Women’s Political Activism

The collapse of censorship due to the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641 and the consequent enabling of the publication and dissemination of political pamphlets proved to be foundational for the rise of women’s political activism during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum (1640–60). The most salient use by women of this unprecedented opportunity may be the publication of their petitions to Parliament. This political activism by women engendered satiric petitions and Aristophanic accounts of “Parliaments of Women”; these oppositional accounts acknowledge women’s active involvement as a fact of contemporary politics that needed to be countered. In addition to these petitioners—from whose ranks emerged as leaders Katherine Chidley, Elizabeth Lilburne, and Mary Overton—individuals such as Mary Pope, Eleanor Davies, Elizabeth Poole, Mary Cary, Anna Trapnel, Mary Howgill, and Priscilla Cotton represented women’s first foray into the political public sphere; these Interregnum women writers were followed in the Restoration and beyond by writers such as Margaret Fell, Ann Docwra, Elizabeth Cellier, and Elinor James.