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Celebrated Women

and events

of the

17th Century

1609

Henrietta Maria ..... born 1609 died 1669 ..... youngest daughter of Henry 1V of France and Marie de Medici. In 1625 she married Charles 1 and although she was a strong Catholic it was evident that she was a tool in the hands of the Catholics who compelled her to refuse to be crowned with her husband in Westminster Abbey. On one occasion she was forced to take part in a pilgrimage. It was partly due to her that Charles made the foolish attempt to arrest the Five Members in 1642 and soon after this civil war broke out. Henrietta escaped from England and narrowly missed being taken prisoner by Parliament on her return in 1643. A year later she escaped to France where she remained until the Restoration. On her return to England she was given Somerset House to live in but in 1665, when the plague broke out, she returned to France where she remained until her death

1614

Alice Lisle - Dame ..... born c1614 died 1685 ..... wife of John Lisle, one of Cromwell's Lords and they lived at Moyles Court in Ellingham. After being accused of sheltering two fugitives from the Battle of Sedgemoor, she was tried by the infamous Judge Jeffreys and although she was over 70 years old she was sentenced to death. The usual sentence of burning was later changed to beheading. After the Revolution in 1688 the judgement on her was annulled by an Act of Parliament. It is said that her ghost is sometimes heard in Moyles Court and that she has been seen driving down Ellingham Lane in a driverless coach drawn by two headless horses

Margaret Fell ..... born 1614 died 1702 ..... the Mother of Quakerism, she was the wife of Thomas Fell, judge and master of Swarthmore Hall, near Ulverston, England. She was a woman of immense courage and determination and made her home the centre of Quaker missionary enterprise, corresponding greatly with the early leaders of the Society of Friends. She was converted by the Quaker George Fox and became the champion of this once dangerous faith, suffering two terms of imprisonment ( one of them for four years) for her beliefs. when her husband died in 1658 she married George Fox the following year at the Friends Meeting House at Broadmead in Bristol. although she was ten years older than him she outlived him by twelve years

1619

Anne- Geneviéve Longueville de Bourbon-Condé - Duchesse de  ..... born 29th August 1619 died 15th April 1679 .....  born in prison in Vincennes where her parents were prisoners due to their opposition to the Marquis d'Ancre.  In 1639 she married the Duc de Longueville who was at least twenty years older and later became the mistress of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld.  The Fronde was an uprising by some nobles and others against Cardinal Mazarin and Anne of Austria and her political activities led to her being called ' the soul of the Fronde'. When her husband died in 1663 and she was deserted by Rochefoucauld she lived in Paris and became increasingly convinced by Jansenism - the Christian teaching of Cornelius Jansen which divided the Roman Catholic Church in France in the mid-17th century. She became the protector of the movement and during her lifetime the nuns of Port-Royal des Champs were safe. In later life she retired to the convent where she had been educated but continued to have influence at court

1626

Queen Christina ..... born 19th April 1626 died 8th December 1689 ..... Queen of Sweden, only child of Gustavus Adoplhus, who, having expected a son, gave her a masculine education and she dressed as a man. At the age of six years in 1632 she succeeded to throne and when she was eighteen years old  endowed with brilliant intellect, powerful personality and exceptional courage, she assumed power. However after seven years it gradually became clear that she was temperamentally unfit for her position and in 1654 she was persuaded to abdicate. She left Uppsala dressed in men's clothes and set out for Innsbruck where she joined the Roman Catholic Church.  Although she eventually pleaded to have her throne restored she was ignored and died alone and forgotten, living on the charity of the Pope

1635

Francois d'Aubigné Maintenon - Marquise de ..... born 27th November 1635 died 15th April 1719 ..... born at Niort. When her father died in 1645 Francois and another child returned to France from the French West Indies with their mother. She went to live with her aunt, Madame de Villette, and was strictly educated in the Protestant principles of which her grandfather had been so earnest an apostle. For some unknown reason, the Queen Regent, Anne of Austria, was induced to take her away from her aunt's home so that she could be instructed in the Catholic faith and she was put into a convent until she was fourteen years old. In 1652 her mother died and Francoise was left penniless. At the age of seventeen she became the wife of the poet Scarron and at his home formed many friendships which she later turned to her advantage. When Scarron died in 1660 she was given a pension of 2,000 francs by Anne of Austria. With her good looks, talents and manners she soon became a favourite in aristocratic salons which was where she met Madame de Montespan, one of the most celebrated of Louis X1V's concubines and who had seven children by him. Francois, scheming and unscrupulous, undertook the guardianship of some of these children and this brought her into contact with the court. From being head nurse to the children she slowly rose to be the formidable and eventually triumphant rival of Madame de Montespan herself. In 1673 Louis X1V bought her the estate of Maintenon from which she took her title. By 1684 she was queen after a secret marriage to Louis. She had great influence over him which was fatal for him and for France. When the King died in 1715 she spent her remaining years at Saint Cyr, where she had founded a home for impoverished noblewomen, the Maison Royale de Saint Louis

1647

Maria Sibylla Merian .....  born 12th April 1647 died 13th January 1717 ..... born in Frankfurt, daughter of Matthew Merian the Elder, she achieved a reputation greater than that of either her father of brother.  In 1665 she married J A Graff the painter, but retained her own name by which she had already become widely known. She devoted herself to the representation of fruits, flowers and especially insects in their various stages of development and transformation. Her drawings soon became famous and she received unusual marks of admiration and respect from the naturalists of the day. With her husband she settled in Amsterdam but travelled for the sake of making drawings from living objects. Her principal journey was to Surinam (1699-1701) and as a result of this she published her works in 1705 and this was reprinted many times in various languages. Her drawings are a small size on vellum, admirable drawn and coloured and are in almost every important national collection in Europe.  The British Museum has two volumes of them, one of the insects of Europe and one of the insects of Surinam

Marguerite Marie Alacoque ..... born July 22nd 1647 died 17th October 1690 .... born in Burgundy she had an unhappy childhood when her father died with relatives virtually taking over her home. In 1671 she became a nun at the convent of Paray-Le-Mortal and as a novice was clumsy and impractical but had patience and was charitable. From 1673 to 1675 she experienced a series of visions of Christ and also believed that he spoke to her. This met with many contradictions from her superiors and others but eventually she won the confidence of her critics and became mistress of novices and assistant superior. Devotion to and a feast of the Sacred Heart were eventually approved by the papacy. She was canonised in 1920 and her feast day is 17th October

1662

Celia Fiennes ..... born 1662 died 1741 ..... compulsive traveller who, between 1685 and 1703, travelled into every county of England on horseback, sometimes accompanied but in some cases alone except for servants. As she travelled she described the landscapes and the places she stayed at and made a point of giving detailed descriptions of the stately homes which were then being modernised or newly built. She recorded the state of the roads, the food she ate and the beer and wine she enjoyed. Like many women of her era and class she made a habit of visiting spas and watering-places and wrote her accounts when keeping diaries was an important activity for women and travel journals were becoming fashionable

Event ..... King Charles 11 proclaimed that in future women are to play female roles on stage overturning hundreds of years of tradition as these roles were previously performed by men. However in Spain, Italy and France women had played in these roles for over one hundred years

1664

Ann Bland - Lady ..... born 1664 died 1734 ..... only child of Sir Edward Mosley, she inherited the Mosley estates and the manorial rights when her father died. Her husband turned out to be an incurable gambler as did her sons but she managed to keep a large part of her fortune from their hands. In 1694 the Cross Street Chapel was erected and Lady Ann and other Low Church Anglicans would worship there in a congregation of Dissenters. When the minister of this chapel died she had the idea of building a church in which she and her Low Church following could worship. William Baguley of Acres Field gave land for this purpose and she subscribed liberally to the building of the church. On 17th July 1712 the church was consecrated by Bishop Dawes of Chester and was dedicated to St Ann, mainly as a complement to Lady Ann herself and to the reigning queen. She also laid out the adjacent square and built Manchester's new Assembly Rooms on nearby King Street which had a passage underneath that gave access from King Street to the church and was known as St Ann's Passage. She also decorated Hulme Hall, her home, with Roman antiquities. After her death her son sold the Hulme estate

1665

Ann - Queen ..... born 6th February 1665 died 1st August 1714 ..... second daughter of James 11 and Anne Hyde and the last of the Stuarts to occupy the throne. In 1683 she married George, brother of Christian V of Denmark. In 1702 she became Queen on the death of William of Orange and reigned for twelve years until her death. Her reign was made glorious by the victories of Marlborough, the writings of Addison and others and the passing of the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707. In 1711 whilst out driving, she chanced on Ascot Heath and decided that it was a perfect place for a race meeting. after only a few months the Queen Anne's Plate of 100 guineas was being advertised and on August 11th the first meeting at Ascot took place. The Queen Anne Stakes still open the meeting today

1681

Henrietta Howard ..... born 1681 died 1767 ..... Countess of Suffolk. She was the daughter of Sir Henry Hober and married Charles Howard, the son of Henry, 5th Earl of Suffolk who succeeded to the earldom. For many years she was the mistress of George 11 and when her husband tried to remove her from the household, Caroline, then Princess of Wales, protected her. Henrietta was courted by the opposition, partly in the mistaken expectation of gaining the royal ear and partly from real regard for her amiable character. In 1734 she withdrew from court and married the Hon. George Berkeley

1683

Elizabeth Elstob ..... born 1683 died 1756 .....  born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne she came to be regarded as a pioneer in the plea that historical scholarships should not be confined to men. She was the daughter of a merchant and sister of William Elstob. She learned eight languages including Latin and became an Anglo-Saxon scholar publishing two books to aid others. William and Elizabeth lived together but when William died in 1715 she was left without money. For many years she ran a school at Evesham with some financial aid from Queen Caroline and in 1758 became governess to the children of the Duchess of Portland, a position she held until her death. One of her published works is Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue, First Given in English: With an apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities (1715) and she also published a translation of Madeleine de Scudery's Essay Upon Glory (1708)

1693

Marguerite-Jeanne de Staal, Baronne de ..... born 1693 died 1750 ..... neé Cordier ..... born in Paris, the daughter of a painter, and dropped his name for that of her mother Delaunay. She became a ladies maid and then secretary to the Duchess of Maine and was later involved in the plot by the Duchess against the crown. She spent two years in the Bastille where she had a love affair with the Chevalier de Menil. In 1735 she married the Baron Staal.  After her death some memoirs of her life Memoires (1755) which describes the world of the regency in France, were published and later translated into English in 1892

1697

Marie de Vichy Chamrond- Marquise du Deffand ..... born 1697 died 1780 .....  " women are too imaginative to have much power of reasoning" were her words. She was born of a noble family of Burgundy and educated in a Paris convent. Beautiful, witty but poor, she allowed her self to be married at the age of twenty-one to the Marquis du Deffand but soon tired of him and they separated. She became a leading member of the philisophico-fashionable circles of Paris and her salons were frequented by Montesquieu, D'Alembert and others.  Marie had many lovers and when she was seventy and blind she met Horace Walpole and a strange love affair developed with a man she could not see. A large number of her letters to him survive and were edited in 1912 by Mrs Paget Toynbee but at his request, his letter to her were destroyed