Emily Marshall

Emily Esther Marshall (4 December 1832 – 23 June 1915) was a British advocate of an ordained ministry for women and founder of an Anglican Franciscan third order.

Life Marshall was born in Upper Clapton in London in 1832. She was the middle child of seven born to Jane and Laurence Jopson Marshall. Her father was an underwriter and her parents had her educated at home. She was of " independent means" and made her home in Sunderland where her brother in law, Proctor Swaby, was the minister in Casteletown. She was one of his pastoral assistants. She obtained a copy of Paul Sabatier's "Forbidden Book" La vie de St. François d'Assise (translated as Life of St. Francis of Assisi). The book was included in the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books in 1894. Marshall obtained went to meet him and told her more and he agreed that her ideas for reviving the Third Order were in line with ideas of St Francis. As a result, she wrote "The dawn breaking, and some thoughts on the third order of St. Francis, with translation from the French" in 1896. Her ideas took root in the Anglican church in Guyana.

However Lightfoot's death in 1889 resulted in her plans being shut down in England. Bishop B. F. Westcott who was Lightfoot's successor appointed deaconesses who were not women who were deacons but a different role and this undermined the idea of an order of men and women equitably appointed. Swaby's archdeacon Fortunato Pietro Luigi Josa had published St. Francis of Assisi and the Third Order in the Anglo-Catholic Church in 1898 quoting text from Marshall's writings but without naming her. The idea grew /1900 then the new order quickly took hold.

Marshall had created a new religious order within the church based on Lightfoot's discussion of the Third Order of Saint Francis who had historically consisted of men and women who did not live in monasteries or wear cowls. Marshall however regretted throughout her life that the diaconate idea had been lost due to his death.

Marshall died in Ripon.