Katherine Chidley facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Katherine Chidley
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| Personal details | |
| Born | Unknown: probably 1590s. Probably Shrewsbury. |
| Died | 1653 or later. London |
| Political party | Levellers |
| Spouse | Daniel Chidley |
| Relations |
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| Profession | Haberdasher |
| Signature |  |
Katherine Chidley (fl. 1616–1653) was an English Puritan activist and controversialist. Initially involved in resistance to episcopal authority and in separatist activity in Shrewsbury and London, she emerged during the English Civil War as a powerful advocate of an Independent or Congregationalist polity. Under the Commonwealth of England and the Protectorate she was a leader of Leveller women, noted for her contribution to campaigns on behalf of John Lilburne.
Shrewsbury
Chidley's origins and background, even her own family name, are unknown. She first appears in Shrewsbury as the wife of Daniel Chidley. The Shrewsbury Burgess Roll lists him in 1621, under the name Chidloe, as a tailor and the son of William, a yeoman of Burlton, a village to the north of Shrewsbury. By this time he had two sons, Samuel and Daniel. Katherine may have been from Shrewsbury or the surrounding area, like Daniel, but it is impossible to be certain. The baptism of the first child, Samuel, described as the son of "Daniell Chedler" was recorded in the parish register of St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury on 13 April 1618: the spelling of the surname is very varied. Between 1618 and 1629, the register records the baptisms of eight Chidley children and the burial of one, Daniel, who died in infancy. The couple were so intent on having a son with his father's name that they named a further son Daniel, which throws into question their naming of the first son. Katharine Gillespie has suggested that the naming of Samuel may have implied a likening of Katherine Chidley to the Biblical Hannah, who in 1 Samuel 1:21-28 dedicated her first child, Samuel, to God and refused the traditional purification ritual until the child was weaned. Moreover, the dedication of the Biblical Samuel is followed by a prophetic utterance from Hannah, 1 Samuel 2:1-10, the model for the Magnificat, that looks forward to an overturning of existing power relations. Katherine Chidley herself was not mentioned in the parish register entries until the baptism on 12 February 1626 of the second Daniel, who was recorded as "s. of Daniell & Katharn Chedley"
Following the birth of the second Daniel, and possibly at earlier births, Katherine Chidley refused to undergo the Churching of women, a service prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer. She was not alone in this: the ceremony was suspect to Puritans, even of the fairly moderate kind. Particularly resented was the use of Psalm 121, with its striking spell-like verse 6, "The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night." Katherine, along with Judith Wright and five other women, was cited for refusing to be churched by the Peter Studley, the High Church incumbent of St Chad's, later in the year, during a canonical visitation under Thomas Morton, then Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield. Judith was the wife of George Wright, sometime bailiff of Shrewsbury, and the couple had son, Joshua, baptised on 25 April 1625: George Wright was one of the relatively small number accorded the title of Mr. in the register, showing that he was regarded as socially superior to artisans like Daniel Chidley. However, he was cited for allowing meetings to hear sermons and sing hymns in his home on Sunday evenings, and it is known that these were centred on Julines Herring, the town's public preacher, of whom the Wrights were key supporters. Studley deferred to Morton's judgement: "whether Action of gathering together may be termed a conventicle we refer to your honorable court to judge and determine." Katherine and her husband were also among twenty parishioners presented to the Consistory court for failure to attend church. This may suggest that they had already sought to form a conventicle or separatist group. However, William Rowley, another former bailiff, was cited with them, although he was certainly not a separatist but a leader of the Puritan faction on the corporation and a close supporter of the Presbyterian Herring.
Although Studley chose for tactical reasons to conflate them, there seem to have been two distinct Puritan oppositional groups at St Chad's. Herring himself considered the Chidleys separatists and his biographer, Samuel Clarke reports that: "When some seeds of separation were scattered in Salop (by Daniel Childey and his wife,) their growth was checked by his appearing against them." Herring's criticism of them is reported as:
It is a sin of an high nature to unchurch a Nation at once, and that this would become the spring of many other fearful errours, for separation will eat like a Gangrene into the heart of Godlinesse. And he did pray, that they who would un-church others, might not be un-christianed themselves.
The Chidleys were distinct from the moderate Presbyterian Puritans in social class as well as theology. However, they continued to have their children christened at St Chad's, which was contrary to the beliefs and practice of convinced separatists. The last baptism of a Chidley child at St Chad's was of John on 26 October 1629, and the register has a gap where Katherine's name should be. In order to find like-minded people, and possibly for economic reasons also, the Chidleys were forced to move. It seems that their radicalism was deepened by the experience of living in London and it is possible that it was only in London that they moved decisively to a separatist position.
London
The Chidley's are shown to have been active in London by 1630 by a manuscript in the collection of Benjamin Stinton, and used by the Baptist historian Thomas Crosby. This records Daniel Chidley helping John Dupper or Duppa and Thomas Dyer to form a separatist church in the capital. This group was a splinter from a church which was organised by Henry Jacob in Southwark before his departure for New England, and later pastored by John Lothropp. The new grouping distinguished itself by rejecting entirely communion or contact with Anglican churches – an issue brought to the fore when one member had his child baptised in his local parish church, exactly as the Chidleys had previously done. Katherine and Daniel Chidley seem to have been involved in this radical underground resistance to the established Church throughout the 1630s. David Brown, a founder member of the group, implies that they tore a surplice as a deliberate act of iconoclasm one St Luke's Day (18 October) at Greenwich. This was a particularly ungodly place in their eyes because a Catholic chapel had been installed there for Queen Henrietta Maria. Little is known of the group's activities and it is unclear whether such direct action was typical. However, the Chidleys made progress socially and financially after their move to London. Daniel became a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers in 1632, and their eldest son, Samuel, was admitted as an apprentice in 1634.
Missionary activity
Katherine and Samuel Chidley were engaged in missionary work in Suffolk during 1647. Thomas Edwards testifies in the later part of Gangraena, compiled that year from readers' reports, that
There is one Katherine Chidly an old Brownist, and her sonne a young Brownist, a pragmaticall fellow, who not content with spreading their poyson in and about London goe down into the Country to gather people to them, and among other places have been this Summer at Bury in Suffolke to set up and gather a Church there...
The mission is known also from the extant covenant made by the church they helped found in Bury St Edmunds. The covenant is radically separatist:
and [wee] being conuinced in conscience of the evill of ye Church of England, and of all other states wch are contrary to Christs institution. And being [(according to Christes institutions and comandements)] fully separated, not only from them, but also from those who comunicate with them either publickly or priuately, wee resolve by the grace of God, not to returne unto their vaine inuentions their human deuices, their abominable idolatries, or superstitious high places, which were built and dedicated to idolatry.
The community swore "to become a peculiar Temple for the Holy Ghoste to dwell in, an entier spouse of Jesus Christ our Lord of glory." Eight adults and six children subscribed, with Katherine and Samuel Chidley signing as witnesses, as compared with the seven converts estimated by Edwards.
The key member of the Bury congregation was John Lanseter, who became its first pastor and served until 1654, when he was expelled by his congregation for drunkenness. It seems that the Chidleys issued a pamphlet from Suffolk in response to the criticism of Katherine in the first part. Entitled Lanseter's Launce, Edwards mocked it: "as for Laseter's lance for my Gangraena, I shall shew it to be made not of iron or steele but a lance of brown painted paper, fit for children to play with." Edwards alleged that the Chidleys worked together "one inditing, the other writing."
Edwards had made clear that the Chidleys' expedition to Suffolk was not unique, and it seems likely that they continued agitating and planting new separatist churches throughout a period of uncertainty. Presbyterian reorganisation was even more patchy in the rest of the country than in London and another ordinance was passed in January 1648, with the aim of removing obstructions to the process. It foundered mainly as a result of opposition from Independents in the increasingly powerful army. The irascible Edwards had been forced to leave the country during late summer 1647 and surfaced in the Dutch Republic as a member of the English Reformed Church, Amsterdam: he died there on 7 February 1648. The Second English Civil War, with the abortive invasion of the country by a Scottish army in support of the king, resulted in the final collapse of the attempt to construct a Presbyterian system and the triumph of toleration for the Independents. The Presbytrian structures fell into neglect after 1648, although the remaining active classes continued ordaining ministers throughout the Commonwealth and Protectorate periods.
Businesswoman
Daniel Chidley became a Master of the Haberdashers' Company in 1649 but died shortly after. Samuel Chidley became a Freeman of the company also in 1649. Katherine Chidley seems to have continued her husband's business, presumably with her son's help, and became a government contractor. This involved considerable sums. For supplying 4000 pairs of stockings to the army in Ireland she received £250 on 7 November 1651. On 7 January she was paid a further £104 3s. 4d. for 1000 pairs.
Leveller
By this time she had emerged as a leader of Leveller women and seems to have been involved in their petitioning of Parliament. On 29 April 1649 the English Council of State committed to prison the Leveller leaders John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn and Thomas Prince, who owned a book critical of the regime, England's New Chains. The House of Commons agreed that they should be tried under Common Law on 11 April. The House was under a constant bombardment of petitions on behalf of the arrested Levellers, and women mobilised in numbers. On 23 April Bulstrode Whitelocke observed:
Some hundreds of women attended the house with a petition on the behalf of Lilburn and the rest ; it was reproachful, and almost scolding, and much to the same effect with former petitions for them.
The women were driven off at pistol point, but returned the next day, although they "could not get it received." On 25 April they came to parliament for a third time, when:
The house sent them this answer by the sergeant:
That the matter they petitioned about was of an higher concernment than they understood; that the house gave an answer to their husbands, and therefore desired them to go home, and look after their own business, and meddle with their housewifery.
This patronising answer seems to have provoked their Humble Petition of divers well-affected women of the Cities of London and Westminster, presented on 5 May 1649, which may have been written by Chidley. The Leveller women justified their political activity on the basis of "our creation in the image of God, and of an interest in Christ equal unto men, as also of a proportional share in the freedoms of this Commonwealth." They went on to ask:
Have we not an equal interest with the men of this Nation, in those liberties and securities contained in the Petition of Right, and the other good laws of the land? Are any of our lives, limbs, liberties or goods to be taken from us more than from men, but by due process of law and conviction of twelve sworn men of the neighborhood?
They went on to point out that the arbitrary treatment of the four Levellers implied they too could be "liable to the same unjust cruelties as they." Public pressure was probably secured the freedom of the four, as they were not released immediately after acquittal.
When John Lilburne found himself on trial again in 1653, Chidley rallied to his defence, organizing a petition to Barebone's Parliament. Edward Hyde, the royalist, was told that it gathered over 6000 female signatures. Hyde heard that "the ringleader was the wife of one Chidley, a prime Leveller." She led a delegation of twelve women to present the petition. Praise-God Barebone himself was sent to meet and dissuade the women but his efforts were in vain. Another member was then sent out to tell them that Parliament could not notice the petition, "they being women and many of them wives, so that the Law tooke no notice of them."
Family
Katherine and Daniel Chidley had the following eight children christened at St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury.
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- Samuel, 13 April 1618. He was also a Leveller activist.
- Daniel, 20 August 1620. He was buried 13 June 1621.
- Priscilla (Prissella), 22 April 1622.
- Sarah (Sarra), 11 April 1624.
- Daniel, 12 February 1626.
- Mary, 25 February 1627.
- Joseph, 14 September 1628.
- John, 26 October 1629.
Death
Nothing further of Chidley is documented after 1653 and her date of death is not known.
