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The work of Rachel Speght, one of the earliest female polemicists in England, has in the last few years resurfaced after centuries of obscurity. Her published works, A Mouzellfor Melastomus (1617) and Mortalities Memorandum (1621), have been reprinted recently and extensively studied as examples of Renaissance literature and of querelle des femmes polemic.1 However, relatively little research has been done on her life, with Barbara Lewalski's brief introduction to the 1996 edition of her writings currently the only work in print. The purpose of this essay is to summarize the known facts of Speght's life: the details of her early life before her marriage in 1621, the fragmentary evidence for the ten years following, and newly discovered evidence relating to the period after 1630, of which nodiing had previously been known.2 Her later years were in some ways as eventful as her youth, and equally steeped in controversy. Rachel Speght was a significant protagonist in the patriarchy debate of the early seventeenth century, and hers was a life of engagement in the political, religious, and social conflicts of her day.
Born about 1597, Rachel was brought up in the heart of London's clerical and mercantile community. Her father, James, was a clergyman and scholar. Born in Horbury in West Yorkshire, he was a graduate of Christ s College, Cambridge, and had lived in London since 1591.3 At the time of Rachel's birth he was about thirty-three years old and an established figure in clerical circles. Since 1593 he had been rector of St. Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, and in 1611 he added to it the rectory of nearby St. Clement, Eastcheap, holding the two parishes in plurality until his death in 1637. The two livings together yielded an annual income of nearly £120, enough to allow the family to live in reasonable material comfort. Their home was a house "next adioyning unto the north side of the churche" in Milk Street, a major thoroughfare of Cripplegate ward, which Speght leased (from 1606) at an annual rent of £6.4
By 1612 Speght had begun to invest in property in Deptford, where he lived in retirement in his last years, and by his death had accumulated an extensive estate there. Additionally, he enjoyed a modest eminence in...