Elizabeth Freke

Elizabeth Freke (1641–1714) was an English memoirist and poet, known for her diaries and remembrances, but also for a collection of recipes covering medicine and cooking. Her poetry includes a dramatic dialogue between Eve and the Serpent of Eden.

Family and life Elizabeth Freke was born in 1641 in Hannington, Wiltshire into the wealthy Royalist household of Ralph Freke and Cicely Culpeper. Her mother, one of the eight daughters of Sir Thomas Colepeper of Hollingbourne, died when she was just seven years old, leaving her the eldest woman in the house of her four sisters (including Frances, later Lady Norton). She was brought up mainly by an aunt in Kent. Her father was a lawyer in London, England who had an estate in both Kent and Wiltshire in later years. The estate also belonged to Elizabeth's maternal aunt.

In 1672, Freke married at the age of 30 her second cousin, Percy Freke of Rathbury Castle, County Cork, Ireland, after seven years of courtship. The wedding took place "withoutt my deer Fathers Consentt or knowledg. In A most dreadfull Raynie day."

On 2 June 1675 she gave birth to their only son Ralph Freke. At one point later in the marriage, Percy returned to Ireland and left Elizabeth with her son and scarcely any money. She then left to visit her sister until 1685, and her son shortly after fell ill with smallpox, but recovered. In 1704, Percy came to live with Elizabeth in Norfolk, but due to illness, he died in her arms two years later. As she grew more involved, she began to assert her dominance on the church, as she felt that she had gained the control from her financial contributions. On 14 February 1713, Charles Trimnell, the Bishop of Norwich, instructed the vicar of Gayton to bar her from the church entirely. She stored these books in her residence located in Bilney, Norfolk in two separate rooms. The book was relatively small as it lacks metrical psalms. The book has been since repaired in 1964.

There was an ongoing dispute in regard to her efforts within the church and her failure to pay tithes. She believed that she had donated enough by paying the curate and for the upkeep of the church. A few years later, she was officially banished from the church and died the following year. She collected medical remedies from these recipe books and published medical writings from her findings. With her knowledge of these precedented examples, she prepared some of her own remedies as she consulted with other physicians and medical practitioners of the time. She even kept a personal inventory list of the ingredients for her medical recipes, along with the remedies themselves. It is known that she had stockpiles of many common 'cure-all' recipes of the time like Aqua Mirabolus, Ague Water, Poppy Water, and Cowslip Wine.

These recipe books were passed down from family members and Elizabeth continued to add her own writings to them. The original manuscript books are currently at the British Library under archives and manuscripts, but there is a published version edited by Mary Carbery called Mrs. Elizabeth Freke, Her Diary 1671 to 1714. Carbery transcribed from Elizabeth's original manuscripts and rewrote her entries in chronological order, leaving out some of Elizabeth's collected recipes and all of her inventory lists.