Bishop Atterbury’s remarks on Mary Astell may be quoted as illustrating the surprise felt by cultivated ecclesiastics at the display of literary ability in women. Writing to Smalridge in 1706, he says—
“I happened, about a fortnight ago, to dine with Mrs. Astell. She spoke to me of my sermon, and desired me to print it (the sermon was delivered on the election of the Lord Mayor); and after I had given her the proper answers, hinted to me that she would be glad of perusing it. I complied with her request, and sent her the sermon next day. Yesternight she returned it, with this sheet of remarks, which I cannot forbear communicating to you, because I take them to be of an extraordinary nature, considering they come from the pen of a woman. Indeed, one would not imagine a woman had written them. There is not an expression that carries the least air of her sex from the beginning to the end of it.”
The bishop does not divulge the exact nature of Mary Astell’s remarks, but, as he takes them in such good part, they were probably not unfavourable to himself. The fact that a woman was capable of literary criticism which was not of a feminine tone filled him with astonishment.
Among the women most noted for piety and good works in the seventeenth century was Mary, daughter of the Earl of Cork, and wife of the Earl of Warwick, a warm friend of the Puritans. The Countess, although a Churchwoman, seems to have found no difficulty in breathing the theological atmosphere of her husband’s household, where Puritan discourses were frequently heard. She was born in the year of the accession of Charles I., 1625, and lived to see some eighteen years of the Restoration. Her biographer, Dr. Walker, speaks of her as “great by her tongue, for never woman used one better.” She is also said to have been “great by her pen,” and “great in her nobleness of living and in her free and splendid hospitality;” likewise “great in her conquest of herself and the mastery of her passions.” She was very strict in the observance of her religious exercises, and in her influence on the company about her is enigmatically described as “like a spiritual stone.”
The Countess of Warwick was no less esteemed as a mistress than as a landlord, and
“as a neighbour she was so kind and courteous, it advanced the rent of adjacent houses to be situated near her. Not only her house and table, but her countenance and very heart were open to all persons of quality in a considerable circuit; and for the inferior sort, if they were sick or tempted, or in any distress of body or mind, whither should they go but to the good Countess, whose closet or still-house was their shop for chirurgery, and herself (for she would visit the meanest of them personally) and ministers whom she would send to them, their spiritual physicians?”
Lady Warwick not only acted the Lady Bountiful among the poor, distributing beef and bread regularly to the needy of four parishes, but she extended her charity to the cause of education. The poor children she placed in schools; scholars she provided with means to go to the university, and the meagre salaries of ministers of religion she supplemented out of her abundant wealth.
Then there was Lady Elizabeth Hastings, daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon, who aided missionary work abroad, and spent freely in her own neighbourhood on charitable works; the celebrated Lady Russell, wife of Lord William Russell; Bishop Burnet’s wife, together with others of less fame, who were known for their piety and active benevolence. A careful examination of this period will reveal much individual effort put forth by women under that strongest of all motive-forces—the religious impulse, but little organized work, either secular or otherwise, for the bettering of humanity.