These infamous words of St. Paul, which must have formed the authoritative scriptural text for many a misogynist sermon at church and in the home, may serve to remind us of the constraints upon women's access to the word (and the Word) in a period of profound religious sensitivity such as the seventeenth century in England. The essential characteristic of a Christian woman, repeated in consecutive sentences in the Pauline text, is “silence”: a silence representing submission, the silence of one who is “subject” to another's authority, a pupil or learner who is expressly forbidden to teach but must ever increase her holiness. It is interesting to observe how the word “holiness” replaces “hope” in this sober echo, for female consumption, of the more familiar trio of faith, hope and charity from 1 Corinthians 13.13; good works and a holy outlook were apparently more significant than inner confidence when it came to women's spirituality. How, then, was a woman to fulfil the requirements of devotion and femininity in the seventeenth century, as laid down by St. Paul? The most obvious way for a woman to learn in silence was either to listen to a man, or to read.