Anne Whitehead

Anne Whitehead or Anne Downer; Anne Greenwell (c. 1624 – 28 July 1686) was an English Quaker organizer, preacher and writer. She underwent severe distraints for her beliefs.

This article is about the Quaker preacher. For the Virginia suffragist, see Anna Whitehead Bodeker.

Anne Whitehead
Born
Anne Downer

c.1624
Charlbury
Died28 July 1686
Middlesex
NationalityUnited Kingdom
Known forearly Quaker
Spouse(s)George Whitehead
Parent(s)Thomas and Mary Downer

Life and work

Whitehead was born in Charlbury in about 1624 to Thomas and Mary Downer. Her father was vicar and her grandfather is thought to have been Ralph Hutchinson, who was a biblical scholar and college head at Oxford University.[1]

Quakerism spread during Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth that followed the English Civil War. Anne Downer joined the Religious Society of Friends in London in 1654.[2] In 1655 she became the first Quaker woman preacher, for which she was imprisoned and beaten.[2] In 1656 she preached in Chadlington, and then went to Launceston prison in Cornwall to serve as secretary to the Quaker leader George Fox.[2] She then preached at her home town of Charlbury, where Quaker meetings were held in the homes of William Cole and Alexander Harris.[2] Both men were jailed in 1657–1658 for refusing to pay tithes to the Church of England; Cole died in prison.[2]

Many Quakers in Charlbury were distrained for refusing to pay the Church Rate.[2] In 1660 a Chadlington Quaker who attended the Charlbury meetings was jailed for refusing to swear the Oath of Allegiance, and in 1663 Henry Shad, a Quaker schoolmaster, was barred from teaching.[2]

In 1670 she married George Whitehead who was a Quaker preacher who had been imprisoned, whipped and placed in the stocks because of his religion.[3]

Whitehead died in Middlesex in 1686.[1] Among those to laud her was Mary Forster in her 1686 work Piety Promoted.[4]

References
  1. Catie Gill, "Whitehead , Anne (c. 1624–1686)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., January 2015 accessed 14 August 2017
  2. Crossley et al. 1972, pp. 127–157
  3. Nigel Smith, "Whitehead, George (1637–1724)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 14 Aug 2017
  4. Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, eds, The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present (London: Batsford, 1990), p. 388.

Sources
  • Crossley, Alan; Colvin, Christina; Cooper, Janet; Cooper, N. H.; Harvey, P. D. A.; Hollings, Marjory; Hook, Judith; Jessup, Mary; Lobel, Mary D.; Mason, J. F. A.; Trinder, B.S.; Turner, Hilary (1972). A History of the County of Oxford. Victoria County History. 10: Banbury Hundred. London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research. pp. 127–157. ISBN 978-0-19722-728-2.
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