Bathsua Makin

Bathsua Reginald Makin (; 1600 – c. 1680) was a teacher who contributed to the emerging criticism of woman's position in the domestic and public spheres in 17th-century England. Herself a highly educated woman, Makin was referred to as England's most learned lady, skilled in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, Spanish, French and Italian. Makin argued primarily for the equal right of women and girls to obtain an education in an environment or culture that viewed woman as the weaker vessel, subordinate to man and uneducable. She is best known for her polemical treatise entitled An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts & Tongues, with an Answer to the Objections against this Way of Education.

Life She was born in 1600 and named after the biblical Bathsheba. Makin was the daughter of Henry Reginald or Reynolds, who was a schoolmaster of a school in Stepney and published a broadsheet of Latin poems and pamphlets on mathematical instruments. In 1616, Makin published Musa Virginea, a book with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, French and German verse.

In 1621 she married Richard Makin, a courtier.

Employment as teacher By 1640 Makin was known as the most learned woman in England. She was tutor to the children of Charles I of England,

In 1673 Makin circulated a pamphlet entitled "An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen", which argued the case for educating women. and is the source for the claim that she was the greatest scholar of any woman in England. Makin praises Schurman in her An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen, published 1673. Makin and van Schurman both maintain that only women with enough time, wealth, and basic intelligence should receive a humanist education. Makin, like her contemporary Diana Primrose, relied on Queen Elizabeth I and the humanist education she received at a young age, to support her arguments for the education of women. Makin also cited Margaret Roper and Anne Cooke Bacon as authoritative models for the claim that women's education would have a pious benefit for the state. Like Anne Askew, whose writings had been published 1563 by John Foxe in Acts and Monuments and which had shaped the English Reformation, Makin argued that "our very Reformation of Religion, seems to be begun and carried on by Women."

Makin was also influenced by the writings of John Amos Comenius and adhered to his advice that vernacular (ordinary) language should be used instead of Latin when teaching.

An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen

The treatise is structured in three parts, beginning with a letter written in favour of educating women, followed by a letter arguing against the education of women, and a lengthy third part defending women's use of speech and resolving the debate in favour of educating women. However, like Christine de Pizan before her, Makin came from an intellectual family and advocated in favour of women's intellectual equality, not women's political equality. In An Essay Makin writes, "Let not your Ladiships be offended that I do not (as some have wittily done) plead for Female Preeminence. To ask too much is the way to be denied all". Arguments in favour of educating women have, however, legitimised the first feminists.

Works

An online version of Bathsua Makin's An Essay To Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts & Tongues, With An Answer to the Objections against this Way of Education is available at A Celebration of Women Writers.