Elizabeth Warren

In 1642, Robert Cade who had been minister at St Mary’s for sixteen years was asked to yield the pulpit to a number of preachers or ‘lecturers’ of whom at least were townsmen.  Evidence of debate in the town, about who should preach in church, comes from the writing of Elizabeth Warren. She was a pious and scholarly lady who, according to Vincent Redstone was married to the churchwarden John Warren.  Others have disputed this but there is no doubt that she was either one of the Warren family that lived in Woodbridge or was married to one of them.  One of her treatises has a preface by the Rev. Robert Cade, saying that he had lived in the same town as the author for twenty-six years.

Her first tract was a defence of the ordained clergy against lay preachers.  It was titled The Old and Good Way Vindicated  and was published in 1646.  It was followed a year later by a long work entitled Spiritual Thrift, comprising a series of meditations on religious themes.  This reveals her to have been a well-educated woman who knew Latin and wrote well.  Her third work, A Warning - Peece from Heaven against the Sins of the Times appeared in 1649.  It was a lament on the breakdown of authority in the home, church, and state.

Elizabeth Warren displays an extraordinary amount of classical and theological learning, quoting Latin authors in the original, and by sermonizing she behaves as if she herself were a minister - a profession from which women would be excluded for another three centuries.  Yet she seems to have accepted a subordinate role for women even in spiritual matters. She wrote that she was reluctant to published because she was 'conscious of her mentall and sex-deficiencie'.  She also believed that women were more susceptible to error than men because 'wee of the weaker sex, have hereditary evill from our Grandmother Eve' and so were 'created subordinate by divine institution'.

If you want to know more about her she had entries in both the Dictionary of National Biography and the Biographical Dictionary of British Women.

Warren, Elizabeth (fl.. 1646-49), religious pamphleteer, known only by three pamphlets which she published in the late 1640s. She apparently lived in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and may have been the wife of the Rev. John Warren, headmaster of Woodbridge School from about 1632. Her first tract was a defence of the ordained clergy against lay preachers, The Old and Good Way Vindicated (1646, two editions), and in 1647 she issued a long work entitled Spiritual Thrift, comprising a series of meditations on religious themes. This reveals her to have been a well-educated woman who knew Latin and wrote well. Her third work, A Warning - Peece from Heaven against the Sins of the Times (1649), was a lament on the breakdown of authority in the home, church, and state.

Unlike many female pamphleteers of the 1640s, Elizabeth Warren seems to have accepted a subordinate role for women even in spiritual matters. She published only reluctantly, 'conscious to my mentall and sex-deficiencie', and believed that women were more susceptible to error than men: 'wee of the weaker sex, have hereditary evill from our Grandmother Eve' and so were 'created subordinate by divine institution'. She provides some insight into the difficulties faced by women who wanted to write: her own educational, social, and family commitments, together with poor health, she says, 'put mee continually upon such employments, as straightens my leisure in affaires of this nature'.

See also K. Thomas, 'Women and the Civil War Sects', in Past and Present, 13, 1958; E. M. Williams, 'Women Preachers in the Civil War', in Journal of Modern History, I, 1929.

Draft of Dictionary of National Biography entry by Julia Gaspa

WARREN. Elizabeth, (b. 1617), religious writer of the Civil War period. She was the daughter of John and Elizabeth Warren, baptized at Woodbridge in Suffolk on 19th December 1617. Warrens had been recorded in Woodbridge since 1568. She is probably the Elizabeth Warren who married one John Mace at Woodbridge on 27th October 1641. She is known as Elizabeth Warren of Woodbridge because her treatise .Spiritual Thrift (1647) carried a preface by the Rev. Robert Cade, vicar of that parish, saying that he had lived in the same town as the author for twenty-six years. Cade, a signatory of the petition of Presbyterian ministers in Suffolk in 1646, endorsed Warren's writing. Her remarkable education is most likely to have arisen in a clerical family, and it is very probable that she was related to the Rev. Thomas Warren (1617?-94) a nonconformist divine who came from Suffolk according to Venn's Aluni-Cantabrigiensi. Perhaps he was her brother (his birth date is approximate but he may have been born earlier in the same year) or her cousin. If they were twins it seems likely that they would have been baptized together. But the likelihood of their relationship seems strong enough to adjust his birth date to accommodate hers.

Warren's output consists of three learned theological treatises, the first of which appeared in 1646 entitled The Old and Good Way Vindicated. It is a defence of the clergy against extreme non-conformist doctrine. In 1929 E M Williams suggested that it was "obviously" a defence of the notoriously persecuted puritan clergyman Henry Burton, who came into conflict with Charles I and Archbishop Laud. However, he brought no supportive arguments, and unless some specific connection is shown, it is possible to read it rather as a defence of the need for a highly educated, specialist elite who preach and interpret the gospel. Such a doctrine was within Anglican bounds, but the pamphlet did not defend episcopacy nor denounce unconventional religious assemblies, which were then widespread. It went into a second edition, claiming to be much enlarged but identical to the first.

Spiritual Thrift is a book of devotional character, with only occasional allusions to the errors or vices of the time.

Her third work, the short treatise A Warning-Peece from Heaven appeared in 1649, and speaks in strong terms of the divine vengeance which England would incur because of its immorality. It deplores "schismaticks" and "Regicides" the latter now being "stiled meritorious".

The church of St. Mary's at Woodbridge was ravaged by the Cromwellian army at some point in the Civil War, and perhaps their behaviour influenced Warren’s opinions. The political-position of the pamphlet is not obvious, in fact it is very tricky to interpret, because it refers to biblical examples of bad kings such as Ahab, alongside examples of schismatics such as Korah who were smitten by God. Ahab was killed in battle, but most of Warren's readers would have known the story of how Jehovah sent a "lying spirit" into the mouth of all his prophets in order to persuade him to go into battle. The line between providence and outright regicide for his suffering subjects was unclear.

Warren has been classified as "Presbyterian" or a "moderate Puritan". However, her works operate on multiple levels, and it is not merely what she writes, but the fact that she is writing, and actually publishing it, which is transgressive since she is intervening in debates restricted by law and custom to men. Warren displays an extraordinary amount of classical and theological learning, quoting Latin authors in the original, and by sermonizing she behaves as if she herself were a minister - a profession from which women would be excluded for another three centuries. Although married, Warren published all her books under her maiden name and made no allusion to any need for husband's authority. It is possible that she was a widow - there was, after all, a civil war raging - but altogether her practice was more radical than her theory.

The prefaces to The Old and Good Way and to Spiritual Thrift reveal awareness of tension and sexist intolerance by labouring to justify or glorify a female writer. Cade stresses that her abilities are gifts from God, while she herself writes: " And if any suppose me, Proteus-like, to change the shape of my silent modestie, let their Christian moderation embrace this Maxime, That Grace devests Nature of no due ornament." While not taking issue with men's doctrine of woman's inferior and subordinate nature, she finds away of by-passing it. Grace, i.e. divine blessing, has bestowed these gifts upon her.

Warren used her maiden name on her writings, but would surely have used her married name on any will, so she is probably not the Elizabeth Warren who wrote a will in 1656, the testator then being described as "late of Chatham in the County of Kent, widow” leaving her property to her son Hamlett

Warren's own works, listed in the article.

I.G.I. Genealogical Search www.familysearch.

Suffolk Subsidy Returns, researched by Dr. Robert Merrett

Will of Elizabeth Warren, 1656, in P.R.O. (Xeroxed by will search).

Old D.N.B. article on Thomas Warren.

New D.N.B. article on Thomas Warren, quoted pre-publication.

Keith Thomas, "Women and the Civil War Sects," Past and Present, 13, (1958), pp.42-62.

Ethyn Morgan Williams, "Women Preachers in the Civil War," The Journal of Modern History 1(1929), pp.561-569.

Greaves and Zaller, Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seventeenth Century, (1982-84) , III.

Bell, Parfitt and Shepherd, A Biographical Dictionary of English Women Writers 1580-1720 (Harvester 1990).

Fraser, Antonia; The weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in the Seventeenth Century England, (Methuen 1984).

Last edited  21 Aug 23