During the early modern period, and especially with the rise of Puritanism, many literate women began to keep diaries or write autobiographies that focused on their spiritual lives. Women may have been encouraged by their spiritual advisors to keep a record of their prayers, their devotional lives, and their reflections on scripture. The women writers discussed here did autobiographical writing with a focus on their religious convictions and practices, a kind of ledger of their spirituality.
Grace Sharington, later the wife of Sir Anthony Mildmay, was the daughter of a Wiltshire knight. She was educated at home in Protestant religious practices, as well as all the skills expected of a gentlewoman, including household management such as preparing medicine and elaborate foods, music, and needlework. At age 15, she married Anthony Mildmay, the son of the chancellor of the Exchequer. Unlike many marriages among the upper classes, their marriage settlement, including a dowry and jointure, was not written out, which led to both of them feuding with various members of their families for many years over issues of money and property.
Grace Mildmay developed her medical ability at a higher level than many of her peers. She wrote extensively about the causes and treatments of illnesses and the preparation of various medicines to treat them. Her surviving papers indicate she investigated and supervised the manufacture of large batches of complex medicines using both herbal and chemical formulations. She documents the cordials, potions, and ointments she used to treat both mental and physical ailments. She did not perform any surgery or keep records of her patients.
Her
with silence and all subjectionand
neither usurp authority over the man, but be in silence(qtd. in Bedford 171).
She notes her reason for composing the
All these things coming into my mind, I thought good to set them down to my daughter and her children, as familiar talk and communication with them, I being dead, as if I were alive. And I do therewthall heartily pray them to accept thereof, and of the whole book of my meditations, which hath been the exercise of my mind from my youth until this day.
Margaret Dakins was raised in Yorkshire, the daughter of a wealthy gentleman. An heiress educated in the household of Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntington, she was married three times to prominent younger sons of influential families. Her first husband was Walter Devereaux, brother to the second Earl of Essex who later rebelled against Elizabeth I. Her second husband was Thomas Sidney, brother to the courtier and poet, Sir Philip Sidney. Widowed for the second time by the age of 24, in 1596 she married the puritan politician, Sir Thomas Hoby. She had no children.
Lady Hoby’s diary provides the first diary of an Elizabethan woman’s daily life, mainly a detailed record of her religious pursuits, including daily prayer, meditation, and reading. This account of Lady Hoby’s spiritual discipline downplays her other daily activities. But the diary also reveals how she managed her husband’s estates during his frequent absences, how she dealt with her many servants, and her interests in music and gardening. Several fascinating passages detail her attending on women in childbirth or refer to the medical advice and treatment she provided to her servants and local citizens, such as when an infant born without an anus was brough to her. She performed surgery on the child to no avail in an attempt to find an outlet for the child’s bowels (Bedford 183).
Margaret Hoby also explains that she resisted her last husband’s pressure to gift property from her first marriage, a manor in Hackness, to him and his heirs until the year before her death. Although the diary focuses on her spiritual devotions within her everyday life, readers may enjoy the nonreligious details to build up a picture of her domestic life.
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