A Puritan Subject's Panegyrics to Queen Anne

When Mary, Lady Chudleigh, a little-known Devonshire writer of Puritan background, published a collection of poems in 1703, she was among a number of women writers who found themselves empowered to publish under the symbolic authority of the new female monarch, Queen Anne. ¹ In her dedication of the volume to the queen, Chudleigh explicitly seeks out Anne's protection, praising her as "[t]he Greatest, the Best, and the most Illustrious Person of Your Sex and Age." ² Chudleigh also includes in the volume three poems specifically addressed to Anne. With these several panegyrics to Anne marking the beginning, middle, and end of her collection, the role of the new Stuart monarch looms large in Chudleigh's volume of poetry.

We do not often associate female writers with panegyric, especially when it is employed as a form of political commentary, as it frequently was by the end of the seventeenth century. For, while the voices of many seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century English women authors have been recovered, this has occurred primarily in strictly "literary" terms. In the realm of politics and history, the objects of study remain predominantly men, a phenomenon that continues despite our knowledge that adding female voices to the store of material we consider as we study early modern political culture can broaden and complicate our understanding of the time.

Even when Chudleigh's political views have been taken note of, as they have been by several critics over the past century, they have been largely misunderstood. Although Hoxie Neale Fairchild approaches the mark when he describes Chudleigh as a latitudinarian Whig, most other critics associate her with Toryism. ³ Ruth Perry defines Chudleigh as a "royalist" and Maren-Sofie Røstvig as among the "Tory die-hards who never were reconciled to the new regime of William of Orange." ⁴ Although Carol Barash's more recent work stops short of explicitly labeling Chudleigh's political stance, she too aligns Chudleigh with Tory women writers. ⁵ While Barash's discussions of early modern English women poets make significant inroads into breaking the boundary between women's writing and politics, and while she acknowledges the range of religious connections among those women poets who entered the public dialogue, her studies do not extend themselves to differentiating altogether the writers' specific political agendas. For instance, Barash does not sufficiently distinguish among the women poets regarding the degree to which they manifest rather than appropriate the "'liberty of conscience'" associated with Puritan religious and political culture. ⁶

One might assume that in the politically charged decades of the late seventeenth century women of dissenting background would have found themselves doubly marginalized and silenced—and thus prevented from participating in political dialogue. N. H. Keeble's research, however, demonstrates that dissenters—even nonconformists—did continue to write and publish during the Restoration despite the circumscription on their activities. In fact, as Keeble points out, those whose view toward public life continued to include a sense of duty to the world—to family, church rulers, neighbors—came primarily from dissenting groups. ⁷ The emphasis on active public service among dissenters is reinforced by Paula R. Backscheider's description of the influence on Daniel Defoe of his nonconformist teacher, Charles Morton, and clergyman, Samuel Annesley, both of whom "had a passion for practical teaching." ⁸ And Margaret J. M. Ezell has illustrated with examples of Quaker women writers that a rich style and voice developed during these decades among this most identifiable group of nonconformist authors. ⁹ Indeed, it appears that dissenters not only continued to write and publish during the Restoration but that a background in dissent may have provided a sense of civic knowledge and duty that enabled some women to overcome the inhibitions put on them as women.

Chudleigh illustrates in her writing a public spirit of reform that appears to have emerged from her roots in West Country...