But in her Diary, Harl. MS., she writes, “And on ye second day of March in this year my grandchild, Mr. Thomas Tufton, was chosen Burgess of ye Town of Appleby to serve in the House of Commons in Parliament therein assembled, and sitting in Parliament at Westminster, in ye place of Mr. John Lowther, my cosin’s son, who dyed; so as Mr. Thomas Tufton, my grandchild, begann first of all to sitt in ye said House of Commons at Westminster as a member thereof, the 10th day of March, he being ye first grandchild of mine yt ever sate in ye House of Commons.”
On 21st Sept., 1668, in 1670, and in 1674, this Mr. Thomas Tufton visited his grandmother and his constituency, still Burgess.
So she had her way with the Secretary of State, as she had had with the King, the Protector, and her noble husbands. Her motto, it may be remembered, was “Preserve your loyalty, defend your rights.”
Many other women have been right in their contentions, but to very few have been given with the spirit and courage, the wealth, power, patience and opportunity to secure success. Her struggle was no purely personal one; it was the first Protest against the invasion of the rights of her sex. She saw how “legal precedent” was drifting.
Mr. Joshua Williams on Land Settlement says, “I have not been able to discover any trace of a limitation of an estate, tail, or any other estate to an unborn son prior to 3 and 4 Philip and Mary” (“Judicial Papers,” vol. i., part i., p. 47).
We have already noted the decision of Judge Popham in the case of Lady Fane, which Anne Clifford quoted as precedent for her own case in vain. She utilised every opportunity of improving herself and blessing her fellow-creatures. She would not go where she could do no good. Being invited to the Court of Charles II. she replied, “I could not go, unless I were to wear blinkers, like my horses!”
Dr. Donne said of her, that she “was able to converse on any subject, from predestination to slea-silk.”
In her Funeral Sermon, preached by Bishop Rainbow, he mentioned her learning, hospitality, and encouragement of letters, and reckoned among her many virtues, Courage, Humility, Faith, Charity, Piety, Wisdom. “Thus died this great wise Woman, who, while she lived, was the Honour of her Sex and her Age, fitter for a History than a Sermon.”
In 1694 Mary Astell protested against the state of things in her day in a small anonymous publication, “A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, by a Lover of their Sex.” Speaking of the repute learning was held in about 150 years ago, she says, “It was so very modish that the fair Sex seemed to believe that Greek and Latin added to their charms, and Plato and Aristotle untranslated were frequent ornaments of their closets. One would think by the effects that it was a proper way of educating them, since there are no accounts in history of so many great women in any one age as are between 1500 and 1600.” She refers to Mr. Wotton’s “Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning,” p. 349, and makes clear that her proposal is to found an institution for the higher education of women, to be dedicated to the Princess Anne of Denmark. In 1696 she also published “An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, by a Lady.” Defoe next year in his “Essays on Projects,” proposed to establish Academies for women, and criticises “the Lady” who had suggested the idea under the conditions of a Monastery.
“Reflections upon Marriage” appeared in 1700. In the third edition of the latter, 1706, answering objections, in the Preface, she says, “These Reflections have no other design than to correct some abuses which are none the less because power and prescription seem to authorise them. ’Tis a great fault to submit to Authority when we should only yield to Reason,” ... “designing nothing but the Pubic Good, and to return, if possible, the native Liberty, the Rights and Privileges of the Subject.... She did not indeed advise women to think men’s folly wisdom, nor his brutality that love and worship he promised in the matrimonial oath, for this required a flight of wit and sense much above her poor ability, and proper only to masculine understandings.... ’Tis true, through want of learning and of that superior genius which men, as men, lay claim to, she was ignorant of the natural inferiority of our sex, which our masters lay down as a self-evident and fundamental truth. She saw nothing in the reason of things to make this either a principle or a conclusion, but very much to the contrary, it being Sedition, at least, if not Treason, to assert it in this Reign. For if by the natural superiority of their Sex they mean that every man is superior to every woman, which is the obvious meaning, and that which must be stuck to if they would speak sense, it would be a sin in any woman to have dominion over any man, and the greatest Queen ought not to command, but to obey her Footman, because no municipal Laws can supersede or change the Laws of Nature. If they mean that some men are superior to some women, that is no great discovery. Had they turned the tables they would have found that some women are superior to some men. Or, had they remembered their Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy, they might have known that one woman is superior to all the men in the Kingdom, or else they have sworn to very little purpose, and it must not be supposed that their Reason and Religion would suffer them to take Oaths contrary to the Law of Nature and the Reason of Things.” “That the Custom of the World has put women, generally speaking, into a state of subjection, is not denied; but the right can be no more proved by the fact than the predominance of vice can justify it. They say that Scripture shows that women were in a state of subjection. So were the Jews, under the Chaldeans; and the Christians under the Romans. Were they necessarily inferior? That ingenious theorist, Mr. Whiston, argues, ‘that before the Fall woman was the superior.’ Woman is put into the World to serve God. The service she owes a man at any time is only a business by-the-bye, just as it may be any man’s business to keep hogs. He was not made for this, but if he hires himself out to such an employment, he ought conscientiously to perform it.... We do not find any man think any the worse of his understanding because another has more physical power, or conclude himself less capable for any post because he has not been preferred to it.... If all men are born Free, how are all women born slaves? Not Milton himself would cry up Liberty for Female Slaves, or plead the Lawfulness of resisting a private Tyranny.... If mere power gives a right to rule, there can be no such thing as Usurpation, but a Highwayman, so long as he has Strength to force, has also a right to command our obedience. Strength of mind goes along with Strength of body, and ’tis only for some odd accidents, which philosophers have not yet thought worth while to inquire into, that the sturdiest porter is not also the wisest man.... Sense is a portion that God has been pleased to distribute to both sexes with an impartial hand; but learning is what men have engrossed to themselves, and one cannot but admire their improvements.” She winds up with another Eulogy on the good Queen Anne. But society did not then reform itself upon her suggestions.