Headnote
Not much is known of Susanna Parr’s early life other than that she was born between 1650–1659 into a family with “parliamentary and Puritan sympathies” and was related to Exeter’s previous mayor Alderman Ignatius Jourdain, who was influential in Exeter becoming a Puritan-governed city prior to its siege by royalists (Bullock, Adcock 69). Though what is certain, is that Parr was excommunicated from an Independent Congregation in Exeter alongside Mary Allein on the 8th of March 1658. Susanna’s Apologie is one of several publications emerging from this event as Thomas Mall, the assistant minister; Toby Allein, Mary’s husband; and most notably, the chief minister Lewis Stucley wrote pamphlets discussing the excommunication (Edwards 1).
For Parr, the hypocrisy that lies at the centre of this controversy is how Stucley required her to participate in private meetings where it was becoming accustomed for women to speak on church affairs, only to then accuse her of “contentiousness, censoriousness, and lying” when her opinions did not match those of his own (Manifest Truth 41). Responding to Stucley, the preface to Susanna’s Apology quotes 1 Corinthians 14:34, “Let your women keep silence in the church” to suggest Parr’s dissatisfaction with how she was made to voice her views on church policy and the admission of new members against her will. Although this biblical quotation has led to the view that Parr’s ideas “lie towards the conservative end of the Independent spectrum” (Wilcox et al 100), Parr’s denial of her own ability to speak is in tension with how she takes the public form of a pamphlet to assert that it is her duty “to keep the house of God pure… which in this case I cannot doe, without clearing my selfe from those crimes layd to my charge”. This sentiment prompts a consideration of how Parr may have held the view that it is better for women to not speak in the church at all than to have a voice that is subject to manipulation and judgement by men. As Karen Edwards observes, Parr’s pamphlet “explodes the myth that the private sphere is a place of safety for a woman” as male ministers could limit the scope of what is considered as “private” and report women to the rest of the congregation when they became a threat to church governance (10-12).
While Parr keeps “with traditional notions of femininity” by referencing her “weak measure” (Wilcox et al 100, Parr 10), she is resolute in her ability to defend her liberty of conscience. The excerpt conveys how Parr believed that she was fulfilling her duty to God by keeping the church pure in her judgement of a man named Ganicle during the admission process. As the piece develops, Parr expresses discontentment towards her previous congregation’s separation from the national church as she saw no reason to justify this division. The excerpt ends with Parr proclaiming that she had a vision sent from God which persuaded her to leave Stucley’s congregation for Thomas Ford’s church.
Susanna’s Apologie Against the Elders[1]
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I acquainted him likewise of other disorders and miscarriages very frequent at our meetings, declaring how much I was troubled at them; for redresse of which, I intreated him to be constantly with us. But he endeavoured to quiet me with this, that they were honest, though weak, and further perswaded me to be constant at the meetings, to be faithfull unto them, in minding them of what was amisse. I told him it was more fit for me to be in private meditation, to be gathering rather then scattering[2]: but he replyed, that the time was now not to be Closet-Professors, but to say, come, let us go up to the house of the Lord, to seek the Lord together, with our faces Zion-ward[3]. And though I pleaded my Sex, my naturall
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and sinfull infirmities, which made me unfit to speak unto others, yet he pressed it on me as my duty. And when there was any Jarring between them and my selfe, he desired me not to be troubled, though I met with opposition, that one was of a Souldierly spirit, another of a dull Spirit, that it was meere Envy, promising to speak with them about it himselfe. Yea when I resolved to be silent at some meetings, Mr. Stucley himselfe would single me out, and even constraine me to speak.
As concerning my Carriage at the Admission of members, I shall give a briefe account of it as followeth.
They who desired admission into the Society, were sometimes desired in a private meeting to speak what experience they had of the worke of grace upon their Soules: after which we were every one of us both men and women to declare our thoughts of what was spoken; it being laid down as a ground, that we must have an account of a change from a naturall and legall estate, into an estate of grace and believing, of those whom we admitted into communion with us. I among the rest did according to my weak measure declare my selfe against that which I thought would not stand for grace. I was so far from delighting in this work, as that it was a trouble to me, an Imployment from which I would willingly have
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been freed: I conceived it more needfull for my selfe to study the worrd, and compare my own heart with the rule, then to be so taken up about the condition of others. But this was our principle, we were to keep the house of God pure, we were set as Porters at the door, it was our duty, we were not to be wanting at such times, yea it was our liberty, that we, who were to have communion with those who came to be admitted, should give in our assent, or dissent in reference to their admission. I did therefore at such times declare my thoughts as well as the rest, but left the determination to themselves, as it appeares in Ganicle[4], who was admitted, though I was at the first against his admission. I mention him, because he was brought by Mr. Eveleigh[5], as an Instance of my censoriousnesse. I was blamed for disliking him, whom they said was one of the most eminent among them, and yet it was not long after, before he discovered himselfe, by Renouncing the principles of Christianity, and turning Quaker. He in speaking out his Experiences pretended unto much Joy and ravishment of Spirit, but (the Lord knowes) when he spake of such enjoyments, he spake as a stranger that never intermedled with this Joy, never declaring any powerfull effect thereof, but only that which was, only but a Balaams wish[6]. I the rather instance in
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him, because he was the first that kindled the fire of Contention, which then brake out in that manner, as it is not quenched to this day; here began the Quarrell on their part. When I was called by the Elder to give in my thoughts concerning a Person proposed, he most disorderly intercepted me, for which there was not the least admonition given him: but not long after his folly was made manifest, by his Casting off the very forme of godlinesse. This is one and the Cheife one of those persons whom I disliked, though approved of by the Church. If I be contentious for opposing such a one, let me be contentious still; though none among them will witnesse[7] for me, yet he doth, he stands to this day as a sad witnesse between me and them, whether I were contentious in my oppositions, or they infallible in their determinations. Besides, as for some who continue among them, if you look for distinguishing Characters, they are scarcely visible, much lesse easy to be discerned.
Thus I did from time to time, whilst we were without Officers and Ordinances, partly through the great desire I had to promote the worke of Reformation among us, partly through Mr Stucley’s instigation reprove them for their indifferency of Spirit, stir them up to that which I conceived was their duty, for which I alwaies gave them my grounds and
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reasons. But after the officers were chosen, I never medled (to my remembrance) with Church affaires, nor spake in the meetings, after I heard by Mr. Stucley my speaking was disrelisht; unlesse a Question was proposed, and I was desired to give my Answer unto it.
Not long after, the Officers were chosen, I being at Mr. Stucley’s house, desired him to resolve me concerning a true Church, he then confessed that the Churches of New England did acknowledge the Churches of old England, from whence we had separated, to be true Churches: I told him thereupon that we could not justifie our Separation. At length we falling into discourse of other things, he said my speaking was disrelisht by some; I answered, that I did not like it my selfe, and therefore would be from thenceforth silent, though I looked on it as my duty formerly, he told me no, he would have me speak, but it must be by a Brother[8]; for a stander by may see more then he that plaies the game, promising likewise if I did speak by him, to deliver my words in the same manner as I spake them.
After this it pleased the Lord to exercise me with a smarting affliction, the death of a dear child; the suddennesse of the stroke, and some other circumstances made it a very melting affliction. When my Bowels were yerning
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towards my child, I called to remembrance the Lord’s tender bowels towards his children[9], for whom he had given his only Son; when I considered the breach that the Lord had made in my family, I beheld how terrible it was to make a breach in his family. Then the worke I was ingaged in, this Sin of Separation, appeared nakedly unto me to be no other then a wounding of Christs body, which is his Church, the Church which he hath purchased with his own blood: I then looked on Separation to be a dividing of Christ. Truly I beheld it with terror, this sin of wounding of Christ it made a wound in my soule, which was kept open in a terrible manner, the Lord bringing to my remembrance his Justice and severity[10], and wrath revealed from heaven on families and nations, yea on his own people, ever since the beginning of the world: as also his Judgments which are in the earth to this day, from Genesis to the Revelation[11] was brought to my remembrance, and kept hard upon me. Having these Impressions on my Spirit, I was almost overwhelmed, and in mine own apprehension upon the Borders of Hell, where the Lord made me to behold the Execution of his wrath upon sinners: I could then have told what hell was, I felt the flashings of hellfire in my soule, the wrath of God that lay hard upon me, the effects whereof were very
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terrible, insomuch as I was even swallowed up, only the Lord was pleased to keep me following after him, resolving to lie at his feet, though he should spurne me to hell. Having thus been under a sentence of death with the very terrors of hell in my soule, providence so ordering it, I came (by following the people) where Mr. FORD[12] preached.
Endnotes
[1] The title is a reference to Susanna and the Elders in the book of Daniel from The Apocrypha. In this story, Susanna is approached by two elders of the church whilst she is bathing in her private garden. The judges command Susanna to engage in sexual intercourse with them but when she refuses, they defame her in an alternative way by falsely accusing her of adultery. Susanna is labelled as an adulteress and sentenced to death in court until Daniel interrogates the elders to prove her innocence. Like Susanna from The Apocrypha, it is likely that Susanna felt a similar sense of entrapment by male ministers after she was constrained by Stucley to speak in private only for her words to be used to publicly defame her.
[2] “Gather” and “Scatter” are frequently placed in opposition to one another in the Bible. In Matthew, Jesus teaches the Pharisees that “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand” (Matt. 12:25). This results in Jesus telling them that “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad” (Matt. 12:30).
Similarly, the term “scattering” is given negative connotations when it is used in the biblical story of The Tower of Babel: “the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city” (Gen. 11: 8). Since the Reformation saw the separation of the national church into several congregations, Susanna could be alluding to these biblical stories to criticise the division of the church as she later voices how she “could not justifie our Separation” (13).
[3] When discussing the royalist siege of Exeter, Rachel Adcock remarks that “it must have seemed to Parr and her fellow Puritans that they were facing a siege bombardment like that of Jerusalem by the Babylonians recorded in Jeremiah, where God would destroy the disobedient dwelling in the city, but would bring out the godly from their captivity as prisoners” (69-70).
This quotation is a reference to Jeremiah 50:4–5 which states that after judgement falls upon the Babylonians, “the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the Lord their God. They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten”. In the same way that the oppression of the Israelites by the Babylonians encouraged “their reformation, and to allow them to escape their captivity under oppressive kings”, the siege of Exeter instigated reformation in the church as Parr “links her newly established, reformed congregation with God’s chosen people of Israel” (Adcock 70).
[4] Ganicle is one of the members in which Susanna had initially opposed admission into the church. He is mentioned in Stucley’s Manifest Truth as Stucley refers to him as a “godly sort” whom “this censure was inflicted on” (22). Yet Parr uses the example of Ganicle to defend herself against the allegation that she had opposed someone of a “godly” character as soon after Ganicle’s admission, Parr claims that he had renounced “the principles of Christianity” and turned Quaker (Susanna’s Apologie 70). Since Parr’s pamphlet was published after Stucley’s, she “provides the last word – literally and figuratively” on the matter (Edwards 1).
[5] Nicholas Eveliegh was an elder of Stucley’s congregation. Mr Eveleigh and his wife were previously auditors to Mr Stucley before they joined his Church-fellowship (Manifest Truth 6). Eveleigh’s signature is included in Manifest Truth alongside that of Thomas Mall and John Whitehorne to indicate his consent that this pamphlet should be published to preserve the reputation of Mr Stucley in response to Toby Allein’s pamphlet which opposed Stucley’s decision to excommunicate his wife Mary Allein and Susanna Parr (25).
[6] Parr inserts a biblical allusion to Numbers 22-24 which tells the story of the prophet Balaam who could deliver prophecies for God. When King Balak of Moab sends for Balaam to ask him to curse the Israelites that are invading his territory in return for a reward, Balaam responds that he will only do so with permission from God. Yet after God states that it is not his will to curse the Israelites, Balaam continues to travel to Moab on his donkey. An angel is sent from God to hinder the donkey’s path, but Balaam could not see him and beats the animal for stopping. Once Balaam’s eyes are opened, the angel instructs him that he can only speak what God tells him to. Therefore, when Balaam blesses the Israelites instead of cursing them, the king becomes infuriated. Like Balaam who could only speak God’s word, Parr may be suggesting that she was only upholding God’s will by denying Ganicle’s admission into the church. Previously in the pamphlet she claims that she believed that it was her “duty” to “keep the house of God pure, we were set as Porters at the door, it was our duty, we were not to be wanting at such times, yea it was our liberty” (11).
[7] Parr deploys legal terminology throughout her pamphlet to construct her readership as a courtroom listening to her deliver a testimony in which she declares her innocence over false allegations made by the elders of the church.
[8] A significant contributor to Parr’s dissatisfaction with Stucley’s congregation is that she felt that she was being denied the liberty to speak. Rachel Adcock comments that a Brother was often required to speak for female members of the church due to fears over women usurping male authority (82). Although Parr mentions that she was constrained to contribute to discussions concerning church affairs at the beginning of her pamphlet, disapproval from male ministers towards her ideas meant that her power was radically reduced over the period that she attended the Independent church as Stucley assigned a Brother to speak for her.
[9] Susanna draws on the loss of her child to justify her reasoning for being against the separation of the church. This anecdote conveys how writers negotiated between their gender and religious identity in their texts as female writers would often refer to their own experience of womanhood to construct persuasive arguments against church policy and government. As Elaine Hobby notes, “the significance of this episode in the story she tells is theological, not purely emotional or personal” as Parr strategically generates a sympathetic response from the reader by suggesting that “our father God suffers the same agonies of loss when a congregation leaves the church’s body as a grieving parent does when a child dies” (171).
[10] Elaine Hobby has discussed the role of the female prophet during the English Civil War as it was believed that since women were the weaker vessel, they were more likely than men to have God speak through them (162). Although Karen Edwards has recognised that “what makes Susanna Parr’s vindication a particularly valuable contribution to our understanding of seventeenth-century women is precisely the fact that she did not claim to be a prophet; she claimed rather to represent herself, to speak in her own voice” (3), it could be suggested that Parr is briefly overcome with a prophetic vision in this section. But instead of following the tradition where the visionary must display a “radical denial of self” in their proclamations (Mack 8), Parr’s placement of her vision directly after her memory of child loss affirms her female identity by suggesting that the female experience is integral to her ability to assert judgement over the running of the church.
[11] Parr assumes an apocalyptic rhetoric by referring to Genesis and Revelation which speak of the beginning and end of the world. While most apocalyptic writings were male-authored, Parr could be compared to Lady Eleanor Davies who during the 1640s was engaged in “direct prophecies” and “warnings of apocalyptic revolution” to comment on the events of the English Civil War (Matchinske 358). Like Davies, Parr claims “God’s authority to legitimate her prophesies” so that she “can selectively circumvent any secular authority that seeks to restrict her actions or diminish her status” as a female speaker (Matchinske 359).
[12] Allan Brockett notes how Exeter Cathedral was used “by two distinct congregations, one Presbyterian and the other Independent” from around 1650 (11-12). Thomas Ford was appointed to lead the Presbyterians, while Lewis Stucley acted as chief minister and Thomas Mall as co-pastor for an Independent church in the western half of the Cathedral (Brockett 12). Due to tension rising between congregations in “December, 1656, the City Chamber decided, at the instance of Stucley, to divide the great church physically into two parts by building a wall between the Nave and the Choir… the Presbyterians used the Choir, or East Peter’s, while the Independents used the Nave, or West Peter’s” (Brockett 12). One might consider how the proximity between congregations heightened Stucley’s animosity towards Parr as according to her pamphlet, Stucley compared her leaving his church for Ford’s to adultery by alleging that she “might aswell delight in another man that was not my husband, because the Image of God shined more in him then in my husbād” (21). The gendered nature of Stucley’s complaint is apparent in how he compares Parr’s betrayal to female sexual deviancy.
Works Cited
Brockett, Allan. “Before the Restoration.” Nonconformity in Exeter, 1650-1875, Manchester UP, 1962, pp. 1–17.
Bullock O’Dell, Karen. “Parr, Susanna (fl. 1650–1659)”. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 Sept 2004, https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-66714?rskey=sfs08m&result=1. Accessed 25 May 2024.
Edwards, Karen L. “Susannas Apologie and the Politics of Privity.” Literature & History, vol. 6, no. 1, Mar. 1997, pp. 1–16.
Hobby, Elaine. “Prophecy, Enthusiasm and Female Pamphleteers.” The Cambridge Companion to Writing of the English Revolution, edited by N. H. Keeble, Cambridge UP, 2001, pp. 162–178.
Mack, Phyllis. “Introduction.” Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England, U of California P, Berkeley, 1992, pp. 1–11.
Matchinske, Megan. “Holy Hatred: Formations of the Gendered Subject in English Apocalyptic Writing, 1625-1651.” ELH, vol. 60, no. 2, 1993, pp. 349–377.
Parr, Susanna. Susanna’s apologie against the elders. Or A vindication of Susanna Parr; one of those two women lately excommunicated by Mr Lewis Stycley, and his church in Exeter. 1659. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/eebo/docview/2240955005/99868530/C8EDC4B0F6F047F2PQ/1?accountid=10792&sourcetype=Books. Accessed 25 May 2024.
Stucley, Lewis. Manifest truth: or An inversion of truth’s manifest Containing, a vindication of a Church of Christ in their proceedings on March the 8. 1657, against Mrs Mary Allein, from the false and injurious aspersions of her husband Mr. Toby Allein. By Lewis Stucley, pastor of a congregation in Exeter . 1658. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/eebo/docview/2248577263/99896001/D075EC269EF94B7CPQ/1?accountid=10792&sourcetype=Books. Accessed 25 May 2024.
Wilcox, Helen, et al., editors. “Susanna Parr: From Susanna’s Apology Against the Elders, 1659.” Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen, Routledge, London, 1989, pp. 99–114.
Works Consulted
Allein, Toby. Truths manifest revived, or, A farther discovery of Mr. Stucley and his churches causeless excommunication of Mrs. Mary Allein wherein the former narrative and observations on Mr. Stucleys sermon are reprinted, and his late scandulous pamphlet, falsly intituled Manifest truth, answered and refuted. 1659. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/eebo/docview/2240878613/13683343/FC6F54806BF446B5PQ/1?sourcetype=Books. Accessed 25 May 2024.
Mall, Thomas. Diotrephes detected, corrected, and rejected, and Archippus admonished: by a soft answer to an angry sermon and book lately published, intituled, A true account of what was done, at the casting of two members out of Mr. Stucleys congregation in Exon. 1658. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/eebo/docview/2240875246/99830664/8561BC551759470EPQ/2?accountid=10792&sourcetype=Books. Accessed 25 May 2024.