Woman: Man's Equal

by Thomas Webster

At the age of forty, she married a Scottish gentleman, named Kello, or, as we would spell it in these modern times, Kelly. The issue of this marriage was one son, named Samuel; and it was her grandson, Samuel Kelly, who was in possession of various portions of her works in the last century.

LADY PAKINGTON.

This celebrated lady, who flourished in the latter part of the seventeenth century, was the daughter of Lord Coventry, Keeper of the Great Seal, and the wife of Sir John Pakington. She was justly considered one of the celebrities of her day, and her society sought by the learned divines with whom she was contemporary. She was the well-known author of several works of merit, and the reputed author of others.

Ballard, who has given the world so many sketches of worthy and eminent women, with several other writers of note, claims that it was she who wrote the treatise entitled "The Whole Duty of Man;" and his reasoning is so much to the point, though quaint, that we simply append what he says of her, with his apt quotations from her writings, as a sufficiently clear delineation of the character and talents of this worthy woman. He writes:

"Yet hardly my pen will be thought capable of adding to the reputation her own has procured to her, if it shall appear that she was the author of a work which is not more an honor to the writer than a universal benefit to mankind. The work I mean is 'The Whole Duty of Man;' her title to which has been so well ascertained, that the general concealment it has lain under will only reflect a luster upon all her other excellencies by showing that she had no honor in view but that of her Creator, which, I suppose, she might think best promoted by this concealment. (The claims of other authors are not difficult to be disposed of.) If I were a Roman Catholic, I would summon tradition as an evidence for me on this occasion, which has constantly attributed this performance to a lady. And a late celebrated writer observes, that 'there are many probable arguments in "The Whole Duty of Man," to back a current report that it was written by a lady,' And any one who reads 'The Lady's Calling,' may observe a great number of passages which clearly indicate a female hand.

"That vulgar prejudice of the supposed incapacity of the female sex is what these memoirs in general may possibly remove; and as I have had frequent occasion to take notice of it, I should not now enter again upon that subject, had not this been made use of as an argument to invalidate Lady Pakington's title to those performances. It may not be amiss, therefore, to transcribe two or three passages from the treatise I have just now mentioned. 'But, waiving these reflections, I shall fix only on the personal accomplishments of the sex, and peculiarly that which is the most principal endowment of the rational nature—I mean the understanding—where it will be a little hard to pronounce that they are naturally inferior to men, when it is considered how much of intrinsic weight is put in the balance to turn it to the men's side. Men have their parts cultivated and improved by education; refined and subtilized by learning and arts; are like a piece of common which, by industry and husbandry, becomes a different thing from the rest, though the natural turf owned no such inequality. We may, therefore, conclude that whatever vicious impotence women are under, it is acquired, not natural; nor derived from any illiberality of God's, but from the ill-managery of his bounty. Let them not charge God foolishly, or think that by making them women, he necessitated them to be proud or wanton, vain or peevish; since it is manifest he made them to better purpose; was not partial to the other sex; but that having, as the prophet speaks, "abundance of spirit," he equally dispensed it, and gave the feeblest woman as large and capacious a soul as that of the greatest hero. Nay, give me leave to say further, that as to an eternal well-being, he seems to have placed them in more advantageous circumstances than he has done men. He has implanted in them some native propensions which do much facilitate the operations of grace upon them,'

"And having made good this assertion, she interrogates thus: 'How many women do we read of in the Gospel who, in all the duties of assiduous attendance on Christ, liberalities of love and respect, nay, even in zeal and courage, surpassed even the apostles themselves? We find his cross surrounded, his passion celebrated, by the avowed tears and lamentations of devout women, when the most sanguine of his disciples had denied, yea, foresworn; and all had forsaken him. Nay, even death itself could not extinguish their love. We find the devout Maries designing a laborious, chargeable, and perhaps hazardous respect, to his corpse; and accordingly it is a memorable attestation Christ gives to their piety by making them the first witnesses of his resurrection, the prime evangelists to proclaim those glad tidings, and, as a learned man speaks, apostles to the apostles.'

"There are many works of this lady besides 'The Whole Duty of Man,' enumerated in her biographies."

MRS. MARY WASHINGTON.

The material at hand is too meagre to admit of giving such a sketch of this lady as would afford any adequate idea of her character; and yet it is due to her memory, and to her nation, that there should be some tribute to her worth.