Lilias Skene

Lilias Skene or Lilias Skein (1626 – 21 June 1697) was a Scottish Quaker preacher, prophet and poet.

Early life She was born in 1626 as Lilias Gillespie, one of eight children born to Lilias née Simson, the daughter of Patrick Simson, the minister of Stirling, and John Gillespie (d. 1627), the minister of Kirkcaldy. Her father's date of death is uncertain, being either around the time of Skene's birth or just after her marriage in 1646. Her brothers included the Church of Scotland ministers Patrick Gillespie, Principal of the University of Glasgow, and George Gillespie, a member of the Westminster Assembly.

Marriage and Conversion On 26 August 1646 at Kirkcaldy she married the Aberdeen merchant Alexander Skene (–1694), a magistrate and the author of Memorialls for the Government of the Royall-Burghs in Scotland. From 1649 to 1671 he held various offices in Aberdeen, including Treasurer of the Town Council, Dean of Guild, Baillie and a leading man in the church courts. Skene and her husband were avowed Covenanters (a 17th-century Scottish religious and political movement, who supported a Presbyterian Church of Scotland) who were admired for their deep faith at a time when their strict Presbyterianism was out of favour following the Restoration. In 1669 Skene suddenly converted to Quakerism, with her husband joining her in 1672. Of this time she wrote, 'It is very well known to all that lived in the place where I sojourned, I was none who conversed with them, I was never at one of their meetings, I never read one of their books', yet she experienced 'that thing the school-men call Immediat Objective Revelation'. While the citizens of Aberdeen knew her as Lilias Gillespie, among the Quaker community she was known by her husband's surname. It is likely that in the 1680s she helped her husband write his two manuscript accounts of the history of Quakerism in Aberdeen. Skene corresponded with the princess and her companion, Countess Anna Maria van Hoorn, and was invited to visit them at Herford Abbey in Westphalia, where Elisabeth was the Abbess. Skene's letters have not survived but are referred to in correspondence between Barclay and the Princess.

The biographer of George Keith says that Skene went with Keith, Barclay, George Fox and William Penn on their tour of the Netherlands and Germany during the summer of 1677. Similarly, Barclay wrote that Skene intended to go but Penn and Fox do not mention her in their writings about the trip, and in a letter written to Skene in 1678 Elisabeth seems to be implying that the two had not actually met, writing: 'I love your upright intention to travail (i.e. toil) in spirit for your friends, though unknown to you'. During the summer of 1677 Skene was actually in London and also found time to visit the philosopher Anne Conway at her home, Ragley Hall in Worcestershire. Conway, a recent convert to Quakerism, was bedridden and Skene befriended her and the two began a correspondence with Skene organising from Aberdeen the hiring of Quaker servants for Conway's home. Her only known publication during her lifetime (in which the author referred to her as Lillias Skein) was 'An Expostulatory Epistle, Directed to Robert Macquare' (1678) included in one of Robert Barclay's works in 1679. Macquare (known today as Robert MacWard) was a Presbyterian dissenter whose hate-filled writings against the Quakers had previously persuaded her husband Alexander Skene to write and print a rebuttal. Lilias Skene's 'Epistle' against Macquare was balanced but to the point, commenting: 'O Robert! thy hard speeches have manifested thy own sad acknowledgement to be very true, the Holy fire is gone out with thee indeed'.

The 19th-century literary historian William Walker published selections from thirty-three lyric poems and three anagrams written by her between 1665 and 1697, 1,472 lines in total transcribed from an original manuscript in the private papers of a previous owner that are now lost, presumably accidentally burnt after the death of the owner. Lilias Skene's poetry and prose were heavy with mystical allusions and scriptural images of suffering and salvation. The Aberdeenshire poll-tax book for 1696 states that the now widowed Skene was living in modest circumstances in Aberdeen with her daughter Anna and two servants. Here she died in June 1697 aged 68 and was buried beside her husband in an unmarked grave in the Quaker burial-ground at Kingswells.

Today there is a plaque dedicated to Lilias Skene on a wall near the entrance of the Crown Street Quaker meeting house in Aberdeen in addition to an information board about her at the Tollhouse where the Quaker men were imprisoned during her lifetime.