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‘He-goats before the Flocks’: a note on the part played by women in the founding of some Civil War Churches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Claire Cross
Claire Cross*
Affiliation:
University of York
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Extract

Recent seventeenth-century historians have stressed the opportunities the disruption caused by the Civil War gave to women to assert a new role for themselves, first in religion, then in society in general. There is much truth in this thesis: especially among the more extreme sects like the Ranters, and, later, the Quakers, women did publicly teach and evangelise, activities hitherto exclusively reserved for men. Yet this emphasis upon radical women sectaries can be misleading since it tends to obscure the importance of more sober protestant matrons. For them the Civil War did not mark a new period of spiritual awakening or intellectual enlightenment: rather it brought to fruition a tradition of independent action by laywomen which can be traced back at least to the days of the Henrician Reformation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 8: Popular Belief and Practice , 1972 , pp. 195 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1972

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References

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