Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500–1800 Jane Lead and her Transnational Legacy edited by Ariel Hessayon Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500–1800 Series Editors Professor Crawford Gribben, Queen’s University Belfast , UK Dr R. Scott Spurlock, University of Glasgow, UK Building upon the recent recovery of interest in religion in the early modern trans-Atlantic world, this series offers fresh, lively and inter- disciplinary perspectives on the broad view of its subject. Books in the series will work strategically and systematically to address major but under- studied or overly simplifi ed themes in the religious and cultural history of the early modern trans-Atlantic. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14892 Lady Mico’s almshouses near St Dunstan’s church, Stepney (nineteenth-century watercolour by an unknown artist); reproduced by courtesy of the Mercers’ Company. Ariel Hessayon Editor Jane Lead and her Transnational Legacy Editor Ariel Hessayon Department of History Goldsmiths, University of London London , United Kingdom Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500–1800 ISBN 978-1-137-39613-6 ISBN 978-1-137-39614-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39614-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016944988 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London To the Panacea Charitable Trust ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume emerged from the conference ‘Blessed Virago: The International Mysticism of Jane Lead’ held at the Hoxton Hotel, London on 8 September 2012. I am grateful to the trustees of the Panacea Charitable Trust for their generous fi nancial support in hosting this event. Additional gratitude is due to the Panacea Charitable Trust, which has very generously supported my larger research project on the prophetic thought and legacies of Jacob Boehme. Thanks also to Jade Moulds and the rest of the staff at Palgrave Macmillan for their courtesy, kindness and effi ciency. Finally, of course, thank you to the contributors for their unstinting cooperation and unfailing patience. ix CONTENTS 1 Introduction: Jane Lead’s Legacy in Perspective 1 Ariel Hessayon 2 Lead’s Life and Times (Part One): Before Widowhood 13 Ariel Hessayon 3 Lead’s Life and Times (Part Two): The Woman in the Wilderness 39 Ariel Hessayon 4 Lead’s Life and Times (Part Three): The Philadelphian Society 71 Ariel Hessayon 5 Jane Lead and the Tradition of Puritan Pastoral Theology 91 Amanda L. Capern 6 Jane Lead and English Apocalyptic Thought in the Late Seventeenth Century 119 Warren Johnston xi xii CONTENTS 7 The Restitution of ‘Adam’s Angelical and Paradisiacal Body’: Jane Lead’s Metaphor of Rebirth and Mystical Marriage 143 Stefania Salvadori 8 Mystical Divinity in the Manuscript Writings of Jane Lead and Anne Bathurst 167 Sarah Apetrei 9 ‘God’s Strange Providence’: Jane Lead in the Correspondence of Johann Georg Gichtel 187 Lucinda Martin 10 Philadelphia Resurrected: Celebrating the Union Act (1707) from Irenic to Scatological Eschatology 213 Lionel Laborie 11 Jane Lead’s Prophetic Afterlife in the Nineteenth-Century English Atlantic 241 Philip Lockley 12 ‘A Prophecy Out of the Past’: Contrasting Treatments of Jane Lead Among Two North American Twentieth-Century Millenarian Movements: Mary’s City of David and the Latter Rain 267 Bridget M. Jacobs General Index 291 Index of Places 301 NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS Sarah Apetrei is Departmental Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (2010), and has co-edited collections of essays on prophecy and mysticism in seventeenth-century England, and on the reception of Jacob Boehme. She is currently working on a book dealing with the place of mystical theology in seventeenth-century British religion. Amanda L. Capern is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hull. She is a specialist on early-modern English women’s history, publishing widely in this area including The Historical Study of Women: England 1500–1700 (Palgrave, 2008; 2010). She is co-editor of Palgrave’s Gender and History book series and was sub-editor on the Chawton House Library edition of Mary Hays’ Female Biography (2013–14). Ariel Hessayon is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of ‘Gold tried in the fi re’. The prophet Theaurau John Tany and the English Revolution (2007) and has co-edited several collections of essays. He has also written extensively on a variety of early modern topics: antiscripturism, book burning, communism, environmentalism, esotericism, extra-canonical texts, heresy, crypto-Jews, Judaizing, millenarianism, mysticism, prophecy and religious radicalism. Bridget M. Jacobs is a PhD candidate in English literature at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette whose research interests focus on blending print culture and reader-response approaches to early modern religious literature. Jacobs was a 2012 winner of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded Central New York Humanities Corridor grant for her North American archival work on Jane Lead. xiii xiv NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS Warren Johnston is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy at Algoma University in Ontario, Canada. He has published a number of peer-reviewed articles and chapters on early modern English apocalyptic ideas. His book Revelation Restored: The Apocalypse in Later Seventeenth-Century England explains the importance of apocalyptic belief to political thought and culture during the Restoration. His current research project examines National Thanksgivings and Identity in Britain from the late seventeenth century to the end of the Napoleonic wars. Lionel Laborie is a visiting researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London. His work concentrates on religious toleration and dissent in early modern Europe, with a particular interest in the Camisard rebellion (1702–1710) and its international legacy in the Protestant world. He is the author of Enlightening Enthusiasm: Prophecy and Religious Experience in Early Eighteenth-Century England (2015). Philip Lockley wrote his chapter in this volume while British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford. He is the author of Visionary Religion and Radicalism in Early Industrial England: from Southcott to Socialism (2013) and editor of Protestant Communalism in the Trans- Atlantic World, 1650–1850 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). He is now an ordinand in the Church of England at Cranmer Hall, Durham University. Lucinda Martin holds a position at the Gotha Research Centre of the University of Erfurt, Germany, where she is the principal investigator for a project funded by the German Research Council on the ‘Philadelphians’. Her publications have concentrated on religion as an agent for change in the Early Modern era. Stefania Salvadori is a Research Fellow at the Herzog August Bibliothek— Wolfenbüttel, where she is working on the inventory of the correspondence of Johann Valentin Andreae. Her publications include a monograph on Sebastian Castellio and the history of tolerance (2009), editions of works of Erasmus (2011), of pietistic theological treatises (2014), and of Melanchthon’s Loci (forthcoming, 2016), as well as essays on religious and political dissent in early modern Europe. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BL British Library, London Bodl. Bodleian Library, Oxford Chetham’s Chetham’s Library, Manchester CJ Journals of the House of Commons (34 vols, 1742–92) CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic CUL Cambridge University Library DWL Dr Williams’s Library, London FbG Forschungsbibliothek Gotha FHL Friends House Library, London G & C Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge GL Guildhall Library, London LJ Journals of the House of Lords (64 vols., 1767–1830) LMA London Metropolitan Archives LPL Lambeth Palace Library, London Norfolk R.O. Norfolk Record Offi ce, Norwich ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Thune, Behmenists Nils Thune, The Behmenists and the Philadelphians: A Contribution to the Study of English Mysticism in the 17th and 18th Centuries , trans. G.E. Björk (Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksells, 1948) TNA: PRO The National Archives: Public Record Offi ce Walton, Notes Christopher Walton, Notes and Materials for an adequate Biography of the celebrated divine and theosopher, William Law (London: privately printed, 1854) xv TABLES Table 12.1 Versions of the ‘sixty propositions’ 275 xvii CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Jane Lead’s Legacy in Perspective Ariel Hessayon Jane Lead (pronounced Leed or Leeds by contemporaries) and sometimes written with a fi nal ‘e’ (especially in printed German translations of her works) was among the most prolifi c published female authors of the long eighteenth century.