Katharine Gillespie
Vol. 17, No. 2 (Fall 1998), 213-233

This essay analyzes the writings of preacher and polemicist Katherine Chidley, arguing that Chidley’s 1641 and 1645 tracts on religious toleration encode arguments for female political authority. In so doing, this essay counters scholarly work that portrays Chidley as uninterested in the plight of women and as solely committed to advancing Independency, the Puritan movement that advocated voluntary church membership rather than the mandatory parochial affiliation traditionally required by the government. Chidley’s case for the separation of church from state reinvents the private realm, typically identified as the female sphere, as a site of authority. Just as individuals should follow the command of God and not state officials in matters of religious belief, so individual women should attend to God’s call and predicate their actions upon God’s word. The private sphere thus becomes a site of individual political and spiritual self-determination.