Anne Whitehead
Anne Whitehead | |
|---|---|
| Born | Anne Downer c.1624 |
| Died | 28 July 1686 |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | early Quaker |
| Spouse | George Whitehead |
| Parent(s) | Thomas and Mary Downer |
Anne Whitehead or Anne Downer; Anne Greenwell (c. 1624 – 28 July 1686) was an English Quaker organizer, preacher and writer. She underwent severe distraints for her beliefs.
Life and work
[edit]Whitehead was born in Charlbury in about 1624 to Thomas and Mary Downer. Her father was vicar and her maternal grandfather is thought to have been Ralph Hutchinson, who was a biblical scholar and college head at Oxford University.[1]
Quakerism
[edit]Quakerism spread during Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth that followed the English Civil War. Anne Downer moved to London and joined the Religious Society of Friends there in 1654.[2]
In 1655 she became the first female Quaker preacher, for which she was imprisoned and beaten.[2] In 1656 she preached in Chadlington, and then went to Launceston prison in Cornwall to serve as secretary to the Quaker leader George Fox.[2] She then preached in her home town of Charlbury, where Quaker meetings were held in the homes of William Cole and Alexander Harris.[2] Both men were jailed in 1657–1658 for refusing to pay tithes to the Church of England; Cole died in prison.[2]
Many Quakers in Charlbury were distrained for refusing to pay the Church Rate.[2] In 1660 a Chadlington Quaker who attended the Charlbury meetings was jailed for refusing to swear the Oath of Allegiance, and in 1663 Henry Shad, a Quaker schoolmaster, was barred from teaching.[2]
Anne Whitehead played a significant role within London Quakers’ women’s meetings, promoting piety, plainness, and older Friends teaching younger members Quaker values.[3] She campaigned for an end to the persecution of Quakers, writing for both Quakers and non-Quakers, including For the King and both houses of Parliament. Much of her work was on the role of women within the Quaker community.[3]
Personal life
[edit]She married Quaker Benjamin Greenwell on 24 March 1663. He was imprisoned in Newgate prison under a sentence of banishment, dying there on 5 February 1665. The couple had no children.[1]
In 1670 she married George Whitehead at the Peel meeting of Quakers in Clerkenwell. Her new husband was a Quaker preacher who had been imprisoned, whipped and placed in the stocks because of his religion. He later described her as 'like a Tender Mother' to him.[4]
Anne Whitehead died in Middlesex in 1686.[1] Her husband George to publish a collection of personal testimonies to her memory, Piety Promoted by Faithfulness (1686). Among those to laud her was Mary Forster in her 1686 work Piety Promoted.[5] She was posthumously referred to as a “mother in Israel”.[3]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c Catie Gill, "Whitehead , Anne (c. 1624–1686)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., January 2015 accessed 14 August 2017
- ^ a b c d e f g Crossley et al. 1972, pp. 127–157
- ^ a b c Rosner, Isabella (2021), "Whitehead, Anne", The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 1–3, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-01537-4_228-1, ISBN 978-3-030-01537-4, S2CID 242680690, retrieved 24 July 2021
- ^ Nigel Smith, "Whitehead, George (1637–1724)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 14 Aug 2017
- ^ Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, eds, The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 388.
Sources
[edit]- Crossley, Alan; Colvin, Christina; Cooper, Janet; Cooper, N. H.; Harvey, P. D. A.; Hollings, Marjory; Hook, Judith; Jessup, Mary; Lobel, Mary D.; Mason, J. F. A.; Trinder, B.S.; Turner, Hilary (1972). A History of the County of Oxford. Victoria County History. Vol. 10: Banbury Hundred. London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research. pp. 127–157. ISBN 978-0-19722-728-2.
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