Women and Legal Petitions in Print

Legal petitions addressed to Parliament emerged as a new genre of women’s printed writing during the English Civil Wars. Between 1640 and 1660, forty-two petitions representing themselves as written by women were printed. Petitions of individual women seek relief from Parliament for a range of personal grievances including pardons and financial assistance. Collective petitions of multiple women intervene in a number of political, legal, and religious matters of national import. This entry places women’s printed petitions in their historical context, offers an overview of large collective petitioning efforts, considers the question of their female authorship, and discusses their significance and reception. Attention is paid to the rhetorical strategies used to justify women’s petitioning and identifies several specific petitions. This entry foregrounds the later petitions of Elinor James (1681–1716) as an example of the ongoing significance of the genre.