Mistress Bradstreet (41 page)

15.
Second Part of a Register, II,
quoted in Edmund Morgan,
Visible Saints,
7.
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16. Ziff,
Career of John Cotton,
58.
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17. Roger Virgoe, ed.,
Private Life,
87.
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18. Ziff,
Career of John Cotton,
49.
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19.
Memorials of Affairs of State in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I,
ed. E. Sawyer, vol. 2 (London: 1725), quoted in White,
Anne Bradstreet,
39.
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20. Bradstreet, “Autobiography,” in
Works,
240-41, 243
. “The New England Primer,” in
Concise Anthology of American Literature,
ed. George McMichael, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1985),
54-55
.
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21. Bradstreet, “Autobiography,” in
Works,
244.
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22. William Hubbard, quoted in Mary Beth Norton,
Founding Mothers and Fathers,
362.
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23. John Winthrop, ibid.
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24. It was not until “God . . . shut a door against . . . us from ministering to him and his people in our wonted congregations, and calling us by a remnant of our people, and by others of this country to minister to them [in America], and opening a door to us this way,” that Cotton believed it was time to emigrate. He still debated this issue, wondering if God did not want him to stay in prison in England, but finally he decided, after consultation with other Puritan leaders, that he could serve God more fully in the New World. “Mr. Cotton’s Letter Giving the Reasons of His and Mr. Hooker’s Removal to New England,” in Heimert and Delbanco,
Puritans in America,
95.
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CHAPTER THREE:
Sempringham

1. Cotton Mather,
Magnalia Christi Americana,
quoted in White,
Anne Bradstreet,
54.
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2. Ibid.
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3. Bradstreet, “To the Memory of My Dear and Ever Honoured Father Thomas Dudley Esq. Who Deceased, July
31, 1653
, and of His Age 77,” in
Works,
202, lines
33-35
.
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4. The title of Elizabeth’s book was, appropriately enough,
The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie.
It was printed at Oxford and was twenty-one pages long. White,
Anne Bradstreet,
54.
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5. Richard Mulcaster, quoted in White,
Anne Bradstreet,
58. This is the advice Sir Ralph Verney wrote to his ambitious and literary goddaughter Nancy Denton in
Memoirs of the Verney Family,
ed. Frances Parthenope, Lady Verney, and Margaret Verney, vol. 3 (1894),
73-74
, quoted in White,
Anne Bradstreet,
59.
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6.
The Divine Weekes and Workes
was translated into English by Joshua Sylvester in 1605 and went through many editions by the Restoration.
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7. Bradstreet, “In Honour of Du Bartas, 1641,” in
Works,
192-93
, lines
28, 33
.
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8. Bradstreet, “Autobiography,” in
Works,
241.
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9. Although it is unclear when Anne actually read these books, her comfort with their ideas suggests that she encountered them at an early age. Also, these were books that would have been readily available in Sempringham and in her father’s library.
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10. Philip Sidney, “Sonnet 1,” from
Astrophel and Stella
in
The Norton Anthology of English Literature,
vol. 1, eds. M. H. Abrams et al. (New York: Norton, 1979), 486.
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11. For this argument about literacy—the difference between being able to read as opposed to being able to write, see Hall’s
Worlds of Wonder,
especially
32-33
.
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12. Richard Mather,
Two Mathers,
60-61
, quoted in Charlotte Gordon, “Incarnate Geography: Anne Bradstreet’s Discovery of a New World of Words in 17th Century New England,” PhD diss., Boston University, 2000.
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CHAPTER FOUR:
A Man of Exemplary Discretion and Fidelity

1. Cotton Mather, quoted in White,
Anne Bradstreet,
74.
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2. Anne does not describe this time in her life with any detail except to lament her “carnal heart.” Instead, it is through her later poems to Simon that we learn how she viewed him as a lover, counselor, soul mate, and good friend.
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3. Bradstreet, “Autobiography,” in
Works,
242.
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4. Bradstreet, “Another,” in
Works,
228, lines
32, 38
; “A Letter to Her Husband,” in ibid., 226, line 8.
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5. Bradstreet, “Autobiography,” in
Works,
241.
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6. Ibid.
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7. Bradstreet, “Youth,” in
Works,
56, lines
199, 202, 183-84
.
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8. Joshua Moody, quoted in Daniels,
Puritans at Play,
7.
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9. The most influential work that supports this idea of the Puritan ability to enjoy sex is by Edmund S. Morgan, particularly his early essay “The Puritans and Sex,”
New England Quarterly
15 (1942):
591-607
. I find his arguments somewhat persuasive, but it is important to note that many of his ideas have been successfully challenged by more recent scholars, among them Michael Zuckerman, “Pilgrims in the Wilderness: Community, Modernity, and the Maypole at Merry Mount,”
New England Quarterly
50 (1977):
266-70
, and Kathleen Verduin, “Our Cursed Natures: Sexuality and the Puritan Conscience,”
New England Quarterly
56 (1983):
222-24, 229-30
.
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10. The minister Thomas Hooker wrote, “There is wild love and joy enough in the world, as there is wild thyme and other herbs, but we would have garden love and garden joy.” Quoted in Daniels,
Puritans at Play,
12. The Puritans became famous for the bizarre cases they prosecuted in order to maintain their standards of behavior concerning sexuality. A man named Thomas Grainger who would plead guilty to “buggery with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves, and a turkey,” would be summarily executed. William Bradford, quoted in ibid., 126.
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11. Bruce Daniels writes, “Excessive passion, deviant sex, fornication, and even masturbation constituted acts of such profound rebellion against deeply held beliefs of the church and community that pious persons could not embrace any of these sins without deeply troubling their souls.” Ibid., 127.
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12. Bradstreet, “Youth,” in
Works,
56, lines
177, 180
.
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13. Cotton Mather, “The Life of Simon Bradstreet, Esq.,” in
Magnalia Christi Americana,
bk.
2, 19
.
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14. In some communities, the couple was considered legally bound after the banns had been announced three times; in others, the initial proclamation of the banns was all it took. Once the Puritans had emigrated to New England, such premarital “confusions” were punished severely by the courts with public whippings that were made all the more humiliating because the law stipulated that the perpetrators had to be stripped to the waist. Norton,
Founding Mothers and Fathers,
67-69
.
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15. Michael Wigglesworth, for example, a somewhat dour Puritan minister who had lost his wife when he was middle-aged, confessed to a woman whom he wished to marry that he was deeply attracted to her and that after they had met, “my thoughts and heart have been toward you ever since.” But this assay was actually not meant to win her affections. Instead, Wigglesworth went on to assure her that he had of course questioned his desires, and only after “serious, earnest, and frequent seeking of God for guidance . . . [have] my thoughts . . . still been determined and fixed upon yourself as the most suitable person.” Daniels,
Puritans at Play,
128.
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16. Bradstreet, “Autobiography,” in
Works,
241.
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17. Bradstreet, “Youth,” in
Works,
57, line 224.
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18. Isle of Man, “Diseases,” in “Manx Note Book,” ed. Frances Coakley, at www/isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/famhist/genealogy/diseases.htm.
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19. Bradstreet, “Autobiography,” 241.
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20. Bradstreet, “Youth,” in
Works,
57, line 221.
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21. Lucy Hutchinson,
Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson
(Everyman’s Library, 1936), 51, quoted in White,
Anne Bradstreet,
90.
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CHAPTER FIVE:
God Is Leaving England

1. Terrorized by the most visible “purifying” techniques of Puritan radicals—smashing, burning, stealing, shouting, breaking, and even murdering—frightened devotees of Rome invented the term itself as an angry epithet in a tract published in 1565 by Thomas Stapleton, an English Catholic who had fled the country in the wake of antipapist violence.
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2. For an example of Anne’s bloodthirsty predilections, see Bradstreet, “A Dialogue between Old England and New,” in
Works,
187, line 279.
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3. Reputedly, Anne’s father’s ancestor had actively supported and participated in the killing of Protestants. Dudley’s grandfather, George Sutton Dudley, in verifiably Dudley fashion, had been neither a quiet nor a moderate Catholic. He had stormed readily into battles, a violent warrior on behalf of his convictions, as well as an undercover assassin. Impelled by a vision of a purely Catholic England, George had plotted to overthrow Henry VIII and then to murder his son, King Edward, and he greeted the accession of Mary with relief and joy. No ancestor could have been more shameful for the Dudleys to claim as their own. George had clearly aided and abetted the queen, whom they regarded as a monster.
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4. Most Puritans referred to
The Book of Martyrs
as an essential text, and many had memorized long passages from the book. It quickly became one of the cornerstones of most Puritans’ education because it was placed in English churches of all stripes to allow the reading public to encounter this hair-raising work whenever they so desired.
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5. John Foxe, “A lamentable spectacle of three women, with a sillie infant,” vol. 2, 1764, in “Selected Woodcuts and Passages,” from
Actes and Monuments
or
The Book of Martyrs
(Center for Electronic Text and Image, University of Pennsylvania Library, Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, at http://oldsite.library.upenn.edu/etext/furness/foxe/infant.)
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6. “Persecutions in England during the Reign of Queen Mary,” chap. 16 in Foxe,
The Book of Martyrs,
ed. William Flatbush (Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics, www.reformed.org/books).
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7. Even though it was God who determined one’s eternal destination, certain actions made hell seem more likely than others, and most people believed that heresy was the kind of sin that led to damnation. Accordingly, it was better to withstand the temporary torture of earthly flames and adhere to one’s Puritan beliefs than to recant and risk being plunged into their infernal counterpart.
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8. Bishop Latimer, quoted in Green,
A Short History of the English People,
359.
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9. Mark Kishlansky,
Civilization in the West,
vol. 2 (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 422.
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10. Ibid.
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11. Bradstreet, “A Dialogue between Old England and New,” in
Works,
187, lines
271, 279
.
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12. Cotton Mather,
Magnalia Christi Americana,
16.
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13. Bradstreet, “Autobiography,” in
Works,
241.
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14. As the situation worsened, many of the ministers who would one day lead New England congregations fled the country: Thomas Shepard, Hugh Peter, and John Davenport, to name just a few. However, although David Cressy agrees that these “radical ministers” were indeed hounded from the country, he seriously questions the extent of persecution that most Puritans endured. He writes, “The old notion . . . that Puritan migrants to America had to escape from Charles I’s England through an underground network is seriously wrong. Hardly any of the families involved in the great migration were actually fleeing from persecution.” Cressy,
Coming Over,
140. Cressy’s argument is persuasive, but he also concedes that many of the Puritans
believed
that they were being persecuted and spread rumors to this effect in both the Old and New Worlds. Anne and her family are among this latter category. There is no evidence of any actual persecution, but the Dudleys were among the most important proponents of the
idea
of Puritan suffering and the need for escape. See especially Anne’s rendition of Puritan victimization at the hands of Laud in “A Dialogue between Old and New England,”
Works,
184, lines
177-190
. Shepard, “The Autobiography,” in McGiffert,
God’s Plot,
53.
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