it probable that the correspondence dates from the late 1640s or early 1650s.

In the two letters examined here Sadleir entered into a lively and sometimes playful debate with Williams about religion. This was often enacted, as in the passage above, through the recommendation or discussion of books she had read. Williams evidently sent her suggestions for reading material, which she did usually engage with, but rarely liked. In one instance Williams recommended Jeremy Taylor’s A Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying, published in 1647, to which Sadleir cuttingly responded:

I have also read Taylors book of the liberty of protesting though it please not me yet I am sure it does you or els I you not have wrot to me to have read it, I say it and you would make a good fire.¹⁴¹

Taylor was an Anglican writer, but the Liberty of Prophesying was a call for religious toleration, something for which Williams was known.¹⁴² Sadleir made it clear that she did not object to all of Taylor’s works, who was included in her list of the ‘glorious lights of the church of England’, quoted above. She suggested that Williams consider Taylor’s other books, writing ‘have you sene his devine institution of the office ministeriall, I assure you that is both worth your reading and practice’.¹⁴³ She read critically and selectively, although her suggestion that Taylor’s call for toleration should be burnt was an extreme (and witty) dismissal.

They also discussed Milton, with whom Williams was friends. Sadleir gave her opinion of Milton in no uncertain terms:

for meltons [Milton’s] book that you desire I should read if I be not mistakn, that is he that has wrot a book of the lawfulnes of devorce, and if report sais true he had at that time two or thre wives living, this perhaps were good Doctrine in new England, but it is most abominable in old England, for his book that he wrot against the late King that you would have me read, you should have taken notice of gods judgment upon him who stroke him with blindnes, and as I have heard he was faine to have the helpe of one Andrew Marvell or els he could not have finished that most accurssed Libell, god has begun his judgment upon him here, his punishment will be here after in hell.¹⁴⁴

In taking such a hard line on Milton, apparently without having read the book suggested to her (it is unclear which text Sadleir was referencing), Sadleir was aligning herself with one side of the cultural debate surrounding Milton’s tracts on divorce, which had been condemned by the church establishment and Parliament.¹⁴⁵ Sadleir also mentioned Milton’s ‘book that he wrot against the late King’, which could either mean Eikonoklastes, his defence of regicide written in response to Eikon Basilike (which she listed as one of her guiding ‘lights’), or his The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.¹⁴⁶ She implied that he was struck blind by God in punishment for his writings, and suggested that he was not even capable of finishing the text without Marvell’s help.¹⁴⁷ Her criticism of Milton was damning and unforgiving, writing that he would be punished for his ‘Libell’ in hell as well as by blindness during his life. By responding in this way, she both underlined her religious and social sensibilities, a significant part of her identity construction, and affirmed her own knowledge and authority.

Sadleir also kept Williams up to date with interpretations of political events, again largely through reading recommendations. This appears to have been part of their religious debates, as was implied in this same letter:

for the bloud you mention, which has bin shed in these times which you would father upon the late king, there is a booke called the Historie of independencie, a booke worth your reading, that will tell you by whom all this Christian bloud has bin shed, if you cannot git that there is a sermon in print of one Paul Knells the text the first of amos verse that 2 that will informe you.¹⁴⁸

Here Sadleir was referring to Clement Walker’s History of Independency, first published in 1648, which attacked the New Model Army and their parliamentary allies for obstructing a settlement with the king.¹⁴⁹ Walker, though by no means a staunch Royalist, was heavily critical of the increasing divisions between the Presbyterians and the Independents, and wrote numerous pamphlets attacking parliamentary radicals.¹⁵⁰ Some of his works were reprinted during the Restoration as part of his The Compleat History of Independency.¹⁵¹ Paul Knell, whose sermon she recommended, was a Church of England minister and a Royalist. The connection between religion and politics is inescapable here. Sadleir’s religious and political reading were used in tandem in order to understand the Civil War. Although the letter is undated, it is clear that the conflict was, if not ongoing, then still a hugely pertinent issue, again making it likely that they were corresponding sometime around 1650. Sadleir represented both her political and religious position to Williams through the books she recommended.

Sadleir’s references to her reading, then, did not serve to indicate traditional femininity. Instead, she linked her piety to a more intellectual endeavour, demonstrating her broad literary education as a way to justify her position in the debate with her nephew and with Williams. While not constructing a character in the same way as one would when writing a memoir, nevertheless Sadleir was creating a persona for herself, one which was linked to her devotion and religious affiliation, but not necessarily her femininity. She, moreover, used her reading, still often religious in nature, to engage in debates about the political state of affairs. Sadleir’s letters demonstrate the close intertwining of these complex issues in the mid-seventeenth century, and the ways in which women negotiated contemporary debates through reading and letter-writing.

Conclusion

Religious writings, whether devotional or theological, were used and represented in a number of different ways in early modern women’s letters, meditations and spiritual diaries. Women could choose to echo the language of advice literature and funeral sermons, emphasising their practices of re-reading scripture and the ways in which it moved them. This created an image of exemplary feminine piety, and helped to situate the woman in her role within the devout Protestant household. That is not to say, however, that this reading was indeed ‘confining’ women to a world of conventional spirituality and domesticity. Instead, that was merely how they chose to represent themselves. They made a choice to use devotional literature and their recorded responses to it to demonstrate their feminine identity.

This is often seen in their personal devotional writings, and is partly due to the nature of that form of autobiography. Spiritual diaries, like that of Margaret Hoby, were used as a record of piety. The idea of recording one’s life and devotions for future use by the writer, or for posterity, had a clear effect on the ways in which these women presented themselves. They conformed to the conventions of the genre, and this was central to their portrayal of their identity. This was still a choice, however, and makes clear the ways in which women negotiated and constructed their own gender identity within the text.

Some women’s letters, however, particularly from the mid-seventeenth century, give the lie to the idea of devotion and religious reading being ‘confined’ to the domestic sphere. Here, women were fully engaged with the socio-political consequences of their religion. Sadleir was not afraid to enter into complex theological debates with her male friends and relatives, and used her reading to support her position. Her religio-political reading became a marker of her identity, intellectually, politically and religiously. It was not, however, a mark of her conformity to traditional, pious femininity. While Sadleir clearly was deeply religious, she did not feel the need to emphasise her adherence to contemporary constructions surrounding gendered reading and behaviour. While this is, of course, partly due to the nature of epistolary exchange and the subjects about which she was writing, it demonstrates the multiplicity of ways in which women could use their religious reading. Women did not only conform to the duties and prescriptions laid out in advice literature, but chose for themselves how to present their identity, dependent on the context in which they were writing.

Finally, the identities that were being created through women’s religious reading were multiple and continual; they were created through the process of repeated reading, and were often influenced by others, be they family members, clergy, friends or neighbours. The use of religious reading to structure time allowed for a continual process of self-fashioning and reaffirming of identity, a process that was frequently done in company.

Notes

1. 1.  See the ‘Her Bible’ section of this chapter for more information.

2. 2.  Both Sasha Roberts and Julie Crawford have emphasised the need to see religion and politics as intertwined for women readers and writers in this period, just as they were for men. Roberts has argued that ‘it is not enough to characterise women’s reading of religious texts as conventionally pious and conformist: the complexities of religious change, sectarianism, and conflict in the early modern period require a much more nuanced approach’ and Crawford concludes, through studying Margaret Hoby’s diary, that ‘recording one’s reading was a way of registering and affirming religious and political alliances’. See Sasha Roberts, ‘Reading in Early Modern England: Contexts and Problems’, Critical Survey 12, no. 2 (2000): 4; Julie Crawford, ‘Reconsidering Early Modern Women’s Reading, or, How Margaret Hoby Read Her De Mornay’, The Huntington Library Quarterly 73, no. 2 (2010): 223.

3. 3.  Crawford, ‘Reconsidering Early Modern Women’s Reading’, 205.

4. 4.  Crawford, ‘Reconsidering Early Modern Women’s Reading’, 206.

5. 5.  The oral nature of reading is important, particularly but not solely in a religious context. Jennifer Richards, for example, has argued that ‘script and print depend on the physical voice for their meaning’. I do not propose to discuss orality too much here, as it has been so well demonstrated by Richards, but it is clearly a very important part of religious reading practice. See Jennifer Richards, Voices and Books in the English Renaissance: A New History of Reading (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 18.

6. 6.  William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties Eight Treatises (London: printed by Iohn Haviland for William Bladen, 1622), 397.

7. 7.  For more on the marital relationship, see Adrian Wilson, Ritual and Conflict: The Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). For more on Whately himself, see Jacqueline Eales, ‘Gender Construction in Early Modern England and the Conduct Books of William Whately (1583–1639)’, Studies in Church History 34 (1998): 163–174.

8. 8.  William Whately, A Bride-Bush, Or A Wedding Sermon: Compendiously Describing the Duties of Married Persons: By performing whereof, Marriage shall be to them a great Helpe, which now finde it a little Hell (Printed at London by William Iaggard, for Nicholas Bourne, 1617), 10.

9. 9.  Whately, A Bride-Bush, 35.

10. 10.  Women were often not taught the skill of ‘reason’, or disputation, which was a mainstay of humanist education. Aysha Pollnitz has explored the way in which early modern princes were educated, and how royal women were often at a disadvantage in terms of their ability to construct arguments. See Aysha Pollnitz, Princely Education in Early Modern Britian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

11. 11.  As Kate Narveson has shown, ‘Bible reading helped to usher in a transitional world in which the growing availability of printed resources was in tension with the sense that lay people should turn for answers to the authority of learned men’. Kate Narveson, Bible Readers and Lay Writers in Early Modern England: Gender and Self-Definition in an Emergent Writing Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), 28.

12. 12.  Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family in England, 1480–1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 295.

13. 13.  Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family, 297; Joris van Eijnatten, ed., Preaching, Sermon and Cultural Change in the Long Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

14. 14.  Houlbrooke, Death, Religion and the Family, 298.

15. 15.  Femke Molekamp, ‘Seventeenth-Century Funeral Sermons and Exemplary Female Devotion: Gendered Spaces and Histories’, Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 35, no. 1, Special issue: Gendering Time and Space in Early Modern England (2012): 44.

16. 16.  John Collinges, Par Nobile. Two Treatises. The one, concerning the Excellent Woman, Evincing a person Fearing the Lord, to be the most Excellent Person: Discoursed more privately upon the Death of the Right Honourable, the Lady Frances Hobart, late of Norwich, from Pro.31.29,30,31. The other, Discovering a Fountain of Comfort and Satisfaction, to persons walking with God, yet living and dying without sensible Consolations: discovered, from Psal. 17. 15. at the Funerals of the Right Honourable, the Lady Katharine Courten, preached at Blicklin, in the County of Norfolk, March 27. 1652. With the Narratives of the holy Lives and Deaths of those two Noble Sisters (London: Printed in the Year 1669), 25. RB 441734, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino. My italics.

17. 17.  Andrew Cambers has noted the importance of reading and discussion combined in a godly household, arguing that religious reading was often a communal practice that involved reading aloud and subsequent discussion (referred to sometimes by contemporaries as ‘expounding’). Andrew Cambers, Godly Reading: Print, Manuscript and Puritanism in England, 1580–1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 89.

18. 18.  John Birchall, The Non-Pareil, Or, the Vertuous Daughter Surmounting all her Sisters: Described, In a Funerall Sermon upon the Death of that vertuous Lady, Elizabeth Hoyle, late wife of the Worshipfull Thomas Hoyle, Alderman of the City of Yorke (York: Printed by Tho: Bro[…], 1644), 12.

19. 19.  Samuel Ainsworth, A Sermon Preached at the Funerall of that religious Gentle-woman M^is Dorothy Hanbury, Wife to Edward Hanbury Esq. living at Kelmarsh in Northampton-shire: Who dyed the 12. day of June, and was buried at Navesby in Northampton-shire July 13. Anno Dom. 1642 (London: Printed by Richard Cotes, for Stephen Bowtell, 1645), 28.

20. 20.  John Bryan, The Vertuous Daughter. A Sermon Preached at Saint Maries in Warwicke at the Funerall of the most vertuous and truely religious young Gentlewoman, Mistresse Cicely Puckering, Daughter and Co-heire to the right Worshipfull, Sir Thomas Puckering, Knight and Baronet, the fourteenth day of Aprill, 1636 (London: Printed by Thomas Harper, for Lawrence Chapman, 1636), 16.

21. 21.  Timothy Rogers, The Character of a Good Woman, Both in a Single and Marry’d State. In a Funeral Discourse on Prov. 31. 10. Who can find a vertuous Woman? For her Price is far above Rubies. Occasion’d by the Decease of Mrs. Elizabeth Dunton, Who Died May 28. 1697. With an Account of Her Life and Death; and part of the Diary writ with her own Hand: With a Preface, containing a Brief History of several Excellent Women (London: Printed for John Harris, 1697), 130. RB 231012, Huntington Library, San Marino. Also see John Howe, The Blessednesse of the Righteous, Discoursed from Psal. 17, 15 (London: Printed by Sarah Griffin, for Samuel Thompson, 1668).

22. 22.  Collinges, Par Nobile. Two Treatises, 26–27.

23. 23.  Isaac Ambrose, Redeeming the Time. A Sermon Preached at Preston in Lansashire, January 4^th 1657, at the Funeral of the Honourable Lady, the Lady Margaret Houghton. Revised, and, somewhat Enlarged; and, at the importunity of some Friends, now published (London: Printed for Rowland Reynolds, 1674), 14.

24. 24.  For more on re-reading, see Chapter 5.

25. 25.  George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, The Lady’s New-year’s Gift: Or, Advice to a Daughter, Under these following Heads: Viz. Religion, Husband, House, Family and Children, Behaviour and Conversation, Friendships, Censure, Vanity and Affectation, Pride, Diversions (London: Printed for Matth. Gilliflower and James Partridge, 1692), 5, RB 329955, Huntington Library.

26. 26.  John Evelyn, ‘Directions for the Employment of Your Time [to Mary Evelyn]’, [early 1680s?], Evelyn Papers, Vol. CCLXXIII. F38r, Add MS 78440, British Library.

27. 27.  R. A. Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe: Culture and Education 1500–1800 (London: Routledge, 2002), 61–62. For more on memory in the early modern period, see Andrew Hiscock, Reading Memory in Early Modern Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). For more on the concept of repetition in early modern Europe, see Lorna Clymer, ed., Ritual, Routine, and Regime: Repetition in Early Modern British and European Cultures (Toronto: University of Toronto Press in association with the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 2006).

28. 28.  Edward Rainbowe, Lord Bishop of Carlisle, A Sermon Preached At the Funeral of the Right Honorable Anne Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery, Who died March 22. 1675/6, and was Interred April the 14^th following at Appleby in Westmoreland. With Some Remarks on the Life of that Eminent Lady (London: Printed for R. Royston, Bookseller to his most Excellent-Majesty, and H. Broom, 1677), 61.

29. 29.  Rainbowe, A Sermon Preached, 62.

30. 30.  This idea of nourishment is not one that will be considered at length here, but for more on the relationship between food and reading, see Jason Scott-Warren and Andrew Elder Zurcher, ed., Text, Food and the Early Modern Reader: Eating Words (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).

31. 31.  Francis Pawley, of Broomfield, county Kent: Inventory of her goods: 1681, Add Ch 44538, British Library.

32. 32.  Egmont Papers Vol. XXIII, Katherine Perceval, née Southwell; wife of Sir J Perceval, 1st Baronet: Correspondence, etc., with her brother, Sir R. Southwell: 1659–1686, Add MS 46942, f167v, British Library. There is of course a difference between post-mortem inventories such as Pawley’s and book lists made by the women themselves, and there are various factors which might have affected the inclusion or exclusion of certain books. It is possible, for example, that Perceval’s book might have been packed for travelling, given the location of a ‘Black Leather Trunk’. Nevertheless, devotional literature was prominent in inventories and lists compiled both post-mortem and while alive.

33. 33.  The catalogue displays a range of genres and lists the volumes by size. ‘An Inventory of Bookes in the Lady Heaths closet’, Heath and Verney Papers. Vol. VI (ff. 229). Miscellaneous inventories and accompts 1599–1799, Egerton MS 2983, f79r, British Library.

34. 34.  The Protestant reception of de Sales’ Introduction to a Devout Life has been discussed in Mary Hardy, ‘The Seventeenth-Century English and Scottish Reception of Francis de Sales’ An Introduction to a Devout Life’, British Catholic History 33, no. 2 (2016): 228–258.

35. 35.  Paul E. Kopperman, Sir Robert Heath, 1575–1649: Window on an Age (Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Royal Historical Society, 1989).

36. 36.  Rebecca Laroche, ‘ “To take in hand the practice of phisick”: Early Modern Women’s Signatures in Print Medical Texts’, in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, IV, ed. Michael Denbo (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008), 271.

37. 37.  Laroche, ‘To take in hand the practice of phisick’, 274.

38. 38.  Jason Scott-Warren, Sir John Harington and the Book as Gift (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 2.

39. 39.  Jason Scott-Warren has suggested that ‘graffiti’ might be a good term for these autograph inscriptions, arguing that ‘many early modern books are “tagged” and “pieced” as the average wall in a European capital city’. Jason Scott-Warren, ‘Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Book’, Huntington Library Quarterly 73, no. 3 (2010): 368, 377–379. He is developing Juliet Fleming’s work on early modern graffiti, which argues that the act of writing on walls ‘appears against the grid of what we understand to be the difference between public and private’. See Juliet Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 33. Katherine Acheson has also recently drawn on Fleming’s work in her study of marginal notes and space, arguing that marginalia ‘allowed women to enter forbidden spaces and extend their selves within those worlds’. See Katherine Acheson, ‘The Occupations of the Margins: Writing, Space, and Early Modern Women’, in Early Modern English Marginalia, ed. Katherine Acheson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 87.

40. 40.  Scott-Warren, ‘Reading Graffiti in the Early Modern Book’, 381, 379.

41. 41.  William Sherman has surveyed annotations on Bibles at the Huntington Library, noting that about one in five Bibles and prayer books in the collection contained significant marginalia. He listed eight different types of annotation commonly found in Bibles, although none of these included family notes of the kind explored here. See William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 73, 80, 83.

42. 42.  Femke Molekamp, ‘The Making of the Geneva Bible: Histories of Translation and Reading’, AHRC Translating Cultures, accessed June 24, 2019, http://translatingcultures.org.uk/awards/fellowship-awards/the-making-of-the-geneva-bible-histories-of-translation-and-reading.

43. 43.  Femke Molekamp, ‘ “Of the Incomparable treasure of the Holy Scriptures”: The Geneva Bible in the Early Modern Household’, in Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England, ed. Matthew Dimmock and Andrew Hadfield (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 135.

44. 44.  I have not found other women’s Bibles bearing the same level of annotations as Beckwith’s, although this is not to say that they do not exist. This is probably more a case of women’s annotations rarely being recorded in archive catalogues.

45. 45.  The Bible. That is, the Holy Scriptures Conteined in the Olde and New Testament. Translated according to the Ebrew and Greeke, and conferred with the best transla-ons in diuers languages. With most profitable annotations vpon all the hard places, and other things of great importance, as may appeare in the Epistle to the Reader (Imprinted at London by the Deputies of Christopher Barker, Printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie. Anno Domini 1597), 464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

46. 46.  2 Macc. 464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

47. 47.  The centrality of the Bible and reading to the godly community has been demonstrated by many scholars, including Andrew Cambers and Michelle Wolfe. See, for example, Andrew Cambers and Michelle Wolfe, ‘Reading, Family Religion, and Evangelical Identity in Late Stuart England’, The Historical Journal 47, no. 4 (2004): 875–896. The Bible would hold a special position both spiritually and materially in the godly household due to the importance of reading.

48. 48.  The idea of ‘extensive reading’ was developed by Rolf Engelsing, the German historian who argued for a ‘reading revolution’ in the early modern period. Engelsing’s work has not been translated into English, but has been influential on many studies of reading since. See, for example, Ian Jackson, ‘Approaches to the History of Readers and Reading in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, The Historical Journal 47, no. 4 (2004): 1041–1054.

49. 49.  464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

50. 50.  The Geneva Bible was the preferred Bible of English Puritans. It included extensive marginal notes to aid comprehension and the reading experience. See, for example, Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales, ed., The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996). It was never officially sanctioned by the state in England, but was popular across the country. See Dan G. Danner, ‘The Contribution of the Geneva Bible of 1560 to the English Protestant Tradition’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 12, no. 3 (1981): 5–18.

51. 51.  The Bible translated according to the Ebrew and Greeke, and conferred with the best translations in diuers languages; with most profitable annotationsvpon all the hard places, and other things of great importance, as may appeare in the epistle to the reader; and also a most profitable concordance for the readie finding out of any thing in the same conteined (Imprinted at London by the Deputies of Christopher Barker, Printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie, 1599). The verse is normally entitled ‘Of the Incomparable Treasure of the Holy Scripture’.

52. 52.  464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

53. 53.  STC (2nd ed.), 2168. For more about the editions of the Geneva Bible, see Maurice S. Betteridge, ‘The Bitter Notes: The Geneva Bible and Its Annotators’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 14, no. 1 (1983): 41–62.

54. 54.  464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

55. 55.  1 Sam. 25:29, 464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

56. 56.  For more on readers of the Geneva Bible, see Michael Jensen, ‘ “Simply” Reading the Geneva Bible: The Geneva Bible and Its Readers’, Literature and Theology 9, no. 1 (1995): 30–45.

57. 57.  Isa. 66, 464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

58. 58.  John Norden, A Pensive Mans Practise verie profitable for all persons (London: Printed by William Hall for Richard Bradocke, 1610), 87. I am very grateful to Michelle O’Callaghan for identifying this poem via the Folger First Lines Index.

59. 59.  Mary Hampson Patterson, Domesticating the Reformation: Protestant Best Sellers, Private Devotion, and the Revolution of English Piety (Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Presses, 2007), 158–161. Patterson has argued that Norden expected a ‘fairly intense cerebral involvement’ from the reader and that he was ‘preoccupied with a piety that is very personal and internal in nature’ (p. 159).

60. 60.  Patterson, Domesticating the Reformation, 167–168.

61. 61.  Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson have demonstrated how prayer was integral to household routine in the early modern period, particularly in the morning, where ‘routine activities in the early morning, from first waking until after dressing, were supposed to be accompanied and punctuated by a series of pious meditations as well as formal prayer’. See Hamling and Richardson, A Day at Home in Early Modern England: Material Culture and Domestic Life, 1500–1700 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 44.

62. 62.  John E. Booty, ed., The Book of Common Prayer: The Elizabethan Prayer Book (Charlottesville, VA: Published for the Folger Shakespeare Library by the University of Virginia Press, 2005), 24. Many thanks to Dr John Hinks for suggesting this.

63. 63.  Isa. 66, 464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

64. 64.  464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

65. 65.  Isa. 44, 464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

66. 66.  For reflections and debates on the political nature of the Geneva Bible, see Tom Furniss, ‘Reading the Geneva Bible: Notes towards an English Revolution?’, Prose Studies 31, no. 1 (2009): 1–21; Richard L. Greaves, ‘The Nature and Intellectual Milieu of the Political Principles in the Geneva Bible Marginalia’, Journal of Church and State 22, no. 2 (1980): 233–249.

67. 67.  1 Kings 6, 464.c.5.(1.), British Library.

68. 68.  For Buckingham’s life, see Roger Lockyer, Buckingham: The Life and Political Career of George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, 1592–1628 (London: Routledge, 1981).

69. 69.  This is similar to Kevin Sharpe’s hypothesis regarding William Drake’s reading habits: see Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).

70. 70.  For more on Sadleir’s reading and book collection, see Arnold Hunt, ‘The Books, Manuscripts and Literary Patronage of Mrs Anne Sadleir (1585–1670)’, in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing: Selected Papers from the Trinity/Trent Colloquium, ed. Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan Gibson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 205–236.

71. 71.  The Trinity Apocalypse, R.16.2, Trinity College, Cambridge.

72. 72.  Natalie Zemon Davis has argued that the book as a patronage gift had an advantage over many other items, as the original owner’s message could not be so easily lost or divorced from the object. She writes that, ‘[i]n the book, everything could be made explicit and the dedications themselves could draw heavily on the language of gifts and responsibilities’. Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘Beyond the Market: Books as Gifts in Sixteenth-Century France – The Prothero Lecture’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 33 (1983): 79.

73. 73.  Claire Cross has noted the impressive scope of Hoby’s theological study, arguing that it ‘must have outpaced all but the most dedicated of Protestant ministers’. See Claire Cross, ‘The Religious Life of Women in Sixteenth-Century Yorkshire’, Studies in Church History 27, Women in the Church (1990): 323.

74. 74.  See Andrew Cambers, ‘Readers’ Marks and Religious Practice: Margaret Hoby’s Marginalia’, in Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning, ed. John N. King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 211–231.

75. 75.  Margaret Hoby, The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, ed. Dorothy M. Meads (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1930), 107.

76. 76.  Helen Smith, noting that the annotations were not in Hoby’s hand, has nonetheless identified other markings in the books that could be attributed to Hoby herself. These include various dots and trefoils, which marked passages that could have been of particular interest to Hoby. See Helen Smith, ‘Grossly Material Things’: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 186.

77. 77.  John Donne, Pseudo-Martyr. Wherein Out of Certaine Propositions and Gradations, This Conclusion is Evicted. That Those Which Are of the Romane Religion in This Kingdome, May and Ought to Take the Oath of Allegiance (London: Printed by W. Stansby for Walter Burre, 1610). Hackness 57, York Minster Library, York.

78. 78.  Donne, Pseudo-Martyr.

79. 79.  Cambers, ‘Readers’ Marks and Religious Practice’, 220.

80. 80.  Olga Valbuena, ‘Casuistry, Martyrdom, and the Allegiance Controversy in Donne’s “Pseudo-Martyr”’, Religion and Literature 32, no. 2, Faith and Faction: Religious Heterodoxy in the English Renaissance (2000): 49–80. For more on the Oath of Allegiance, see Marcy L. North, ‘Anonymity’s Subject: James I and the Debate over the Oath of Allegiance’, New Literary History 33, no. 2, Anonymity (2002): 215–232; Conal Condren, Argument and Authority in Early Modern England: The Presupposition of Oaths and Offices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

81. 81.  For more on Mornay, see Arthur L. Herman, ‘Protestant Churches in a Catholic Kingdom: Political Assemblies in the Thought of Philippe Duplessis-Mornay’, The Sixteenth-Century Journal 21, no. 4 (1990): 543–557.

82. 82.  Philip of Mornai, A Treatise of the Church, Wherein are Handled the Principall Questions Mooued in our Time Concerning that Matter (Imprinted at London by L. S. for George Potter, 1606). Hackness 66, York Minster Library.

83. 83.  Philip of Mornai, Fowre Bookes, of the Institution, Use and Doctrine of the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist in the Old Church. As Likewise, How, When, And by what Degrees the Masse if Brought in, in place thereof (London: Printed by Iohn Windet, for I. B. T. M. and W. P., 1600). Hackness 47, York Minster Library.

84. 84.  Sherman, Used Books, 19–20.

85. 85.  Mark Greengrass, ‘Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, Jacques VI et Ier, et la réunion de christianisme 1603–1619’, Albineana 18 (2006): 423–461; Jaime Goodrich, Faithful Translators: Authorship, Gender and Religion in Early Modern England (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2014).

86. 86.  Cambers, ‘Readers’ Marks and Religious Practice’, 220.

87. 87.  Exact figures: Book One is annotated on 39.4 per cent of its pages; Book Two 40.7 per cent; Book Three 11.1 per cent; and Book Four 6.4 per cent.

88. 88.  Cambers, ‘Readers’ Marks and Religious Practice’, 228.

89. 89.  Cambers, ‘Readers’ Marks and Religious Practice’, 228.

90. 90.  Hoby, The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 67.

91. 91.  Smith, ‘Grossly Material Things’.

92. 92.  Mornai, Fowre Bookes, 129.

93. 93.  Mornai, Fowre Bookes, 305.

94. 94.  Crawford, ‘Reconsidering Early Modern Women’s Reading’, 194.

95. 95.  For more on neighbourly relationship, parish politics and religion, see Naomi Tadmor, The Social Universe of the English Bible: Scripture, Society, and Culture in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Keith Wrightson, ‘The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England’, in The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, ed. Paul Griffiths, Adam Fox and Steve Hindle (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996), 10–46.

96. 96.  Felicity Heal, ‘Reputation and Honour in Court and Country: Lady Elizabeth Russell and Sir Thomas Hoby’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6 (1996): 163. For more on Thomas Hoby, see G. C. F. Forster, ‘Faction and County Government in Early Stuart Yorkshire’, Northern History 11, no. 1 (1976): 70–86.

97. 97.  Hoby, The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 105. For work on the Bible as a conversion tool overseas in the early modern period, see Helen Smith, ‘ “Wilt thou not read me, Atheist?”: The Bible and Conversion’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530–1700, ed. Kevin Killeen, Helen Smith and Rachel Willie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 351–366.

98. 98.  Hoby, The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 136.

99. 99.  While Hoby’s diary was written before most of the conduct literature and funeral sermons surveyed here, it is clear that she was part of this conversation about godly reading and women that was developing during the early modern period, and uses remarkably similar language and tropes.

100. 100.  Sharon Cadman Seelig, Autobiography and Gender in Early Modern Literature: Reading Women’s Lives, 1600–1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 16.

101. 101.  Hoby, The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 67.

102. 102.  Hoby, The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 168.

103. 103.  Hoby, The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 166.

104. 104.  Linda Pollock, ed., With Faith and Physic: The Life of a Tudor Gentlewoman, Lady Grace Mildmay, 1552–1620 (London: Collins & Brown, 1993), 23. Women were not the only ones to practise this ordered, habitual method of reading scripture. Nehemiah Wallington, for example, recorded reading a chapter of the Bible every night. See Nehemiah Wallington, The Notebooks of Nehemiah Wallington, 1618–1654: A Selection, ed. David Booy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 267, 272.

105. 105.  Sarah Cowper, Miscellany, D/EP F44, 87, Hertfordshire Local Studies and Archives, Hertford.

106. 106.  Sharon Cadman Seelig, Autobiography and Gender in Early Modern Literature: Reading Women’s Lives, 1600–1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 16.

107. 107.  Hoby, The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 69–70.

108. 108.  Anne Clifford, The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, ed. D. J. H. Clifford (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1990), 265.

109. 109.  Mary Ellen Lamb, ‘The Sociality of Margaret Hoby’s Reading Practices and the Representation of Reformation Interiority’, Critical Survey 12, no. 2 (2000): 17–32.

110. 110.  Lamb, ‘The Sociality of Margaret Hoby’s Reading Practices’, 28.

111. 111.  Lamb, ‘The Sociality of Margaret Hoby’s Reading Practices’, 18.

112. 112.  Scholars have begun to question the ‘privileging of the individualistic male self over the relational model more common to women’ in the historiography of early modern autobiographical writings. See Lamb, ‘The Sociality of Margaret Hoby’s Reading Practices’, 28.

113. 113.  Rainbowe, A Sermon Preached, 39.

114. 114.  Bernard Bourdin, The Theological-Political Origins of the Modern State: The Controversy between James I of England and Cardinal Bellarmine, trans. Susan Pickford (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 135. William Barclay was the father of John Barclay, author of Argenis, which Clifford read and annotated – see Chapter 2.

115. 115.  Leah Knight, ‘Reading across Borders: Anne Clifford’s “Popish” Books’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 25, no. 2 (2014): 27–56.

116. 116.  Knight, ‘Reading across Borders’, 46.

117. 117.  Lucy Hutchinson is well known for her religio-political writings in the mid-seventeenth century, and demonstrates the political nature of religious reading very well. Elizabeth Scott-Baumann has argued that Hutchinson’s Order and Disorder encourages a ‘kind of politicised reading of the Bible’. See Scott-Baumann, ‘Lucy Hutchinson, the Bible and Order and Disorder’, in The Intellectual Culture of Puritan Women, 1558–1680, ed. Johanna Harris and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 176–189.

118. 118.  Hoby, The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 97.

119. 119.  Hoby, The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby, 260 (note 284); Patrick Collinson, ‘Cartwright, Thomas’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, accessed September 12, 2023, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4820?docPos=1. For more on Thomas Cartwright, see Stephen A. Chavura, ‘Mixed Constitutionalism and Parliamentarianism in Elizabethan England: The Case of Thomas Cartwright’, History of European Ideas 41, no. 3 (2015): 318–337.

120. 120.  Diane Willen, ‘Godly Women in Early Modern England: Puritanism and Gender’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43, no. 4 (1992): 570. Willen builds on the work of scholars such as Patrick Collinson, who studied the place of women in early modern Protestantism, but convincingly argues that they did not pay enough attention to the ways in which gender operated in (female) lay and (male) clerical relationships. See Patrick Collinson, ‘The Role of Women in the English Reformation Illustrated by the Life and Friendships of Anne Locke’, Studies in Church History 2 (1965): 258–272.

121. 121.  Willen, ‘Godly Women in Early Modern England’, 570–571.

122. 122.  Willen, ‘Godly Women in Early Modern England.’ For more on Barrington and Harley, see Chapter 3.

123. 123.  Peter Lake, ‘Feminine Piety and Personal Potency: The “Emancipation” of Mrs Jane Ratcliffe’, The Seventeenth Century 2, no. 2 (1987): 154.

124. 124.  Clifford, The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford, 52.

125. 125.  Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 150. Evidently, Clifford’s husband also wanted this communal reading, although the gendered authority was no doubt different in that interaction.

126. 126.  Elizabeth Delaval, The Meditations of Lady Elizabeth Delaval, Written Between 1662 and 1671, ed. Douglas G. Greene (Gateshead: Printed for the Surtees Society by Northumberland Press, 1978), 117.

127. 127.  Henry Hammond, A Paraphrase, and Annotations Upon all the Books of the New Testament: Briefly explaining all the difficult places thereof (London: Printed by J. Flesher for Richard Royston, 1653); Henry Hammond, A Paraphrase and Annotations Upon the Books of the Psalms: Briefly Explaining the Difficulties thereof (London: Printed by R. Norton, for Richard Royston, 1659).

128. 128.  Michael McGiffert, ‘Henry Hammond and Covenant Theology’, Church History 74, no. 2 (2005): 255–285.

129. 129.  Neil Lettinga, ‘Covenant Theory Turned Upside Down: Henry Hammond and Caroline Anglican Moralism: 1643–1660’, Sixteenth-Century Journal 24, no. 3 (1993): 653–669. For more on Moralism, see C. FitzSimons Allison, The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter (London: SPCK, 1966).

130. 130.  Dorothy Moore’s letters are another good example of this – she often discussed matters of church and state with her male correspondents. See Lynette Hunter, ed., The Letters of Dorothy Moore, 1612–64: The Friendships, Marriage and Intellectual Life of a Seventeenth-Century Woman (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). Carol Pal has examined how the writings of Moore and other contemporary female intellectuals was influenced by the Civil War period and the influx of radical Protestant ideas from the Netherlands. See Pal, Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

131. 131.  Anne Sadleir to Herbert Aston, March 20, 1663, R.5.5. f10, Trinity College, Cambridge.

132. 132.  Herbert Aston to Anne Sadleir, March 31 [no year], R.5.5. f6, Trinity College.

133. 133.  This is almost certainly the 1632 book on English saints by Father Jerome Porter, a Benedictine monk. See Jerome Porter, The Flowers of the Liues of the Most Renowned Saincts of the Three Kingdoms England Scotland, and Ireland Written and collected out of the best authours and manuscripts of our nation, and distributed according to their feasts in the calendar (Printed at Doway, 1632).

134. 134.  Anne Sadleir to Roger Williams, undated, R.5.5. f35, Trinity College.

135. 135.  Timothy L. Hall, Separating Church and State: Roger Williams and Religious Liberty (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998).

136. 136.  Many other women, including Elizabeth Delaval and Anne Halkett, recorded reading some or all of these texts. See Julie A. Eckerle, Romancing the Self in Early Modern Englishwomen’s Life Writing (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 28–29.

137. 137.  Robert Wilcher, ‘What Was the King’s Book For? The Evolution of Eikon Basilike’, The Yearbook of English Studies 21 (1991): 218–228.

138. 138.  Peter Lake, ‘Business as Usual? The Immediate Reception of Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52, no. 3 (2001): 456–486.

139. 139.  Sarah Hutton, ‘Thomas Jackson, Oxford Platonist, and William Twisse, Aristotelian’, Journal of the History of Ideas 39, no. 4 (1978): 637.

140. 140.  Jonathan McGovern, ‘The Political Sermons of Lancelot Andrewes’, The Seventeenth Century 34, no. 1 (2019): 3–25.

141. 141.  Anne Sadleir to Roger Williams, undated, R.5.5. f36, Trinity College.

142. 142.  John D. Schaeffer, ‘Tropical Latitude: Prophecy, Orality, and the Rhetoric of Tolerance in Jeremy Taylor’s The Liberty of Prophesying’, Studies in Philology 101, no. 4 (2004): 454–470. See Jeremy Taylor, Theologia eklektike. A Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying. Shewing the unreasonableness of prescribing to other mens faith, and the iniquity of persecuting differing opinions (London: Printed for R. Royston, at the Angel in Ivie-Lane, 1647).

143. 143.  Anne Sadleir to Roger Williams, undated, R.5.5. f36, Trinity College.

144. 144.  Sadleir to Williams, undated, R.5.5. f36, Trinity College.

145. 145.  Diane K. McColley, ‘Milton and the Sexes’, in The Cambridge Companion to Milton, ed. Dennis Danielson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 181. It is likely from the wording that Sadleir was referring to Milton’s Doctrine and the Discipline of Divorce, first published in 1643.

146. 146.  John Milton, Eikonoklastes. In answer to a book intitl’d Eikon basilike, the portrature of His Sacred Majesty in his solitudes and sufferings (London: Printed by T. N., 1650); John Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates: Proving, that is it Lawfull, and hath been held so through all Ages, for any, who have the Power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and after due conviction, to depose, and put him to death; if the ordinary Magistrate have neglected, or deny’d to doe it (London: Printed by Matthew Simmons, 1649). I am grateful to Marcus Nevitt for this second identification.

147. 147.  Nigel Smith has argued that this claim was ‘groundless, a post-regicide slur, and possibly a confusion of Marvell and Milton’s collaboration in 1653 or 1654’. See Nigel Smith, Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 106.

148. 148.  Anne Sadleir to Roger Williams, undated, R.5.5. f36, Trinity College.

149. 149.  Clement Walker, Anarchia Anglicana: Or, the History of Independency. With observations historicall and politicque upon this present Parliament, begun Anno 16. Caroli Primi ([London, s.n.], 1648).

150. 150.  David Underdown, ‘Walker, Clement’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, accessed September 12, 2023, www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-28473?rskey=nCQKGq&result=1.

151. 151.  Royce MacGillivray, Restoration Historians and the English Civil War (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974).