MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AND THE FIFTH MONARCHY WOMEN: ANNA TRAPNEL, SARAH WIGHT, ELIZABETH AVERY, AND MARY CARY LORRAINE McNEIL A Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph. D in the Department of English Literary and Linguistic Studies at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne October 2001 NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 201097472 ABSTRACT This thesis focuses on mystical experience and the writings of Anna Trapnel and other women associated with the Fifth Monarchy movement, Sarah Wight, Mary Cary, and Elizabeth Avery. Female visionary experience is particularly associated with the High to Late Middle Ages, yet there is a recurrence of it in the mid-seventeenth century, exemplified by the Fifth Monarchy women. One of the aims of this thesis is to determine how far the mystical discourse of medieval writers such as Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, and St. Bridget, penetrates the writing of women associated with the Fifth Monarchists. To this end it participates in the critical debate surrounding the possibility of a tradition of female prophecy. A general residue of medieval mystical texts in England in the seventeenth century suggests cross-cultural influences, yet the recurrence of medieval aspects of mysticism in the writing of women visionaries has been seen as little more than coincidence. In order to develop the idea that there are more deliberate reasons for this recurrence, I will examine the ideological beliefs of the Fifth Monarchy movement, analysing in particular the ways in which these beliefs were expressed, as well as considering the impact of seventeenth-century editions of medieval mystical texts on the visionary writers of this movement. In pointing to a tradition of women's self-expression through mystical experience, this thesis also offers an analysis of Luce Irigaray's essay 'La Mysterique'. Emphasising the notion, that for women, the body is a signifier of mystical experience, Irigaray provides us with the means to gain a greater understanding of women's viSionary writing, while at the same time enabling us to gauge its significance in relation to the systems of social order prevalent during the period in which they wrote. The combination of historical and theoretical analysis is necessary for a full assessment of the implications of a consciousness of a feminised tradition of mysticism for the Fifth Monarchy movement as a whole, exemplified in the work of one of its leaders, John Rogers, but particularly its women members. For Cal CONTENTS Acknowledgements 4 List of Illustrations 5 Chapter One Introduction: Approaches to 6 Sectarian Women's Writing Chapter Two Millenarianism and 20 'La Mysterique' Chapter Three Mvstical, Traditions: The 55 Dissemination of Medieval Mysticism and the Fifth Monarchists Chapter Four Patterns of Mystical Discourse 88 Chapter Five Empty Nothing Creatures: 135 Negation and the Fifth Monarchy Women Chapter Six Writing Defiance: Law, 176 Language and the Fifth Monarchy Women Conclusion 219 Bibliography 223 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to all my family for their support and encouragement during the writing of this thesis; and thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Jenny Richards, for her constructive criticism of my work. 4 ILLUSTRATIONS 1 An illustration from Pepwell's Dietary of Ghostly 61 Helthe (1520), STC 6833. 2 Title page from The Passyon of our lorde Jesu Christe 105 wythe the contemplatios [1508?], STC 14557. 3 Illustration from Winken de Warde's edition of The 107 Book of Margery Kempe: Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplcyon taken out of the bake of Margerie Kempe of Iyn (1501), STC 14924. 5 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: APPROACHES TO SECTARIAN WOMEN'S WRITING This thesis focuses on the visionary writing of the Fifth Monarchy women, Anna Trapnel, Sarah Wight, Mary Cary, and Elizabeth Avery. Female visionary experience is particularly associated with the High to Late Middle Ages, yet there is a recurrence of it in England in the mid-seventeenth century, exemplified by the Fifth Monarchy women whose mystical and prophetic experiences seem to reflect those of medieval women mystics, such as Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, and St. Bridget. These women are acknowledged to be among the most influential of writers of the medieval mystical tradition. The "mystical tradition" is a phrase used by many medievalists to suggest the enduring nature of this type of literature, and by definition it is indicative of a body of thought which is continuous 1. Yet the impact of this tradition on sectarian women's writing has not been considered. Despite the fact that there remained a general residue of medieval mystical texts in England in the seventeenth century which might suggest cross-cultural influences, current critical opinion has declared the recurrence coincidental. Diane Watt's recent study of female prophecy from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century points to the long term influences of the mystics St. Bridget and Margery Kempe, but states clearly that it does not "argue for a single tradition of female prophecy, or suggest that it is a consistent, transhistorical phenomenon,,2. Gerda Lerner notes that the influence of Hildegard of Bingen extends into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but affirms that this does not indicate a tradition of female mysticism: "The women of talent existed, they struggled valiantly, they achieved - and they were forgotten. The women coming after them had to start allover again". 3 Is the recurrence of mysticism in the mid-seventeenth century coincidental or are there more 6 deliberate reasons for it? The aims of this thesis centre on identifying a conscious tradition of female mystical expression. By looking again at the evidence, exploring the dissemination of medieval mystical texts in the seventeenth century, and by analysing texts from key figures in the mystical tradition, I will argue that female visionary experience is a consistent and therefore a cross-cultural phenomenon. The visionary writings of the Fifth Monarchy women will consequently be interpreted as part of a specific feminised movement of self-expression. Critical studies of the Fifth Monarchists have been few, and it is only in recent years that feminist scholars have considered the writings of Anna Trapnel, Mary Cary, and to a lesser extent Sarah Wight and Elizabeth Avery, in terms of seventeenth- century radicalism and female self-expression. Alfred Cohen presented one of the first studies of the Fifth Monarchists in 1964 when he explored the general characteristics of the "Fifth Monarchy mind,,4 through the pen of Mary Cary. He asserted that "the ideas of the Fifth Monarchy Men" were "best seen from a study of the works of one of the popular writers of the movement, Mary Cary.,,5 Although he does not consider the significance of gender differences, Cohen at least acknowledges the contribution made by Cary to the Fifth Monarchy movement at a time when literary critics generally dismissed much of women's writing in the seventeenth century as inferior to that of their male counterparts. In her recent study of seventeenth-century women's prophetic texts, Stevie Davis points out that women's contribution to radicalism has been largely ignored. Davis acknowledges that everyone "writing in the field of seventeenth-century radicalism owes a great debt to writerly historians such as Christopher Hill, Keith Thomas, Lawrence Stone, B.S. Capp, E.P. Thompson, [and] Brian Manning"S, yet, worthy though their studies are, as a whole they tend to neglect the impact of female prophecy. Recently, Hilary Hinds has aimed to enlighten literary critics who argue that women's sectarian 7 I writing from the mid-seventeenth century is excluded because "they have a limited amount to offer on a 'literary' level',.7 As she pOints out, "critics have been analysing and commentating on the writings of men from the radical sects, making sense of their pronouncements on issues similar to those engaged with by the women writers,,8. Critics have considered such matters as the origins of spiritual autobiography, the defining characteristics of Puritan writing, and the language of Quakerism, or of the sects more generally. It was not, therefore, that there was no precedent for looking at this work, continues Hinds, or that there was "no body of criticism to engage or enrage the feminist researcher; it was more that there was a lacuna when it came to that body of writing produced by women from the sects."g In the only full-length study of the Fifth Monarchy movement, Bernard Capp's The Fifth Monarchy Men, the bias is towards understanding the ideas of its male leaders. Men such as Thomas Venner and Vavasor Powell who ensured, as Capp points out, that "Fifth Monarchists were linked to the mainstream of political affairs in the years after the execution of Charles I in 1649.,,10 And in The World Turned Upside Down, as Davis again points out, Christopher Hill has "all but censored out, unread, women of the calibre of Cary, [and] Trapnel,,11, and even by the time he wrote The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution twenty years later these women were still ignored. Nevertheless, Christopher Hill and Keith Thomas have been among those considering the writing of women like Trapnel or Cary in relation to their position as members of a radical sectarian group, and have, as Kate Chedgzoy points out, viewed their utterances within a more general revolutionary framework. 12 Keith Thomas, for instance, explored women's association with the sects in order to assess 13 the extent to which it affected the family unit. Manifest in these studies, however, is the belief that women did not figure as influential members of their particular group; less obvious is the belief that female prophecy was not especially significant either to the 8 movement to which the women prophets belonged, or to the women themselves.