This work is, as far as my research can attest, the first edition of Sarah Blackborow's A Visit to the Spirit in Prison since its initial publication on or around 10 June 1658. Blackborow, or Saraah Blackborow, as her name appears on A Visit to the Spirit in Prison, has garnered passing mention in writing on religious history and literary circles. Biographical data remains sparse; yet a formal reading of the text, combined with explication from historical detail may resurrect the lost Sarah Blackborow.
By creating this edition I am not advocating Sarah Blackborow be enshrined in the canon of great contributors to English literature. As a piece of writing, A Visit to the Spirit in Prison could not stand with the great writers of its time in beauty, content or complexity, and has many peers packed into forgotten shelves of the British Museum Library. Instead, Blackborow's essay and her personal history illuminate a forgotten corner of literary history increasingly being uncovered by projects such as the Women Writers project and facilitated by the enhanced searchablility of electronic resources such as Early English Books Online1.
Many of the women writers of this period have received very little individual attention, earning instead mention in sweeping analyses of common themes, their writing congealed into a comprehensible picture of social and religious history. These writers' differences, and not their similarities, we may begin to understand the people behind the history. While Blackborow's writing may be only one of hundreds of unstudied manuscripts from this period, it contains great utility for a larger understanding of the time period. By examining its nuances and profundities, the scholarly community can gain an intimate understanding of one wave in a great tide of work and generate a more keen understanding of the humanity behind a collection of assorted footnotes.
Blackborow is also a fairly significant figure in the history of women's writing not because of who she was, but in who she was not, and whom she was like. Although I do not question her chastity, she was by no means silent and obedient. Blackborow, and possibly hundreds of women like her, began to find their voices in a time when small precedence existed for women to take up the pen, or indeed become important agents in any social movement. While women of the court, such as Lady Mary Wroth and Anne Locke, had been published centuries earlier, the mid-seventeenth century saw the rise of a middle-class group of women writers. Of this new generation, I assert that Sarah Blackborow establishes herself as a paragon, through both her personal leadership and ability as a writer.
Blackborow engages in the pamphlet warfare
described by Nigel Smith during the interregnum. Smith places writers as central agents for social and political change2, and, by extension, so was the new breed of women writers. The fifteen-page A Visit to the Spirit in Prison was printed in London in 1658 and probably distributed amongst London Quakers and probably (somewhat unwillingly) to local preachers. Quite active for a short time, between 1658 And 1663 Blackborow published the following five tracts3;
- Herein is held forth the gift. 1659, B3063.
- The just and equal balance discovered. 1660, B3064.
- The oppressed prisoners complaint. 1662, B3064A.
- A visit to the spirit in prison. 1658, B3065.
- “Dear friends.” Part of Richard Hubberthorne, A collection. 1663, H3216.
She also appears in the preface to a tract by the Quaker leader James Naylor4. Blackborow rages against what she sees as greed and hypocrisy amongst preachers collecting tithes. She also claims to be personally directed by God, and attempts to convince her reader to embrace Christ.
London in the 1650s
Blackborow lived and wrote in the middle of the seventeenth century. A Visit to the Spirit in Prison, her first work, appears in 1658. She would publish almost once every year until her death in 1665. London at this time was immersed in political and religious upheaval. At the same time, the sudden availability of the printing presses allowed many writers from all walks of life to find a voice, and to be able to spread their message to others. Women also found themselves with heretofore-unknown power. Indeed, in small, radical religious groups, able-bodied and -minded women garnered some of the organizational leadership previously denied them in other movements, and Quakerism was no different.
An egalitarian movement
The Quakers, with whom Blackborow aligned, were one of many religious groups rebelling against the control of epistocratic rule under Cromwell. Barry Reay describes the Quakers as a linking of advanced Protestant separatists into a loose kind of church fellowship with a coherent ideology and a developing code of ethics
(9). Unlike many of the smaller religious sects, emerging at the time, Quakerism exploded into England during the 1650s. From 1653-7, Quakers published 500 tracts and published that number again between 1658-60, and after only a decade of existence were as numerous as Catholics, more numerous than either Fifth Monarchists or Baptists
(Reay 11).
Quakers railed against the corruption they saw within churches. They opposed the charging of tithes to the church and the imprisonment of those who did not pay. They gathered donations to help assist the poor and the imprisoned. They crusaded for social and institutional reform concerning worship and religious teaching. Quakers often targeted Presbyterian and Independent churches for hypocrisy in their teachings.
Quakers were also a passionate and exuberant group, and their name derives from the tendency to shudder or quake while listening to sermons (Reay 35). At times, their conviction that individuals could achieve perfect sinlessness led some practitioners to extended abstinence, fasting, and even self-mutilation in the name of God. The Quakers brought this extremism to their preaching and writing as well.
A favorite Quaker tactic was to interrupt services, standing and witnessing to the congregation, arguing or castigating the preacher. This civil disobedience often landed them in prison, and many of their tracts were written from prison (Barbour 139). Their manner in these demonstrations was so extreme that, as Ludlow observes, As special objects of Quaker verbal abuse, Presbyterian and Independent ministers sometimes lost all self-control, and flinging Christian charity aside, flew at the Quaker gadflies with fists and feet, and occasionally with cudgels and staves
(273-4). Quakers, and Blackborow in particular, also channeled this angst into words.
Although the highest leaders were men, the Quaker movement was largely egalitarian in terms of gender. Both women and men met to raise funds, published tracts and performed the necessary civil disobedience. Reay notes that between 1654 and 1659 women comprised thirty-four percent of the Quakers persecuted for disrupting ministers (26). Quakers refused to accept the power structures implicit in British society. Women taking power, causing distruptions preaching and writing may have further strengthened the Quaker cause due to the shocking reversal of the female role5.
Not always militant and aggressive, much Quaker work involved supporting the poor and imprisoned. Women often ministered to prisoners, wrote persuasive tracts and helped raise money. It is in this vein that Sarah Blackborow took a pivotal role in utilizing women to assist the Quaker cause.
Preacher and prophetess
Sarah Blackborow has remained fairly obscure in history, earning only a footnote's mention in most texts about the seventeenth century. She has appeared under at least three similar names: Blackborrow, Blackbury, Blackberry, and Blackbourne. While several scholars recognize multiple surnames attributed to the same woman, they do not assign any meaning to the phenomenon. The surname Blackborow appears in all of her published writing, and no manuscripts have surfaced bylined Blackbury or Blackbourne in the same time period (Mack 416). William Crouch remembers Sarah Blackberry
as one of the first to bear witness to the truth now made known
(85). Citations about Blackborow, however, are largely derived from George Fox's Great Journal, the earliest version transcribed by Thomas Ellwood in 1693, which was revised by the Quaker community at a general meeting and re-published in 1694. Quaker historian William C. Braithwaite relied upon a 1911 Cambridge edition of the revised text. He notes that he has changed the spelling of Blackborow's name in Fox's text to reflect the later revision. Presumably Fox originally wrote Blackbourne in his journals, which the Quaker community revised to Blackbury. Mack, Ludlow, and Bonnelynn Young Kunze work from Braithwaite and/or texts relying on the Cambridge edition. Auguste Jorns refers to her as Blackbourne from the Ellwood text, and Ludlow seems to have arbitrarily added a second ‘r’ to Blackborow6. Out of respect for the author's manuscript, I have chosen to retain her self-described original spelling.
Although details vary, Mack, Jorns, and Hugh Barbour agree that Blackborow helped arrange regular meetings of women to help provide for poor and persecuted Friends7. Blackborow's women's groups became a country-wide network of Quaker women, responsible for circulating a petition which received thousands of signatures. Fox describes this process:
And when I came to Ger. Roberts' house, about eight in the morning, there came in Sarah Blackbury to complain to me of the poor, and how many poor Friends were in want; and the Lord had showed me, what I should do, in his eternal power and wisdom. So I spoke to her to bid about sixty women to meet me about the first hour in the afternoon, at the Sign of Helmet, at a Friend's house: And they did do accordingly, such as were sensible women of the Lord's truth, and fearing God8. (147-8)
Blackborow gathered sixty women in a few hours, creating a group of formidable social power, and by so doing established herself as a female leader during the Quaker movement.
Blackborow's Style
A Visit to the Spirit in Prison follows a very cogent structure, which illustrates Blackborow's ability as writer. Her focus begins quite narrow: you, who own your selves to be ministers and teachers of the people who preach for hire, and persecute, and throw into prison if you have it not
(2) and broadens to the same people, who yet do forbear to cast into prison
(4). She then interludes with a personal witness, lending her authority to offer God to the general audience in the next section. In her efforts to convert unbelievers, she he transforms her argument into a warning to believers who write, express their ideas through God, before addressing again a general reader advocating his or her union with Christ.
In first section, she castigates the practice of imprisoning those who refuse to pay tithes. Her tone is angry and sharp, asking, how have you made your selves … Divine for money and preach for reward, and seek for your gain from you quarters, and prepare war if they put not into your mouthes?
(3-4). She insists that they blush,
and when she says they serve another master demands they go learn what this means
(4). The Blackborow, these ministers represent the reprehensible; she, in the light of the Lord stands witnesse against
what she considers the false Prophet
(4).
By broadening her attack to ministers who collect tithes but do not imprison recalcitrant members of the congregation, Blackborow moves to the less obvious problems she sees in churches. She labels these preachers greedy, stating that they are guided by one spirit and tis your own
(4). She challenges these preachers for not allowing any children of the Lord … to come into your Steeple-houses to ask you a question, or to declare what they can witnesse
(4-5). Here she sets the Quaker practice of disrupting services as a normal, acceptable event, consciously understating this practice, which by her own admission, generates chaos within the church. This section also demonstrates Blackborow's matronly character that Mack alludes to: she is firm but loving, addressing the section From a lover of your souls but a Witnesse against your deceits
. While speaking to an adversarial audience, Blackborow uses this section to align herself with the Quaker beliefs and defending specific Quaker practices and plights.
Having stated her main argument, Blackborow must now establish herself as credible to write about God's word and will. In order to do this, she makes a thematic break to italicized text, and describes her background as a preacher and prophet. Her diction here provides very specific keywords that establish her authority. She first describes thirsting after
(5) the Lord, demonstrating preparedness and conscious acceptance of Gods message. When God does speak to her, He checks her—she does not establish herself as superior or perfect. Similarly, she admits to God's mystery, saying she did not know in the least which nature it stood in
(5). She then accepts God's word and He reveals to her that He has always been working within her, and this is the course to which she is destined. Now, as a witness directly from God, she has authority to speak regarding practice and worship.
She begins her evangelizing with those like her—with those who thirst after your beloved
(6). This message is meant for those Quakers who may be afraid to be publicly active, or who feel God's pull without acting on it. Like the beginning of her essay, she keeps a narrow focus at first, ever broadening her reach as she continues.
The following section is by far the longest, and presents the reader with a solid wall of words. Blackborow here addresses the general population, those fairly neutral in her eyes. Ever playing the mother, Blackborow engages in a constant, circular method—attacking, and then offering a positive alternative in Jesus. She begins this cycle with questions, asking how can you strive against God? Hath and done so and prospered?
Then directly attacking: Oh the indignation of the Lord its hot and terrible,
all the while not distancing herself from the reader, continuing I have felt it and therefore I am in sorrow for all you who are laying up fuel for it
(8). Her message continually alternates between condemnations of the unbeliever's current path, explanations of the anger and terrors that await them, and then reinstates the positive. She encourages her reading, stating [your acts] is which keeps you from your Teacher within you
(7b). By framing her argument in this light, she does not separate the goodness of God from her reader, persuading them that they have the potential for glory and are merely deluded.
Blackborow alters her tone as she broadens her message to those more hostile to God. To these people who are boasting in other mens lines above the cross
she speaks much more gently, as she understands it is easier to turn away those who already believe you are wrong. In this short section, she insists they are deceived, and holds that judgment awaits them, compassionately inviting them to come down to the Witness, that you may see what is good and what is evil
(10). She considers this group as ignorant that their actions are wrong.
Her next paragraph broadens her reach still further, to all people on the face of the whole Earth
(10). Her message now, to all of her audience, is utterly positive: Love is His Name, Love is His Nature
(11). She has so far in this essay portrayed the current lives of unbelievers as leading to torture and destruction. She cannot end with that negativity—she throws out a life raft in obedience to God. Where she claims that even death is not an ending. She concludes the essay extending this message of peace and wondrous potential.
Although it seems like a rambling tirade, this structure is actually much more advanced than some of her other writings. In Herein is held forth, Blackborow creates a subsection for her injunction against government officials who imprison the religious for gathering and protesting. It does not, however, have the same smooth and artistic transitions. Similarly, the set of couplets in The Oppressed Prisoners Complaint blindly wander from questioning to evangelism without transitioning or denoting a change.
A unique facet of Blackborow's writing is her reference to the Muses in A Visit to the Spirit in Prison. Not only does a radical Protestant allude to a pagan myth, but she also puts the image in parallel structure with two biblical references. As noted within the text, Blackborow also uses a phrase Reverend Peter Sterry—chaplain to Oliver Cromwell—utilizes in his England's Deliverance9. Unlike most Protestants who stress the sole authority of the Bible, Sterry believed pagan myths—especially Ovid—could be used to explicate Christianity. Sterry, a Caimbridge fellow, preached in London and in front of Parliament. Blackborow may have heard sermons by the high-profile clergyman, but it seems unlikely she would have accepted his teachings as inspired.
Blackborow may have intended her metaphor literally. Blackborow presents herself as a witness. She states, between eight and nine years of age, did Gods witnesse strive with me, and chekt me, and convinced me of sin, and sometimes gave me power over it
(5); Barbour also says that most Quaker tracts were written from prison (193). Blackborow's writing, which she claims comes not from herself but from God (7b), may in fact be her witnessing from prison. Blackborow signs The Oppressed Prisoners Complaint, Written by S.B. a Prisoner for the Testimony of Jesus
(1). Her experience quite possibly influenced her metaphor: through her writing she is visiting her kindred spirits in prison.
In addition, she incorporates an image of the unconverted as an imprisoned spirit, and is moved to salute and to visit the spirit in prison in you all
(7). All of Blackborow's writings concern evangelism; an imprisoned spirit to her would be one who had not yet been opened to Jesus. Blackborow displays her proficiency as a writer by translating a personal experience into a metaphor with which she can help reach her target audience.
Perhaps neither the writer nor the reader is the prisoner mentioned in the title and this image. Quaker leader George Fox writes in 1656, to the Magistrates that doe cast Christ into prison
(1), and Blackborow corroborates two years later, stating [Your savior] lyes oppressed under that which cries peace to you & in you
(8). The ignorant person imprisoned as is Christ when man does not recognize him. Blackborow and Fox's depiction of Jesus as fallible and weak may seem jarring, but it puts him on the same level of their target audience. Not only is the person who does not know Christ a prisoner,
but also is the unrecognized deity. Acceptance of Christ presents itself as the natural solution to both of their troubles.
These three layers of meaning in Blackborow's title image testify to her skill as rhetorician. She can take a personal experience, analyze it, synthesize a meaning for those facing a similar problem, and sell that message to her reader.
Blackborow's use of biblical allusions is also of note. Many women writers of the time seemingly wrote with a bible next to their page. Mary Pope, for example, quotes the Bible directly, italicizing the verses interspersed with her own words. Similarly, in The trumpet of the Lord sounded forth and A Warning from the Lord God of life and power, Ester Biddle either capitalizes or italicizes her references to the Bible, consciously not amalgamating them into her own writing. Blackborow, however, integrates biblical passages into her sentences, at times italicizing words, but—with a singular exception—never directly quoting passages. By so doing, she illustrates her command of the bible's stories, images and ideas, not simply their verbage.
Blackborow's manipulation of verse displays her understanding of the deeper meaning of its message. She describes a visible Ministrie, which hath been but as sounding brass, and as a tincling Symbele
(A Visit to the Spirit in Prison 7b); instead of copying 1 Corinthians outright10, she instead mentions only the noisemakers—implying that her readers' current ministry lacks proper spirit. Blackborow does this as well when comparing her readers to the darkness of Cain (10) and as well when she contrasts the negative Tower of Babel with Jesus the cornerstone (9). In stark contrast, preacher and prophet Mary Pope writes in 1648:
Yet God himself is pleased to hold forth himself with the head Magistrate on Earth, and that in these words: My Sonne feare thou Lord and the King, and meddle not with those that are given to change. Prov.24.21. and in the 2 Pet.17. This particular place of Scripture is an exemplary to the King, and holdeth forth unto us Gods unchangeablenesse in his laws: Now seeing the Lord is pleased to hold forth the Kings Prerogative by his own example as in these words: Where the word of a King is there is power? And who shall say unto him, What dost thou? (2)
Pope's method of including verse indicates a two-step process in understanding the verse. She must first learn the verse elsewhere, then recall said verse while writing. She makes does not incorporate the language into her own, nor does she demonstrate any understanding of the meaning behind the verse: it is merely a reproduction. Blackborow's tactic, however, illustrates a five-step process in incorporating her biblical message: (1) Hearing, reading or learning the passage; (2) Understanding of its connotative and denotative meanings; (3) Recognizing the key terms, icons and images that signify that verse's meaning; (4) Recalling the verse at the time of writing, and (5) Amalgamating the verse's meaning into the prose through incorporation of those terms icons and images. By manipulating the verses in this way, Blackborow establishes herself as a having a cogent and thorough understanding of the Bible and its message.
A note on the text
This edition is the first modern publication of Sarah Blackborow's work, intended for a modern, English-speaking audience. The English language in 1658—the probable date of publication for A Visit to the Spirit in Prison—looked and sounded much different than the language of the second millennium anno domini, and as a tribute to the time I have let the antiquated spelling and diction remain, with a few exceptions to assist modern readers.
This edition has been designed for publication on the Internet, and changes have been made to the text to facilitate display and reference on the internet. Published characters must conform to the latin ISO 8859-1 character set; for this reason, the lower case s
has been exchanged for every instance of
. In order to improve the searchability of the document and to facilitate the use of non-graphical browsers (i.e. those for the visually-impaired), double-V (vv) has been changed to 
w
and, in one instance u
has become v
. These changes have been made solely because of the different medium and should not affect word meaning. Every page within a document also contains, beneath the final line, a single word or syllable that also appears on the first line of the following page. In the page-less digital medium these words have also been omitted.
As the Internet is a pageless medium, page-numbered citations in this introduction refer to the original manuscript, a reproduction of which has been included for completeness. Two of the pages have been misnumbered; pages 9 and 10 have been numbered 7 and 8, and pages thereafter follow the logical continuum. Page six has actually been inverted to appear like a nine. Luckily, the last syllable or two of each page is repeated at the top of the following page, allowing a reader to deduce the proper page order. Citations follow the original page numbering, with references to the repeated pages as 7b and 8b respectively.