The Weaker Vessel: Women's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England

by Antonia Fraser

  It was traditional among the English to suppose that it was the women-folk of their Celtic neighbours who possessed a relentless ferocity. The Irishwomen in particular, attached to the Royalist armies, had a bad name (perhaps that contributed to the violence of the attack on the old Irishwoman found wandering about Lyme, although unconscious prejudice against her age and sex may also have had something to do with it). Irishwomen at the siege of Nantwich were said to have been armed with knives half an ell long – nearly two feet. After their capture it was recommended they should all be killed or thrown into the sea; it was Fairfax who had them exchanged for Roundhead prisoners instead.36

  The Scots were thought to have included females among their forces when they marched towards Newcastle in 1644, to swell their numbers ‘and their women (good Ladies) stood with blew-caps among the men’ wrote the newspaper Mercurius Aulicus. When King Charles I moved against the Scots in 1639, the militancy of the Calvinist Lady Ann Cunningham – ‘a notable Virago’ – struck terror not only into the hearts of the English, but also into that of her own son, the Marquess of Hamilton, who did not share her religious convictions. At Berwick on 5 June, she rode with a case of pistols at her saddle, and her ‘dags’ (daggers) at her girdle, at the head of her troop of horse. All her attendant women had been obliged to become expert marksmen; the Marquess aroused her special ire. She threatened to shoot him personally if he came ashore with the King, and to that end, either with magic craft or with an aristocrat’s due in mind, was said to have carried golden bullets with her. 37

  The truth was different: the Celts did not have the monopoly of Amazons. Any woman, desperate or convinced enough, English as well as Scottish or Irish, might find it in herself to play the ‘Virago’. Commitment and necessity brought physical strength. (As indeed women have throughout history, in modern as well as ancient times, performed military service with success when circumstances demanded it.) Besides, whatever the mystique of feminine weakness, and even fragility, enjoyed by the ladies of the middle and upper classes, the women of the English labouring class were in their ordinary peacetime lives indulging automatically in feats of manual strength: a great scythe wielded all day at harvest-time was not such a bad preparation for ‘push of Pike’.

  It hardly needs stressing that at a time of sparse hygiene dress itself and concealment presented little problem: short hair (which was easily achieved) vanished in any case from the Roundhead philosophy shortly after the start of the war; the thick buff cassock coat and breeches of the average soldier was at once disguise and protection. Many must have acted as did Christian Davies, born in 1667, who, going in search of her soldier husband towards the end of the century, adopted the simple expedient of cutting her hair and donning his clothes ‘having had the precaution to quilt the Waistcoat, to preserve my Breasts from hurt which were not large enough to betray my Sex’.

  In her autobiography (sometimes ascribed to Defoe), The life and Adventures of Mrs Christian Davies, commonly call’d Mother Ross … Taken from her own mouth when a Pensioner of Chelsea Hospital, Christian Davies describes herself as one who as a girl had always enjoyed ‘manly Employments, such as handling a rake, flail, pitchfork, and riding horses bareback’.38 Such a one was perhaps the authenticated she-soldier Anne Dymoke, ‘a young person’ who turned up in the military garrison stronghold of Ayr, in 1657, during the occupation of Scotland by the Cromwellian Army. Anne described herself as the daughter to one John Dymoke of Keale, near Bullingbrooke Castle in Lincolnshire. The Dymokes, of which the main branch lived at Scrivelsby, were a distinguished family, headed by the King’s Champion, who as Cavaliers had ruined themselves in the royal cause. But this was back in the bad old days of the Civil Wars; in any case there is no record of Anne in the main branch of the family, so perhaps either John or his daughter Anne was illegitimate. As it is, her adventures demonstrate that the ballads scarcely exaggerated in their dramatic descriptions of the she-soldier’s life.39

  Anne Dymoke’s father and mother being both dead, she went to live with her aunt. Here she fell in love with one John Evison (or Ivison), like herself of Lincolnshire origin, but who had served in the Army in London. Her affection was returned. Unfortunately her friends would not hear of the match, and without their approval, Anne saw no way of ‘accomplishing her end’ – which was to throw in her lot with that of John Evison – ‘but by putting herself into man’s habit’. This she did in May 1655, and so attired went to London with her lover.

  In London, however, John Evison proved to have no means of supporting her, so the couple decided to enter service together, describing themselves as two brothers, ‘this maid still keeping in man’s apparel’. As ‘Stephan’ Evison, Anne Dymoke lived at the house of a coachman in Chick Lane called Taylor for two years, while John Evison lived in Islington. John and ‘Stephan’ Evison then took a sea voyage. Tragically, in the course of this voyage, ‘the said John was cast away’, that is, washed overboard and presumed drowned. It was in this manner that the bereft Anne, ‘keeping still her man’s habit’, arrived at Carlisle.

  What was she to do, a young woman, friendless and alone in a strange city? The course Anne Dymoke adopted was to enlist as a soldier under a Major Tolhurst, using this time the name of her dead lover John Evison. And it was in this manner that she ended up at Ayr, where as Colonel Roger Sawrey was careful to make clear in reporting the incident: ‘I can perceive nothing but modesty in her carriage since she has been with us.’ Nor was Anne Dymoke any less keen to distinguish herself from Dol Troop and her ilk. In the garrison at Ayr she ‘never was known to any, which she declares very solemnly to be all the way of her progress in her disguise’.

  There was one particular woman’s skill which in wartime made her man’s valuable comrade, and that was nursing. The weaker vessel, just because her weakness also comprised softness, tenderness and compassion, was held to be a natural nurse (as man, the stronger vessel, was supposed to be a natural soldier). Sir Ralph Verney spoke as roundly on the subject of nursing to his son John as he had done on the subject of education to Dr Denton, only this time he found for women. ‘’Tis not a man’s employment,’ he declared of nursing, ‘but woman’s work, and they both understand it and can perform it much better than any Man can do.’40

  There was a practical side to this as well. Before the war most nursing had been done at home, and as we have seen, housewives from great to humble regarded the provision of homegrown medical remedies as part of their essential duty. The wartime nursing of the wives among the body of camp-followers was in one sense merely an extension of this role; just as Lady Cholmley, the chatelaine of Scarborough Castle, nursed the sick during its siege, a task she would have performed, if on a lesser scale, in peacetime.

  The field arrangements for nursing during the hostilities were on both sides also extremely sketchy. Commanders might rage – King Charles I might inveigh – against the peripheral nuisance of the camp-followers, but in this case at least, the value of their services was unarguable. General Venables’s ill-fated expedition to the West Indies under the Protectorate was generally censured – rightly – for its lack of preparation. But when the General was also criticized for allowing some of the soldiers to be accompanied by their wives, he struck back with some justice, referring to ‘the necessity of having that sex with an army to attend upon and help the sick and wounded, which men are unfit for’. Had even more women gone, he protested, ‘I suppose that many had not perished as they did for want of care and attendance.’41

  There were no movable hospitals during the campaigns, and a far from abundant supply of surgeons and physicians. There was also very little proper organization to get the wounded away from the field of battle afterwards to what hospitals did exist. Left too often where they had fallen, soldiers of both sides were fortunate to enjoy the natural nursing instincts and skills of some local woman. After Edgehill, for example, one Hester Whyte petitioned for reimbursement because she had taken charge of wounded Parliamentary soldiers
‘in great misery by reason of their wounds’ for three months and had laid out her own money to supply their wants.42

  Royalist prisoners who were taken to Nottingham Castle and encountered Lucy Hutchinson were particularly fortunate. Lucy Hutchinson, ‘having some excellent balsams and plasters in her closet’, was busy attending to the wounds of her own side, and with the assistance of a gentleman that had some skill, she managed to dress all their wounds: ‘Whereof some were dangerous, being all shots, with such good success that they were all well cured in convenient time’. At this point the Governor’s wife noticed three Royalist prisoners, ‘sorely cut’ and bleeding, being carried down to the Castle’s prison, known as the Lion’s Den. Despite the protest of a Roundhead captain that these men were ‘the enemies of God’, the high-principled Lucy insisted on doing ‘what she thought was her duty in humanity to them, as fellow creatures, not as enemies’.43

  Another remarkable character in this respect was Elizabeth Alkin, otherwise known as ‘Parliament Joan’. Elizabeth Alkin first came to prominence at Portsmouth when war broke out, and in the general chaos took it upon herself to take back the wounded to be cared for in London; for which humanitarian service she was paid £1516s 8d. Later she went to Harwich, where she cleansed the bodies of the wounded, cut their hair and had their clothes mended. Like some earlier Florence Nightingale she demanded ‘more hammacoes [hammocks], candles, wood etc.’ for the needs of the sick; she also spent her own money: ‘I cannot see them in want if I have it.’ As a result of these further efforts, she was paid a further £15 by the Committee of Sequestrations in October 1647 (out of confiscated Royalist property) and granted a house for life. The later career of Parliament Joan, by now a ‘fat woman … about fifty’, was as a spy or intelligencer for the Government, ferreting out illegal Royalist newspapers, and later still as a polemical journalist; but as a nurse it should be recorded that with Lucy Hutchinson, she saw it as her duty to tend the sick of all nations, treating Dutch prisoners equally with the English wounded.44

  In the hospitals themselves, once again the pre-eminence of the softer sex in nursing was taken for granted. Amongst women, widows of soldiers were considered to be the best nurses of all; however, economic factors were probably at work here as well as the theory of compassion. For nursing wages were conspicuously low (including those of the Matron). For instance the joint salaries of thirteen nursing Sisters at the Savoy Hospital for sick and wounded soldiers, established in 1644, came to £52 a year. These wages being lower than those offered to the better-class domestic servant, it was not surprising that few women who had a choice expressed a preference for nursing.45 The soldiers’ widows, generally speaking in a depressed class, might be expected to have no choice.

  As it was, women’s traditional faults, as well as their virtues of mercy and tenderness, were not ignored in the rules made for nurses in hospitals. ‘Scolding, brawling or chiding’ were sternly forbidden. And those nurses who carried comradeship to the point of marrying soldiers within the hospital were thrown out.46

  Colonel Bampfylde’s erstwhile comrade, Anne Murray, put her practical abilities to good use nursing the injured and sick in Scotland. Her further adventures had led her here at the period when King Charles II, now allied with the Covenanters, was expected to land. In between there had been yet another humiliating interlude with a family at Nantwich Castle: the lady of the house suspected Anne of designs on her husband, designs which the husband in turn showed every sign of harbouring towards Anne; yet the poor girl had no money to leave. After the Royalist defeat at Dunbar in 1650, Anne was amongst those who tried to succour the wounded Scottish soldiers. She, like Lucy Hutchinson, had her own special balsam and plasters, which in this case she had brought with her from England. She treated at least sixty one day and twenty the next, some of them stinking with maggots and gangrene.

  For the next two years Anne remained at Kinross, helping the sick. In later life as Lady Halkett her love of physics and surgery made ‘things of her preparing’ very popular; certainly she had scope enough in Scotland during the war and post-war years. It is good to record that her flight to Scotland resulted at last in that suitable marriage which Anne Murray had surely long deserved. She was by now a governess in the household of Sir James Halkett, her employer being a widower. As Anne observed demurely in her memoirs: ‘It is so usual where single persons are often together to have people conclude a design for marriage, that it was no wonder if many made the same upon Sir James and me.’47 Yet even now, because the matter of her portion was still unresolved, Anne hesitated. What was more, while matters were hanging fire, the duplicitous if fascinating Colonel Bampfylde made yet another appearance, with more tall tales about his wife, asking Anne soulfully whether she was yet married to Sir James Halkett.

  ‘I am,’ said Anne stoutly aloud, adding ‘not’ under her breath.48

  Then at last, with a simple appearance in front of the Justice in Commonwealth style (who called for a glass of sack to drink their health) and a subsequent religious ceremony in front of the Minister, at the age of thirty-three Anne achieved the long-sought state of matrimony …

  1 Susan Rodway’s letter as printed is a good example of the spelling of a literate woman of the time: ‘My little Willie have bene sick this forknight. I pray you to come whome, ife youe cane cum saffly. I doo marfull that I cannot heere from you ass well other naybores do. I do desiere to heere from you as soone as youe cane. I pray youe to send me word when youe doo thenke youe shalt returne. You doe not consider I ame a lone woemane; I thought you woald never leve me thuse long togeder, so I rest evere praying for your savese returne.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A Soliciting Temper

  ‘Certainly it would not do amiss if she [Lady Verney] can bring her spirit to a soliciting temper, and can tell how to use the juice of an onion sometimes to soften hard hearts.’

  SIR ROGER BURGOYNE’S ADVICE

  TO SIR RALPH VERNEY, 1646

  ‘In these late Times’, wrote Basua Makin after the Restoration, not only did women defend their homes and ‘play the soldier with Prudence and Valour’ but they also ‘appeared before Committees, and pleaded their own Causes, like men’. The necessity for women to make public appearances in their own interests was one of the most surprising developments of the wartime period. ‘The customs of England’ were changed as well as the laws, as Margaret Duchess of Newcastle expressed it, with women ‘running about’ and acting as ‘pleaders, attornies, petitioners and the like’.1

  What began as a necessity would later be regarded as an opportunity. A decade or so later, Basua Makin was advancing this type of wartime activity as evidence of the female’s fitness for that education generally denied to her. Yet ironically enough, women’s influential role as ‘solicitors’ actually developed out of their own supposed weakness.

  The sequestration or confiscation of Royalist estates (and rents) had its origin in the Parliamentary side’s desperate need for money in the early stages of the war, lacking resources to acquire supplies and pay troops. On 27 March 1643, Parliament passed an ordinance which sequestrated the estates of all those giving assistance to the King; in practical terms, the property of such a ‘delinquent’ was to be sequestered by a committee of that county in which it was situated. In October of the same year, the lands and houses of those Members of Parliament who had absented themselves, or those who had neglected to pay Parliamentary taxation were ordered to be let, so that the rent might serve as a security for loans for Parliament.2

  Women, however, were not delinquents, or if they were, it was a rare state, more likely to be connected with their Catholicism than their Royalism. Of the Kentish delinquents listed for example only 5 per cent were female, and of those who did feature, about 93 per cent were Catholic recusants; the tiny category of women sequestered in their own right, widows and spinsters, were accused of such offences as selling goods to Royalist garrisons.3

  Women were not delinquents because of their ow
n dependent legal status: there their dependency worked to their advantage. Technically, because all her rights at law were swallowed up in his, a woman’s husband was also responsible for her crimes. Conversely his delinquency could not be laid at her door; there could be no guilt by association. This principle however had the awkward effect of leaving the weaker vessel not responsible for the crimes of the stronger, yet enduring all the same their practical consequences. So, the Parliamentary ordinance being framed to raise money rather than to impose suffering, delinquents’ families had to be given some kind of protection from the complete destitution which would otherwise have been their lot following the sequestration.

  For this reason, another ordinance was passed in August 1643 which set aside a special sum, not to exceed one fifth of the sequestered income of the delinquent, for the benefit of his wife and children. It was the right to this ‘fifth’, if she pleaded for it personally before the committee concerned at the Goldsmiths’ Hall in the City of London, which gave to the wife – the woman – a new and special importance in that society where her public silence had previously been rated an eminent virtue. A Royalist ballad saluted the change:

  The gentry are sequestered all;

  Our wives you find at Goldsmith Hall

  For there they meet with the devil and all.4

  At the same time the jointures of wives and the settlements of heiresses were not supposed to be sequestered along with their husband’s own property, no matter how masterful a ‘malignant’ (as the Parliamentarians termed their adversaries) he had proved himself to be. It is a commentary on the postulated legal innocence of the weaker vessel that Lady Bankes complained bitterly – and with perfect justification – over the sequestration of her jointure along with the rest of her husband’s assets after the fall of Corfe Castle. Yet, as we have seen, no one could have shown a finer sense of the need to assist the King than the woman who held the upper ward of the Castle and poured stones and hot embers on the heads of the invaders.