Abstract
Unlike the “religious Mrs. Mary Speke,”2 who sought out conventicles in her native Somerset, the cosmopolitan poet and playwright in London, Aphra Behn was unlikely to have ever attended or observed a Dissenting meeting. Her poem, “On a Conventicle,” derives, it seems, from her own fertile imagination as well as from the rich stock of satiric images of Puritans that harkened back to the time of Elizabeth I. Behn’s poetic pairing of Dissent with treason and civil strife was, of course, very much an outgrowth of the Civil Wars when religious dissidents in large numbers sided with Parliament against the King. Sour memories of the violence and chaos of those years were still fresh during the Restoration and, as we have seen, oppositional politics and religious nonconformity were still intertwined in the years following Charles II’s return. While this linkage was exaggerated in royalist propaganda, it existed nonetheless, and in the very heady years of the 1680s, the visibility of Dissenting politicians and preachers involved in Whig politics, often in its most radical forms, was right before all eyes. Parliamentary politics, street demonstrations, coffee house and tavern talk as well as the press, the pulpit, the court room, and the stage were all filled with the noise of partisan politics.
Behold the race, whence England’s woes proceed, The Viper’s nest, where all our Mischiefs breed, There, guided, by Inspiration, Treason speaks, And through the Holy Bag-pipe Legion squeaks.
The Nation’s Curse, Religion’s ridicule, The Rabble’s God, the Politician’s tool, Scorn of the Wise, and Scandal of the Just, The Villain’s Refuge, and the Women’s Lust.
Aphra Behn, “On a Conventicle”1
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Notes
Published for the first time as “Verses by Madam Behn” in Miscellany Poems upon Several Occasions (London, 1692); also in Behn, Works, 1: 355–6.
James Strong, Lydia’s Heart Opened: or, Divine Mercy Magnified in the Conversion of a Sinner by the Gospel (London, 1675), dedication.
On the political context and contents of Behn’s writings, see Janet Todd, ed., Aphra Behn Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Susan Owen, Restoration Theater in Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Melinda Zook, “Contextualizing Aphra Behn: Plays, Politics, and Party, 1679–1689,” in Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, ed. Hilda L. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Anita Pacheco, “Reading Toryism in Aphra Behn’s Cit-Cuckolding Comedies,” The Review of English Studies 55/22 (2004): 690–708; Susan Wiseman, Conspiracy and Virtue: Women, Writing, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 349–63. On Behn’s portrayal of women and her feminism, see the first two chapters in Catherine Gallagher, Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670–1820 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Ros Ballaster, “ ‘Pretences of State:’ Aphra Behn and the Female Plot,” in Reading Aphra Behn: History, Theory and Criticism, ed. H. Hunter (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press,1993); Donald Wehrs, “Eros, Ethics, Identity: Royalist Feminism and the Politics of Desire in Aphra Behn’s Love Letters,” SEL 32 (1992): 461–78; Dolors Altaba-Artal, Aphra Behn’s English Feminism: Wit and Satire (Selingsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1999).
On Behn’s religion, Sara Mendelson, The Mental World of Stuart Women (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), passim; Alison Shell, “Popish Plots: The Feign’d Curtizans in context,” in Aphra Behn Studies, pp. 30–49.
Behn, The Fair Jilt, in Behn, Works, 2: 381.
In her short story, The History of the Nun or the Fair Vow-Breaker, Behn claimed that she was “design’d an humble Votary in the House of Devotion.” Behn, Works, 3: 212.
Colonising Expeditions to the West Indies and Guiana, 1623–1667, ed. V.T. Harlow (London: Hakluyt Society, 1925), letters on Surinam, pp. 184–7; Henry Adis, A Letter Sent from Syrranam (London, 1664), pp. 4–5.
Oroonoko in Behn, Works, 3: 95; also see “The History of the Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn,” in All the Histories and Novels Written by the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn, Entire in One Volume (London, 1698), pp. 2–3.
Janet Todd, Secret Life of Aphra Behn (London: Andre Deutsch, 1996), pp. 40–2.
John Aubrey, Aubrey’s Brief Lives (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 354.
Commons Journals, 3: 24; “Henry Marten,” DNB, s. v; Sarah Barber, A Revolutionary Rogue: Henry Marten and the English Republic (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2000), passim.
Oroonoko, 3: 97; Aubrey, Brief Lives, p. 193; Mark Noble, The Lives of the English Regicides, 2 vols. (Birmingham, 1798), 2: 39; Sarah Barber, “Marten, Henry (1601/1–1680),” ODNB.
Barber, A Revolutionary Rogue, see Chapter VI, “Trade and the Sea.”
Marten’s plantation consisted of 259 acres; he owned 60 slaves. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (New York: Norton & Co., 1973), p. 68; Barber, A Revolutionary Rogue, pp. 122–33.
[E.M. Shilstone], “Some Records of the House of Assembly of Barbados,” Journal of Barbados Museum and History Society X (1943), p. 175.
Colonising Expeditions, pp. 194, 195.
Oroonoko, 3: 111, 118.
The Younger Brother, or, the Amorous Jilt (London, 1696). Marten was later carried off by a pestilence that swept through Surinam sometime before 1668. HMC: Fourteenth Report, Manuscripts of the Duke of Portland (London, 1894), 3: 310.
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, eds., Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), 1:14.
“Thomas Scott,” DNB, s. v; North, Regicides, 2: 172.
CSPD, Charles II, 10: 649; The Speeches and Prayers of Major General Harrison, October 13; Mr. John Carew, October 15; Mr. Justice Cooke, Mr. Hugh Peters, October 16, Mr. Tho. Scott (London, 1660).
Pepys, Diary, 4: 168; Richard Greaves, Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–1663 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 145, 148.
Thomas Scott quoted in Todd, Secret Life, p. 43.
CSPD, Charles II, 6: 236.
Colonel Joseph Bampfield’s Apology, eds. John Clyde Loftis and Paul H. Hardacre (London: Associated University Presses,1993), passim; CSPD, Charles II, 1: 171, 2:391; James Walker, “The Secret Service under Charles II and James II,” TRHS 15 (1932): 225–6.
See By the King, A Proclamation Requiring some of His Majesties Subjects in the Parts beyond the Seas to Return to England (London, 1666), naming Scott and Bampfield.
CSPD, Charles II, 4: 500; Herbert H. Rowan, John de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland, 1625–1672 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 160–1.
Aphra was briefly married to one “Mr. Behn,” a merchant after she returned from Surinam. Janet Todd believes that Behn’s husband was one “Jonas Behn,” a merchant sailor and probably a slaver. Todd, Secret Life, pp. 67–70. He was dead by 1666, perhaps having succumbed to the plague that ravaged London in 1665.
“My Lord Stafford was not a man beloved, especially by his own family.” Evelyn, Diary, 4: 234; DNB, s. v., “William Howard, Viscount Stafford;” Todd, Secret Life, pp. 90–1.
Michael Limberger, “ ‘No Town in the World Provides More Advantages:’ Economics of Agglomeration and Golden Age of Antwerp,” in Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, eds. Patrick O’Brien, Derek Keene, Marjolein t’Hart and Herman van der Wee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 49.
Edward Brown, A Brief Account of Some Travels in Divers Parts of Europe (London, 1685), pp. 108–9; E. Veryard, An Account of Diver Choice Remarks... Taken in a Journey through the Low Countries, France, Italy (London, 1701), pp. 38–9.
Evelyn, Diary, 2: 63–4; Piet Lombarde, “Antwerp in its Golden Age: ‘One of the Largest Cities in the Low Countries’ and ‘One of the Best Fortified,’ ” in Urban Achievement, p. 115.
Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister, Behn, Works, 2: 381.
Todd, Secret Life, p. 109; Sara Mendelson makes the case that Behn was most Catholic at the end of her life, see The Mental World, pp. 117–20, 148–50.
The story of Behn’s spying mission in Antwerp has been told by her biographers, although some details differ. The fullest account is in Todd, Secret Life, pp. 86–106; but also see, Maureen Duffy, Passionate Shepherdess: Aphra Behn 1640–89 (London: Methuen, 1989), pp. 69–77. I have stayed close to the primary sources on Behn’s mission in the State Papers and Colonel Joseph Bampfield’s Apology.
CSPD, Charles II, 6: 44, 72.
Behn calls Corney an “insufferable, scandalous, lying, prating fellow.” CSPD, Charles II, 6: 145.
CSPD, Charles II, 9: 127; Bampfield’s Apology, p. 204.
Alan Marshall, Intelligence and Espionage in the Reign of Charles II, 1660–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 139–41.
NA SP 77/35, ff. 91–2; CSPD, Charles II, 6: 44.
Barnaby, Schnell, and Ballaster base this assertion on the anonymous biography written shortly after Behn’s death in All the Histories and Novels Written by the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn (London, 1689), p. 8. It is unfortunate that these scholars treat this highly improbably statement (that Behn’s dispatches were “laughed at”) as though it were fact. Ballaster,“’Pretences of State:’ Aphra Behn and the Female Plot,” in Rereading Aphra Behn, p. 191; Andrew Barnaby and Lisa J. Schnell, Literate Experience: The Work of Knowing in Seventeenth-Century English Writing (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 161–2.
Schnell and Barnaby, Literate Experience, p. 162.
CSPD, Charles II, 6: 135, 72.
Thomas Middleton, Your Five Gallants (London, 1627), Act 1, sc. 1.
William P. Holden, Anti-Puritan Satire, 1572–1641 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954), pp. 32–6; Patrick Collinson, The Puritan Character: Polemics and Polarities in Early Seventeenth-Century English Culture (Los Angeles: University of California, 1989), pp. 1–6.
Abraham Cowley, A Satyre: The Puritan and the Papist (London, 1643), p. 4.
John Spurr, English Puritanism, 1603–1689 (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1998), pp. 54–61; Holden, Anti-Puritan Satire, pp. 36–8; Nicholas Tyacke, “The ‘Rise of Puritanism’ and the Legalization of Dissent, 1571–1719,” in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England, eds. J. Walsh, C. Haydon, and S. Taylor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 27.
Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair (1619) in The Alchemist and Other Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 408. See also Patrick Collinson, “Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair: The Theater constructs Puritanism,” in The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre and Politics in London, 1576–1649, eds. D. Smith, R. Strier, and D. Bevington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
On Puritanism and the “middling sort,” see Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), ch. 4.
The Dramatic Works in Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, gen. ed. Fredson Bower, 10 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 10: 617.
James Shirley, The Gentlemen of Venice: A Tragi-Comedie (London, 1655), p. 31.
“A Vindication of a Cheapside Cross against the Roundheads,” in Rump: Or an Exact Collection of the Choycest Poems and Songs Relations to the Late Times (London, 1662), p. 141. On the sexualized image of the Puritan see Kristen Poole, Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
John Taylor, The Diseases of the Times (London, 1642), pp. 3–4; “A Song in Defense of Christmas,” in Rump: Or an Exact Collection, p. 143.
“The Character of a Roundhead,” in Rump: Or an Exact Collection, p. 43.
Taylor, The Diseases of the Time, p. 5.
[Henry Ferne], The Sovereignty of Kings (London, 1642), A1, italics mine.
Nathaniel Aske quoted in Donald A. Spaeth, The Church in Danger: Parsons and Parishioners, 1660–1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 160.
Todd, Secret Life, p. 130.
Sir Patient Fancy, “To the Reader,” in Behn, Works, 6: 5.
Playwrights received the ticket fares beginning on the third day of a play’s run. A full house might amount to around £70, although, after expenses, the playwright might only clear a third of that. Judith Milhous, “The Duke’s Company Profits, 1675–1677,” Theatre Notebooks 32 (1978): 76–88.
Behn may have also edited the Covent Garden Drollery. Paul Salzman, Reading Early Modern Women’s Writing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 200.
“Our Cabal,” originally published in Poems on Several Occasions (London, 1684).
On the relationship between Behn and Rochester, see Todd, Secret Life, pp. 262–5; Salzman, Reading, pp. 204–6.
The Dutch Lover: A Comedy (1673), “Good, Sweet, Honey, Sugar-candied Reader,” in Behn, Works, 5: 162.
Sir Patient Fancy (1678) in Behn, Works, 6: 79.
To the Unknown Daphnis on his Excellent Translation of Lucretius (1682) in Behn, Works, 1: 26.
The Rover, 5: 520.
The Feign’d Curtizans, Prologue in Behn, Works, 6: 89.
The Second Part of the Rover (1681), Prologue in Behn, Works, 6: 231.
On partisan print culture see, Mark Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain: Partisanship and Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 6–7.
Roger L’Estrange, Observator, 3 December 1681; Edward Pelling, A Sermon Preached on the Anniversary of that Most Execrable Murder of K. Charles the First, Royal Martyr (London, 1682), p. 11.
The Roundheads, Act 4, sc.1, in Behn, Works, 6: 400.
The Roundheads, dedication, 6: 362.
Sir Patient Fancy, Act 4, sc. 2, 6: 54; Act 2, sc. 1, 6: 19.
The City Heiress, Act 1, sc. 1 in Behn, Works, 7: 15.
The Roundheads, Act 1, sc. 1, 6: 375.
The Second Part of the Rover, Act 2, sc. 1 in Behn, Works, 6: 245. Small beer was less alcoholic and associated with Puritans who were concerned about drunkenness.
Behn has Lord Lambert say, “tis most certain, he that will live in the World, must be indu’d with the three rare Qualities of Dissimulation, Equivocation, and mental Reservation.” This line originates from Tatham’s The Rump, only slightly modified. The Roundheads, Act 1, sc. 2, 6: 374.
The City Heiress, Act 1, sc. 1, 7: 12; Act 3, sc. 1, 7: 37.
Sir Patient Fancy, Act 1, sc. 1, 6: 12.
The Feign’d Curtizans, Act 3, sc. 1, 6: 121–2.
The Feign’d Curtizans, Act 1, sc. 2, 6: 100–1.
The Roundheads, Act 1, sc, 1, 6: 369.
The Roundheads, Act 3, sc. 1, 6: 395–6.
The Roundheads, Prologue, 6: 365.
Sir Patient Fancy, Prologue, 6: 7.
I have discussed this in “The Political Poetry,” in Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn, eds. Janet Todd and Derek Hughes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 49–55.
The Treason Trial of Lady Alice Lisle, State Trials, 11: 298–382.
The Roundheads, Act 1, sc. 1, 6: 369–70. “Creature” was an alcoholic drink, usually whiskey.
The Roundheads, Act 2, sc. 1, 6: 384, 374, 380.
The Roundheads, Act 2, sc. 1, 6: 380.
The Roundheads, Act 2, sc. 1, 6: 383.
The City Heiress, Act 4, sc. 1, 7: 47.
The City Heiress, Act 5, sc. 1, 7: 62.
Behn, Works, 1: 355.
The Roundheads, Act 4, sc. 4, 6: 409.
The Feign’d Curtizans, Act 1, sc. 2, 6: 100.
The Roundheads, Act 5, sc. 1, 6: 414.
Todd, Secret Life, p. 435.
The City Heiress, Act 1, sc. 1, 7: 15.
This is most clearly evident in her Congratulatory Poem to Her Most Sacred Majesty... the Prince of Wales (London, 1688), Behn, Works, 1: 294–8.
Gerald R. Cragg, Puritanism in the Period of the Great Persecution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957).
Victor Hugo, The Toilers of the Sea (New York: The Modern Library, 2002), p. 47.
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Zook, M.S. (2013). Sanctified Sisters: Aphra Behn and the Culture of Nonconformity. In: Protestantism, Politics, and Women in Britain, 1660–1714. Early Modern History: Society and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137303202_4
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