Category Archives: 17th Century

Bathsua Makin, c 1608-1675

Scholar, writer, educator and early feminist

Bathsua Makin was one of a group of women, look including Christine de Pizan, Margaret Cavendish and Mary Astell,

The trouble with Women Pirates…

What could be sassier, you might think, than a bold, sexy buccaneer?  Slightly dykey and into a light-hearted touch of woman-led bondage. Brandishing—but with a beautiful smile—a long whip to go with that lethal cutlass. And mmmmm, swashbuckling along the

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, c 1623-1674

by Claire Jones Playwright; poet; natural philosopher. It was famously said of Margaret Cavendish that she was different to the rest ‘of her frail sex’ who, unlike her, ‘have Fruitful Wombs but Barren Brains’. Gender in the seventeenth century The

Jane Whorwood, 1612-1684

Secret Agent and confidante of Charles I who played a key role in the English Civil War By John Fox Early life No portrait of Jane Whorwood has been found. She was born in 1612 to a Scots official of