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A trio of talented women: abolition,gender, and political participation,1780–91Judith Jennings aa Director of Kentucky Foundation for WomenPublished online: 06 Oct 2011.

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A Trio of Talented Women: Abolition,Gender, and Political Participation,1780–91Judith Jennings

This study presents new information about three influential women, Mary MorrisKnowles, Anna Seward, and Jane Harry Thresher, who supported abolition during the

formative period when anti-slavery sentiment crystallized into the national campaignagainst the slave trade. Focusing on their connections, political ideologies and pro-

abolition activities indicates important ties to radical Patriot ideas, ‘the politics ofcomplexion’ and the power of poetry in shaping early support for abolition. By 1791, atti-tudes toward gender, slavery and abolition had become intertwined across the spectrum of

support for and opposition to slave holding and slave-trading. This study indicates thatfemale participation constituted an important element in the origins of the public move-

ment and documents the social and political importance of this female friendship networkin the early abolition campaign.

As David Brion Davis observed nearly three decades ago in The Problem of Slavery in

the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823, the full story of abolition cannot be told until moreis known about the individuals who helped transform scattered anti-slavery senti-

ments into the successful national movement to end the British slave trade. Twodecades later, in Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870, Clare

Midgley demonstrated how females actively supported abolition in its earliest stagesin such ways as refusing to purchase slave-grown products. More recently in

Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery, J. R. Oldfield broadened the notion ofabolition activity by examining a wide range of cultural participation, involvingpublications, the production of art, and other creative means of influencing public

opinion.1

In the field of women’s history, eighteenth-century scholars are exploring an

expanded definition of political participation and the political importance ofwomen’s friendship networks. In Women, Privilege, and Power: British Politics, 1750

Slavery and AbolitionVol. 26, No. 1, April 2005, pp. 55–70

Judith Jennings is the Director of the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Correspondence to: Dr. Judith Jennings,

Kentucky Foundation for Women, 338 Wildwood Place, Louisville, Kentucky 40206, USA; Email: Judi@Kfw.org.

ISSN 0144-039X print=1743-9523 online=05=010055–16# 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd DOI: 10.1080=01440390500058855

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to the Present, Amanda Vickery argued that women should be included in an extended

definition of political participation as ‘developing political attitudes, engaging inpolitical argument, and giving forceful expression to political views.’ In Women in

British Politics, 1760–1860: The Power of the Petticoat, editors Kathryn Gleadle andSarah Richardson pointed to the importance of using a wide range of primarysources to identify the sometimes unexpected sites and forms of women’s political

activities and connections. In one of the essays in their collection, Elaine Chalusdemonstrated how women exercised political influence in local elections although

they could not vote.2

As this case study will show, combining the rich traditions of abolition and women’s

scholarship suggests new ways of thinking about abolition, gender and politicalparticipation. The study presents new information about three influential women,

all noted for their creative talents, who supported abolition before and during the for-mative stages of the organized anti-slave-trade campaign in Britain. Despite the legalrestrictions preventing them from voting or holding office, each of them found effec-

tive, but very different, ways to exercise influence in favour of abolition. Focusing ontheir connections, political views and pro-abolition activities reveals important ties to

radical Patriot ideology, ‘the politics of complexion’, and the power of poetry inshaping anti-slave-trade sentiment.

The key figure linking this talented trio is Mary Morris Knowles, born in 1733 into aprosperous family of third-generation Quakers in Staffordshire. As a young unmarried

woman living in the provinces, Morris evinced a deep commitment to liberty, rootedin her religious beliefs and informing her political ideology. As with some early

Quakers and other dissenters of the seventeenth century, her commitment to religiousliberty shaped her political views. Like William Penn, whom she admired, her Quakerconvictions concerning the divine spirit present in all fuelled a deep commitment to

social justice based on the belief that spiritual convictions could be united with naturallaw and political practice to form a more perfect society.3

Although a deeply committed Quaker, Morris did not limit her friendships to thoseof her religious beliefs, and, as a young woman, she formed a lasting relationship with

Anna Seward. Nine years younger than Morris, Seward, the second member of thetalented trio presented here, was the daughter of the Reverend Thomas Seward who

became Canon of Lichfield Cathedral. When Anna was a child, her father wrote apoem entitled, ‘A Female’s Right to Literature’, linking education for girls to Britishliberty. Seward’s Anglican family, like Morris’s Quaker one, valued education for

girls, and she received instruction and encouragement in literature, science and theclassics.4 Despite their differences in religion and age, Morris and Seward became

close friends early in their lives. Years later, Seward described her as one ‘withwhom I have maintained the most intimate connection from my earliest youth.’5

Morris’s deep commitment to religious liberty greatly influenced her concept ofslavery. In 1762, at age 29, she engaged in a poetic debate with an Anglican cleric in

which she defended her Quaker beliefs in 58 lines of heroic couplets. In this verse,she referred to some of the rituals practised by Catholics and Jews as signs of

slavery, rejected by modern Protestants. ‘Enslav’d by canons, and the various rules’,

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she wrote, ‘Of councils, synods, colleges and schools/Thus might mankind, (for priests

an ample field)/To circumcision’s ancient custom yield.’6

In these couplets, Morris insisted on her own religious liberty while characterizing

Catholics and Jews as slaves to their religions. By limiting her case for religious libertyto Protestants, Morris evinced sentiments expressed by other radicals, like CatharineSawbridge Macaulay. As Macaulay’s biographer observed, she had a ‘passionate

belief in freedom of conscience and an equal conviction that such toleration shouldnever be extended to Catholics.’7

Appearing first in manuscript form, Morris’s verses reflect what a modern scholarcalls the ‘thriving amateur social literary culture’ of the eighteenth century, but

her poetic exchange was also later published and distributed widely. Although notoriginally written for publication, she clearly intended her poem to be read by

others, so the manuscript had a social function.8 The publication and distributionof these verses indicate that the distinctions between written, printed, and spokenforms blurred as consumers read aloud, copied, memorized, paraphrased, and circu-

lated texts, both in manuscript and print.In January 1765, Morris produced another remarkable manuscript entitled ‘The

Memoirs of M. M., Spinster of this parish’, directly aligning herself with the Englishradical tradition of support for individual liberty.9 She did not, as might have been

expected of a Quaker, write her memoirs as a religious autobiography but as a satiricalaccount of her life in the context of the politics of her day. By composing her own

memoirs, Morris satirically but seriously affirmed a place for herself as both writerand subject in the traditionally male preserve of history.10

‘If I am my own Biographer’, she began, ‘tis no more than these several Heroes,Philosophers, Statesmen and Bards have been before me.’ Tongue in cheek, she contin-ued, ‘As they wisely thought, so think I, that it’s . . .much more honest, than to employ

a parasite or an hireling to do it for us.’11 By using the words ‘parasite’ and ‘hireling’,Morris evoked the language of Grub Street, recalling the civil unrest and radical

politics of an earlier era.12

Morris further indicated her radical links by critiquing the contemporary patriot

tradition as represented by John Wilkes and William Pitt. Referring to the historyof England Wilkes had proposed to write, Morris suggested ‘instead of his [Wilkes]

drawing the Patriot . . . [that he] put the pen into the hand of the glorious Pitthimself, immediately upon hearing the gout attacks his vital parts.’13 The Patriotcontinued to stand for the radical in the mid-eighteenth century English political

lexicon, but Pitt had lost favour among radicals by accepting a pension for himselfand a peerage for his wife.14 While Morris satirized Wilkes and Pitt, her close knowl-

edge of their activities and humorous tone indicate she did so as an adherent ratherthan an opponent.

Like her religious verses, Morris’s manuscript memoirs illustrate and supportcurrent scholarly concepts of the importance of ‘scribal publication’ for women

writers.15 Her memoirs first appeared in a letter written to her cousin and his wife,and like her earlier verses, contemporaries copied and carefully preserved her

words.16 For Morris, as for other women of her time, circulating her religious and

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political ideas in writings to friends and kin represented a viable and important way

to form and shape her own and others’ opinions.At age 34, Morris married Thomas Knowles, an apothecary in Yorkshire,17 and,

while genuinely fond of her new husband, she determined not to become ‘a poorpassive machine . . . a mere smiling Wife.’18 The couple moved to Mildenhall inSuffolk, where he travelled through the surrounding area, selling drugs and giving

medical advice. She set up housekeeping, and became pregnant but lost her infantson in childbirth. In late 1768 or early 1769, they relocated to Birmingham, where

she cared for her aging mother.19

While Thomas continued his work as an apothecary, Mary, in the words of

her memoir, practised her ‘employment . . . in the art of the needle.’20 In 1771,Queen Charlotte saw some of her fine work and asked Knowles if she could stitch

a needle painting of a recent portrait of the King. Needle painting, a new artform then being developed, replicated the appearance of a painted subject throughcrewel embroidery using worsted wool stitches to represent brush strokes. Knowles

readily agreed, ‘though she had never seen anything of the kind’, and completed theportrait to the ‘entire satisfaction of the King and Queen.’21 According to contempor-

aries, Knowles received £800 from ‘His Majesty for her great ingenuity inneedlework.’22

Consistent with the political ideas expressed in her earlier writing, Knowles viewedthe royal reward as a loss of liberty, which she likened to slavery. ‘I am to depart from a

state of independence’, she wrote her cousin, referring to her payment from the King.In this way, Knowles allied herself with the radical critique of court patronage even as

she prepared to accept her reward. Drawing on her strong religious beliefs, she resolvednever to become a slave to her royal ties. ‘I hope, through divine assistance, never to bea slave, so that my connexion there shall be not to make a use of the favour of that

smiling countenance they wear towards me.’23

Writing to the same cousin to whom she had addressed her memoirs, Knowles again

used radical language equating court patronage with government control. Her rhetoricsuggests the continuation of the radical critique of government voiced by some Quaker

women of the seventeenth century.24 Yet because of her personal acquaintance,Knowles differentiated between the institution of monarchy and the smiling counte-

nances shown her by the current King and Queen. Even as she stressed individualliberty and equated government patronage with slavish dependence, Knowlesreconciled her radical views with loyalty to the persons of the monarchs.

Mary Knowles’s royal recognition and financial reward changed both her lifeand her husband’s. Financed by the royal payment, Thomas studied medicine at

Edinburgh and went to Leyden to take a medical degree. Mary accompanied him,and the couple toured Europe before returning to England. They settled in London,

where he became a successful physician, and she became a sought-after social acquain-tance in the dynamic cultural life of the capital.25

Thriving in London, Mary Knowles developed her radical connections and partici-pated in the most important literary coterie of her day. Even before moving to the city,

she had met the energetic and ebullient Edward Dilly, who shared his home

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and business but not his radical politics, with his younger brother, Charles. By the

mid-1770s, the dining room of the bachelor brothers, located over their popular book-shop in The Poultry, served as the meeting site of an influential literary coterie that

included Samuel Johnson and James Boswell as well as an array of other male andfemale authors and political figures.26

On 15 May 1776, Mary Knowles appeared, along with several other of Edward

Dilly’s ‘patriotick friends’, at the historic dinner party where John Wilkes met his fre-quent critic, Samuel Johnson. According to a later report by Boswell, Knowles joined

the group after dinner, the only woman present, in company with William Lee, aLondon alderman and strong supporter of Wilkes and American independence. The

guests already assembled included Arthur Lee, William’s brother and a key connectionbetween radicals in England and the American colonies. Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, a

prosperous Quaker physician, also attended. Lettsom, a West Indian transplant, wasa long-time friend of Knowles and shared her radical views.27

While Knowles became acquainted with important male political and literary

leaders, she also developed a new, and equally important, female friendship withJane Harry. Born in Jamaica, Harry, the third member of the talented trio portrayed

here, reflected the social complexities of British colonialism. Jane, or ‘Jenny’ asfriends called her, was the natural daughter of Thomas Hibbert, an English plantation

owner, and a Jamaican woman now known only as ‘Mrs. Harry.’ As a young man,Hibbert left Manchester for Jamaica where he prospered greatly, acquiring three

estates and becoming a Judge of the Grand Court and a member of the local governingassembly. English males, especially those of the landowning class, far outnumbered

English females in Jamaica. Hibbert, like other resident plantation owners, had along-term relationship with a Jamaican woman.28

A contemporary later described Mrs. Harry as a ‘mulatto’, and evidence discussed

later indicates she may have been or become free. Her union with Hibbert may ormay not have been consensual, and it certainly involved the unequal status of colonizer

and colonized. Hibbert and Harry never married but had two daughters, Jane, bornabout 1756, and Margaret, named for his mother, born nine years later. Jane and

Margaret Harry were baptized in an Anglican Church in Kingston. When they grewolder, they went to England to be educated, like other children of affluent planter

fathers and colonial mothers.29

Jane’s father placed her under the care of Nathaniel Sprigg in Barnes, Surrey, whileher younger sister went to boarding school in London. With Sprigg and his wife as

guardians, Harry enjoyed a life of material comfort at Barn Elms, an ancient manorhouse with a colourful history. Sprigg frequently entertained distinguished visitors

from London, including Samuel Johnson.30

The available evidence does not reveal whether, living in England, Jane Harry

considered herself, or was considered by others, as a woman of colour. While anineteenth-century publication characterized her as a ‘quadroon’, no such contempor-

ary racialized references to her have been found.31 Her future husband once describedher as ‘that West Indian girl.’32 Yet place of birth, social status, and colour were often

conflated in the eighteenth-century lexicon, so that while a West Indian might be

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considered ‘black’, so might persons from Ireland or coal miners and other manual

labourers. As literary scholar Vincent Carretta observed, ‘Social status could supersederace as a defining category’ in Georgian England.33 His observation is supported by the

fact that while Jane Harry’s social position as a member of the middling sorts has beendocumented, her identity in terms of ‘race’ or ‘colour’ has not. This absence suggeststhe fluidity of metropolitan, as opposed to colonial, racial categories in the late

eighteenth century.34

Ambivalence about colour combined with attitudes toward gender to contribute to

what Felicity Nussbaum, another recent literary scholar has described as ‘the politics ofcomplexion’. Nussbaum shows how various eighteenth-century white women writers

negotiated the unstable and elusive constructs of gender, ‘blood’ and social privilege.Yet she recognizes ‘the seemingly insurmountable difficulty’ of studying women

of colour because of ‘the scant testimony from the women themselves.’35 In theabsence of evidence from Jane Harry herself on this subject, she seems to have been,like women who later migrated to England from the British colonies, ‘classified as

neither Black nor White.’36

Jane Harry and Mary Knowles became friends when Knowles visited the Sprigg

family, and the two women discovered they shared a passion for painting. Bothknew Joshua Reynolds, then delivering his influential Discourses to the Royal

Academy of Art. Generous to aspiring students, Reynolds often befriended promisingartists. Harry and Knowles knew Reynolds well enough to be trusted with one of his

paintings, which he sometimes loaned to those who wished to study his work.37

When Harry’s sister died at boarding school, Jane grieved deeply and sought

spiritual solace from Knowles as a mature female friend, more than 20 years hersenior. Knowles sympathetically advised her to read the Bible and seek divine gui-dance. Although torn between the fear of offending her guardian and offending

God, Harry ultimately embraced Quaker beliefs. Her guardian then confirmed herfears by declaring she could no longer live with his family.

Distressed, the young womanmoved to London and wrote a long letter to her fatherpleading for his advice and protection.38 Her father either never replied or declined his

support, so, according to Anna Seward, Jane Harry, at about age 18 or 20, went toboard at the home of Mary and Thomas Knowles.39 While staying with Knowles,

Harry must have met Seward, then gaining a reputation as a promising poet, andother leading literary figures who visited there.Although Seward still lived with her father in Lichfield, she sometimes visited

Knowles in London, despite her dislike of the increasingly commercialized literarylife of the capital.40 As a later biographer observed, ‘Mrs. Knowles, who was a brilliant

woman, could introduce her to a circle of eminent friends.’41 On Sunday, 12 April1778, for example, James Boswell ‘Went and called on Dr. and Mrs. Knowles’ where

he found ‘Miss Seward of Lichfield’, and ‘Mr. Edward Dilly was just leaving.’42

Three days later, Knowles and Seward participated in a literary dinner at Dillys’,

later chronicled by Boswell, where the two women strongly supported religious,political and social liberty, and Knowles defended Jane Harry’s decision to become

a Quaker.

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Amidst discussions of reading, cooking and literary business, Knowles pointed out

the injustice that ‘men had much more liberty allowed them women.’ Johnsonimmediately took issue with her, arguing that ‘women have all the liberty they

should wish to have.’ Undeterred, Knowles presented an example of the unequalsocial standards applied to men and concerning alcohol consumption. ‘Still Doctor,’she concluded, ‘I cannot help thinking it a hardship that more indulgence is

allowed to men than to women. It gives a superiority to men, to which I do not seehow they are entitled.’43

When Johnson and Edward Dilly rebuffed her social arguments in favourof women’s liberty, Knowles turned to religion. Alluding to language in the New

Testament, she said, ‘Well, I hope that in another world the sexes will be equal.’While this reference reflected her Quaker beliefs in women’s spiritual equality,

Knowles applied it ecumenically to all. Boswell quickly refuted this possibility, reply-ing, ‘That is being too ambitious, Madam. We might as well desire to be equal with theangels.’44

Soon after this exchange, Anna Seward revealed her Whig politics and provokedJohnson’s anger by defending the revolutionaries in America. Johnson, who strongly

opposed the American cause, suddenly announced, according to Boswell, ‘I amwilling to love all mankind, except an American.’ Seward, who knew Johnson and

his family from Lichfield and did not fear challenging him, countered, ‘Sir this is aninstance that we are always most violent against those whom we have injured.’ As

Seward must have anticipated, her reply angered Johnson more. Boswell later wrotethat, he ‘roared out another tremendous volley which one might fancy could be

heard across the Atantick.’45

Before the party ended, Knowles and Johnson clashed over Jane Harry’s decision tobecome a Quaker. Johnson had befriended the young woman when she lived with the

Sprigg family but refused to recognize her now that she wanted to join the Friends. Inhis later report, Boswell included a brief account of Johnson’s angry reaction when

Knowles ‘in the gentlest and most persuasive manner solicited his kind indulgence’for what Boswell considered ‘sincerely a matter of conscience.’ Despite Knowles’s

gentle approach, Boswell reported that Johnson ‘rose again into passion, and attackedthe young proselyte in the severest terms of reproach, so that both ladies seemed to be

much shocked.’46

Despite Johnson’s anger and disapproval, Jane Harry did very well for herself,assisted by Mary Knowles. In 1778, Harry received a gold medal for painting from

the London based Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Com-merce.47 Knowles helped her find employment as a governess in the household of

her wealthy cousins, Sampson Lloyd III and his wife, Rachel Barnes Lloyd, wholived on a large estate outside Birmingham.48 Harry joined the Quakers and became

engaged to Joseph Thresher, a surgeon.49

In 1780, Harry’s father, Judge Thomas Hibbert, died in Jamaica, leaving her £2,000

while bequeathing more than £100,000 to his nephew. Jane Harry wrote a protestingletter to the heir, also expressing concern about what provision the Judge had made for

her mother. The heir haughtily informed Harry she had no cause for complaint.

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Historian Madge Dresser has documented similar disparate legacies involving children

of planter fathers and West Indian mothers in Bristol.50

‘To your dutiful and proper enquiries after your mother, I answered that she was

comfortably provided for,’ the heir reminded her. The young man told his cousinthat her father had left land and slaves to Mrs. Harry, indicating her status as a freeperson. The Hibbert heir also told of ‘another lot of land’ near her mother’s house

which Jane would inherit on her mother’s death.51

According to an unnamed contemporary, perhaps Mary Knowles, Harry ‘formed a

design of going to Jamaica, the residence of her mother, with a view to procure thefreedom of her mother’s Negroes, and to instruct them in the principles of the

Christian religion.’ Harry could not, however, act on her convictions because the con-tinuing war with the American colonies made transatlantic travel too dangerous. ‘The

great commotion of public affairs’ caused by the war ‘frustrated her noble design’, thesame contemporary later explained.52

Jane Harry’s desire to free her mother’s slaves predated the beginning of the

organized movement in Britain against slavery and the slave trade. Her newfound reli-gious convictions and personal acquaintance with Quakers may have influenced her.

Individual Quakers in America, like Anthony Benezet and John Woolman, hadstrongly opposed slavery. Dr. John Coakley Lettsom, Mary’s friend and Harry’s

fellow West Indian, had freed the slaves he inherited in Tortola in 1767. Yet whilesome Quakers opposed slavery and the slave-trade, neither the Quaker organization

nor any other group in Britain had taken united action in support of abolition.53

Jane Harry had evidently felt powerless to persuade her father against slave holding,

but, as soon as she learned that her mother had inherited slaves, she resolved totake action to free them.In the spring of 1783, as the American Revolution drew to an end, Thomas

Knowles joined the committee established by the British Quaker organization,at the urging of American Friends, to consider what action should be taken about

slavery and the slave-trade. At the same time, Thomas and five other men Friendsbegan meeting in an informal association ‘to consider what steps could by them

be taken for the Relief and Liberation of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies, andthe Discouragement of the slave trade on the coast of Africa.’ During the summer

of 1783, this informal association met frequently at the Lombard Street homeof Mary and Thomas Knowles.54 Just as the example of Mary Knowles must haveinfluenced Jane Harry to become a Quaker, Harry’s struggle with the realities of colo-

nial slave holding must have influenced Mary and Thomas Knowles to supportabolition.

Jane Harry, meanwhile, had married and given birth. ‘Jane Harry, late of Kingstonin Jamaica, but now of the City of London’, married ‘Joseph Thresher, Junior, of

Worcester, surgeon’, on 26 November 1782, with Mary and Thomas Knowles actingin the place of her ‘relations’.55 The newlyweds settled in Worcester where Thresher

had established his practice.56 In August 1784, however, Jane Harry Thresher died,‘aged about twenty-eight’, three months after giving birth to a baby boy who did

not long survive her.57

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A beautifully written obituary for Jane Harry Thresher appeared in Gentleman’s

Magazine in September 1784, possibly composed by Mary Knowles, indicating thatshe had continued her concern for her mother’s slaves throughout her final illness.

‘We are informed’, said the writer of the obituary, ‘she has requested her husbandthat, if the said Negroes be liberated at her mother’s decease, he will pay thepremium to the Island, for such liberation, if any should be required.’58 During her

short life, Jane Harry Thresher had consistently reaffirmed her ties with both herEnglish father and her Jamaican mother. On her death-bed, she took action, as a

Caribbean-born woman living in England, to end her involvement in slave holding.Mary Knowles lost her friend and then, two years later, her husband. However the

informal committee Thomas Knowles helped found grew into the larger and more reli-giously diverse London Abolition Committee. In 1787, the Committee assumed leader-

ship for involving the public in supporting parliamentary action against the slave trade.By 1788, the Committee was conducting a nationwide campaign using a variety oftactics to demonstrate the evils of the slave-trade to the public and to unpersuaded

Members of Parliament. Josiah Wedgwood, for example, already becoming famousfor his pottery, joined the Committee and began producing a distinctive jasper ware

medallion dramatically portraying the plight of an enslaved African male.59

As another way of stirring public opinion, Wedgwood sent abolitionist tracts to

Anna Seward in February 1788 and suggested she write a poem on the subject.60 Bythen, Seward had gained national recognition for her poetic novel Louisa published

in 1784. She knew Wedgwood through his connections with her one-time Lichfieldneighbour, Erasmus Darwin, and his Midlands circle of scientific and entrepreneurial

‘Lunar Men’ or ‘Lunaticks’, as they sometimes comically called themselves.61

Seward informed Wedgwood that his letter and the tracts had convinced her tosupport abolition. She had heretofore supported the British slave-trade, albeit reluc-

tantly. She told Wedgwood that she had believed it ‘necessary to maintain ourempire and our commerce in the Indies.’ Moreover, her personal acquaintances in

Lichfield included West Indian planters who had upheld the necessity of slavery andwarned against the dangers of losing control over slaves.62

At about the same time, a Quaker male abolitionist approached another womanwriter, who worried about the role of women in the national campaign. In Bristol,

the wealthy Quaker businessman Richard Reynolds had written to Sunday schoolreformer and writer Sarah Trimmer, ‘hoping that she might, through her means, influ-ence the female sex in the cause, and also, if possible, interest the Queen herself.’

According to Reynolds, Trimmer expressed concern ‘that a petition to Parliamentshould even be signed, much less be presented by women.’ Reynolds assured her he

had no such thing in mind, and Trimmer, like Seward, agreed to read and considerabolitionist tracts.63

Seward expressed no such concerns about women’s roles, but declined to write apoem because she feared it might harm her literary reputation. Seward reminded

Wedgwood about the abolition verse written by Ann Yearsley, a former milkmaidpatronized by Hannah More, the evangelical Bluestocking, who had also written a

poem supporting abolition. Acutely conscious of her place in national literary life,

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Seward did not want to risk being unfavourably compared by critics to a writer of such

low status as Yearsley. ‘I cannot prevail upon myself to give my scribbling foes newopportunity . . . by speaking to the world of the inferiority of my attempt to that of

the unlettered milk woman’s,’ she frankly told Wedgwood.64

Mary Knowles, perhaps spurred by the memory of Jane Harry, did not shareSeward’s compunction concerning writing about slavery or the slave-trade. No evi-

dence has been found that members of the London Abolition Committee, several ofwhom she knew personally, called on her to write an abolitionist poem for publication.

Yet an unnamed friend did ask her to write a poetic inscription for a tobacco box, thekind of request often made to recognized writers. In June 1788, Knowles obligingly

penned the following heroic couplets:

Tho various tints the human face adornTo glorious Liberty Mankind are born;O, May the hands which rais’d this fav’rite weedBe loos’d in mercy and the slave be freed!65

Although this inscription was not intended for publication, Knowles’s earlier writings

had been copied, circulated and preserved even before she had become publiclyknown as an artist and literary figure. Because it was written for a tobacco box, the

verse, like the object it adorned, fulfilled a social purpose and would be seen not onlyby the individual owner but displayed to others. Moreover, Knowles’s words were

copied and preserved separately and surely circulated among her friends and admirers.In her poetic statement, Knowles in some ways represented the tradition of ‘The

Female Poet’ identified by literary scholar Anne Mellor. Mellor argues that by the1780s women poets wrote publicly about political and social issues in their verses.

In tracing the origins of The Female Poet, Mellor credits the influence of Quakerwomen preachers of the seventeenth century ‘whose religious beliefs authorizedthem to speak in public.’66

While Knowles’s Quaker origins certainly influenced her political views, this par-ticular poetic statement more directly evinces her radical commitment to ‘Glorious

Liberty’. Knowles had defended women’s liberty in her debate with Johnson in1778, and she now extended this principle to all humans. Her arguments are rational,

nonsectarian and based on universal birthrights. For Knowles, religious liberty led topolitical and social freedom, and her brief poem reminded the owner of the tobacco

box about this important political issue.By transforming the request for this inscription into a political statement against

slavery, Knowles also demonstrated a keen awareness of the connections between

English consumption and colonial slavery. Individual British and American Quakersin the 1760s and 1770s, like John Woolman, had taken the lead in ‘moralizing con-

sumption’ and suggesting abstention from slave products as a way to diminish theprofits of slavery. Yet the wide-scale abstention movement in Britain did not take

hold until the 1790s, and then it focused on sugar with a strong appeal to women con-sumers.67 Knowles wrote her poem three years before this national movement, and she

focused on a product more often purchased and used by males.

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As anti-slave-trade sentiment increased within Parliament and throughout the nation

between 1788 and 1791, James Boswell protested what he saw as the pernicious impactof the poetic power of female abolitionists. Trying his hand at political satire, Boswell

penned an anonymous poem entitled, ‘No Abolition of Slavery, or, The UniversalEmpire of Love’, linking slavery to sexual desire for women and equating abolitionwith unmanly behaviour. Written in mock epic style, the poem began by saluting ‘the

Respectable Body of West-India Planters and Merchants’ but claimed to be ‘Addressedto Miss —’, identified as ‘most pleasing of thy sex, Born to delight and never vex.’68

Writing as a self-described ‘ancient bard of the land’, Boswell argued that slaverybenefited Africans, and the parliamentary leaders who thought otherwise had been

unduly influenced by weak-thinking women. Slavery, he believed, helped Africansby removing them from ‘a state of savage wretchedness.’ Belittling many of the aboli-

tionists in Commons by name, he wondered how one of them, ‘a Roman free andrough’, could ‘Descend to weak blue stocking stuff, And . . . feelings soft and kind,Till you emasculate your mind.’

Boswell compared the subordination of slaves in the West Indies with the subjectionof a love-struck swain to his mistress. He portrayed slavery and sexual attraction as

equal forms of subordination, which he believed to be part of the timeless worldorder. He maintained that, ‘Slavery, subjection, what you will, Has ever been, and

will be still.’ Moreover, he argued, ‘From wise subordination’s plan, springs the chiefhappiness of man.’ Equating the subordination of slavery with that of a lover to his

mistress, he ended by telling the unnamed ‘Miss’ that, ‘Slavery there must ever be,While we have Mistresses like thee!’69

Boswell clearly intended for his poem to produce a comic effect, but the verses revealsome serious connections in his thinking about Africans, women and subordination.He defended the natural superiority of landowning males and made fun of abolition as

a weak idea associated with intellectual women. A woman’s place, in his order of sub-ordination, was not as a thinker or an abolitionist but as an object of love defined by

sexual desire. He believed women and Africans should be satisfied with their places inthis natural order, and he considered it comical for anyone to think otherwise.

Abolition failed in Parliament in 1791, and while supporters vowed to take theircase to the people, literary debates distracted Boswell, Knowles and Seward. Boswell’s

Life of Johnson finally appeared in May 1791, and Knowles immediately declared hehad misrepresented her dialogue with Johnson about Jane Harry. Declaring that shewould not acquiesce in ‘a timid and implicit submission’, Knowles published her

own account in the June issue of Gentleman’s Magazine. In it, Knowles recountedhow she had defended her Quaker principles and argued strongly in favour of the

moral agency and liberty of Jane Harry to choose her own religion.70

Anna Seward agreed with Knowles that Boswell had omitted much of her conversa-

tion concerning Jane Harry. Seward told Knowles she had supplied Boswell with herown version of the dialogue. Seward’s version agreed with Knowles’s in some import-

ant respects, but Seward, the daughter of an Anglican cleric, included little of Know-les’s defence of Quakerism. Instead, Seward focused on Jane Harry, portraying her as

undereducated and naive.71

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Yet, by then, the French Revolution was slowly eroding the long-time friendship of

Knowles and Seward. When Tom Paine published his Rights of Man, Part I, Sewardtold Knowles she began ‘to apprehend’ the French Revolution was ‘pushing the

levelling principles into extremes’ with ‘the confiscation of hereditary estates.’ Further-more, she deemed republican principles too idealistic to be put into practice.72 A yearlater, Seward wrote a friend that on a visit to Lichfield Knowles ‘made flaming

eulogisms upon French anarchy, which she calls freedom and uttered no less vehementphilippics against everything which pertains to monarchy.’73 Within another year,

their friendship seems to have ended.74

Even though Jane Harry Thresher died young and the French Revolution destroyed

the friendship of her two surviving friends, their close relationships and commonsupport for abolition prior to 1791 indicate the importance of female participation

during this formative period of the anti-slave-trade campaign. These three womenunited in support of abolition across a variety of demographic differences, includingage, geography, cultural backgrounds and marital status, as well as differences in

religion and political views. This diversity suggests that abolition had a widespreadappeal to varied women across the country and throughout the empire.

Although all three women supported abolition, each developed different modesand degrees of support. The Jamaican-born Jane Harry Thresher resolved to take

direct action to end her personal association with slave holding. The moderateAnna Seward became convinced that abolition was desirable but refrained from

writing about it to protect her literary reputation. As a radical, Mary Knowlesdefended liberty for women and Africans and reminded consumers about the

connection between tobacco and slavery. The diversity of their responses andBoswell’s reaction to female abolitionists indicate the scope and variety of the inter-sections between gender and abolition and the need for further research on this

important topic.Finally, the activities of these three women abolitionists indicate the political

importance of female friendship networks for middling, as well as elite, women andthe range of ways women found to express their political opinions. Knowles’s see-

mingly private manuscripts expressing her political views were circulated and carefullypreserved. Jane Harry’s desire to free her mother’s slaves was published in Gentleman’s

Magazine. Anna Seward told Josiah Wedgwood she would support abolition andincluded her letter to him among the correspondence published after her death.These expressions of anti-slavery sentiments and actions indicate the wide range of

abolitionist activities available to both women and men. An expanded definition ofpolitical participation reveals unexplored facets of abolition history and contains

rich resources for further research on the complex connections among gender,abolition and political change.

Notes

[1] Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 239; Midgley, Women Against Slavery;Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery.

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[2] Vickery, ed., Women, Privilege, and Power, 19; Gleadle and Richardson, eds., Women in BritishPolitics, 1–13. Chalus, Women, Electoral Privilege and Practice in the Eighteenth-Century.

[3] London, Library of Religious Society of Friends, Cheshire and Staffordshire Quarterly Meeting,Digest Record of Births, 1733; Clark, The Language of Liberty, 1660–1832; Barbour, WilliamPenn, Model of Protestant Liberalism, 156–73.

[4] Lucas, A Swan and Her Friends, 16–8; Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination, 584–5, 592.[5] Letters of Anna Seward: Written Between the Years 1784 and 1807, vol. II, p. 109.[6] Library of Religious Society of Friends, TemporaryMSS 1, File 35, Verses to Mary Morris and her

reply, 1762.[7] Hill, The Republican Virago, 53.[8] Ezell, Social Authorship and the Advent of Print, 25–45; Library of the Religious Society of

Friends, Tracts, vol. C, numbers 49 and 47.[9] Library of Religious Society of Friends, Temporary MSS 403, [Frederick Arthur

Bevan Braithwaite Papers], (hereafter cited as Braithwaite Papers), Box 7, Packet 15,File 3, Number 43, ‘MM, Settle, January 2, 1765.’ to Dr. John Fell and his wife, Sarah BirkbeckFell.

[10] Hicks, Catharine Macaulay’s Civil War, 170–98.[11] Braithwaite Papers, MM, Settle, January 2, 1765.[12] McDowell, The Women of Grub Street, 10, 18–53.[13] Braithwaite Papers, MM, Settle, January 2, 1765.[14] Colley, Radical Patriotism in Eighteenth-Century England, 169; Thomas, John Wilkes; Hicks,

Catharine Macaulay’s Civil War.[15] Justice and Tinker, eds., Women’s Writing and the Circulation of Ideas.[16] Library of Religious Society of Friends, Temporary MSS 28, File 7, Number 3, Copy of an epistle

to Dr. F, dated Jany 1765.[17] Library of Religious Society of Friends, Quarterly Meeting of Warwickshire, Leicestershire and

Rutland, Digest Register of Marriages, 1767.[18] Braithwaite Papers, Box 7, Packet 15, File 3, Number 35, To James Farmer, Birmingham, for

M.F., 8th 28 1767.[19] Braithwaite Papers, Box 7, Packet 15, File 3, Numbers 30, 35, 36, 37, 39.[20] Braithwaite Papers, MM, Settle, January 2, 1765.[21] Lady’s Monthly Museum 11 (July-Dec. 1803), November, 289. Hughes, An Artist in Needlework,

138–9. Swain, Embroidered Georgian Pictures, 4–5, 18–21. Thanks to the Royal Trust for per-mission to view the needle painting in storage at Hampton Court.

[22] Pettigrew, ed., Memoirs of the Life and Writing of the late John Coakley Lettsom, vol. I, p. 18;Wimsatt and Pottle, eds., Boswell for the Defense, 1769–1774, 36.

[23] Library of Religious Society of Friends, Temporary MSS 28, File 7, Number 4, ‘CousinM. Knowles’ to ‘Dr. Fell, Ulverstone near Lanc.’

[24] McDowell, The Women of Grub Street, p. 53.[25] Lady’s Monthly Museum.[26] Butterfield, The American Interests of the firm of E. and C. Dilly, vol. 45, 4th Qtr, 1951, 284–309.[27] Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, vol. II, 80–9; Pettigrew, Memoirs of Lettsom, vol. I, 53.[28] Green, ‘Jenny Harry, later Thresher (c. 1756–1784)’ Friends’ Quarterly Examiner (Tenth

Month) 1913, 559–82. ‘Jenny Harry, later Thresher’(concluded) Friends’ Quarterly Examiner(First Month) 1914, 43–64. Williams, Capitalism and Slavery 88, 232. Barrow, Family in theCaribbean, 245.

[29] Croker, ed., The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Vol IV, 155. Gardner, A History of Jamaica,165–73. Barrow, Family in the Caribbean, 245. Green, ‘Jenny Harry’, Friends’ QuarterlyExaminer (Tenth Month) 1913, 559–60.

[30] Ibid., 559–61. Anderson, A History of the Parish of Barnes.[31] Beck et al., eds., Biographical Catalogue, 411.

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[32] Green, ‘Jenny Harry’, Friends’ Quarterly Examiner (First Month) 1914, 54.[33] Carretta, ed., Unchained Voices, 3.[34] Hudson, From ‘Nation’ to “Race”, 258.[35] Nussbaum, Women and race, 69–88.[36] Ifekwunigwe, Diaspora’s Daughters’, 127.[37] Green, ‘Jenny Harry’, Friends’ Quarterly Examiner (Tenth Month) 1913, 565–7. Brewer,

Pleasures of the Imagination, 230, 288–95.[38] Green, ‘Jenny Harry’, Friends’ Quarterly Examiner (Tenth Month) 1913, 575–7.[39] Library of the Religious Society of Friends, Portfolio MSS 3/126, Notes of a Conversation

between Dr. Johnson and Mary Knowles in a Letter to Boswell.[40] Brewer, Pleasures of the Imagination, 573–612.[41] Ashmun, The Singing Swan, 107[42] Weis and Pottle, eds., Boswell in Extremes, 271.[43] Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. II, 225[44] Ibid.[45] Ibid., 226–7.[46] Ibid., 231–2.[47] Obituary for Jane Harry Thresher, Gentleman’s Magazine 54 (July-December 1784), 716.[48] Lloyd, The Lloyds of Birmingham, 108–18.[49] Green, ‘Jenny Harry’, Friends’ Quarterly Examiner (First Month) 1914, 43–64.[50] Dresser, Slavery Obscured, 73–7.[51] Green, ‘Jenny Harry’, Friends’ Quarterly Examiner (First Month) 1914, 43–64[52] Obituary for Jane Harry Thresher, Gentleman’s Magazine.[53] Jennings, The Business; Pettigrew, Memoirs of Lettsom, Vol. I, 28.[54] Jennings, Business, 23. Library of the Religious Society of Friends, Thompson-Clarkson MSS,

Vol. II, 9. Minute Book.[55] London, Public Record Office, RG6 510, A Register of the Marriage Certificates of the People

Called Quakers belonging to the Monthly Meeting of Devonshire House London in the Countyof Middlesex, 26th day of 11th month called November 1782.

[56] Green, ‘Jenny Harry’, Friends’ Quarterly Examiner (First Month) 1914, 58.[57] London, Public Record Office, RG 8, 808, Monthly Meeting of Worcestershire, Burials

1665–1793.[58] Obituary for Jane Harry Thresher, Gentleman’s Magazine; Green, ‘Jenny Harry’, Friends’

Quarterly Examiner (First Month) 1914, 62.[59] Jennings, Business, 22–52.[60] Letters of Anna Seward, Vol. II, 28–30.[61] Brewer, Pleasures of the Imagination, 591–601. Uglow, The Lunar Men.[62] Letters of Anna Seward, Vol. II, 28–30.[63] Rathbone, Letters of Richard Reynolds, 48, 162–4.[64] Letters of Anna Seward, Vol. II, 28–30.[65] Library of Religious Society of Friends, MSS Vol. 334 [Gibson MSS, Vol. I], 193, Inscriptions for

a Tobacco Box, 6mo 13 1788.[66] Mellor, Mothers of the Nation, 70.[67] Midgley, Slave Sugar Boycotts, 142.[68] [J. Boswell], No Abolition of Slavery.[69] Ibid.[70] Gentleman’s Magazine, 61 (Jan–June, 1791), 500–2.[71] Letters of Anna Seward Vol. III, 72–9. Portfolio MSS 3/126, Notes of a Conversation between

Dr. Johnson and Mary Knowles in a Letter to Boswell.[72] Letters of Anna Seward Vol. III, pp. 72–9.[73] Ibid., 159–60.

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[74] Ibid., 266 contains the last reference to Knowles in Seward’s published correspondence con-tinued in three additional volumes and covering 12 more years.

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