Agnes Beaumont

Agnes Beaumont (Baptised 1652 – 1720) was an English religious autobiographer, who was accused of having a sexual relationship with the Puritan preacher John Bunyan and conspiring with him to murder her father. She wrote an autobiography that declared her innocence of these charges.

Life Beaumont was born in Edworth near Biggleswade and she was baptised in 1652.

Beaumont's family did not follow the established Christian denomination of Anglicanism so it was unsurprising when she joined a church in Gamlingay led by the evangelist John Bunyan. However her (now widowed) father did not approve and forbade her to get involved. Agnes was given a lift by Bunyan and rode pillion on his horse. John Beaumont then threw her out of the family home, and refused to let her back in unless she promised to stop attending the church meetings. After spending two days outside at the height of winter, she agreed to his demand. She wrote her account of this in about 1674. The volume proved popular, with ten editions published over the next eighty years.

In 1901 Beaumont was appearing in a book of girl heroines.

The nineteen-page source manuscript of Beaumont's autobiography, "The Narrative of the Persecution of Agnes Beaumont", was purchased by the British Museum in the 1870s, and is now preserved in the British Library