Theophila Townsend

Theophila Townsend (16561692) was a Quaker writer, preacher, and activist from Cirencester, Gloucestershire, England.

Background

Townsend lived at a time of upheaval in Britain—which, during her lifetime or shortly before she was born, saw the English Civil War, Commonwealth of England, and Restoration—and persecution for the Quakers.

The Society of Friends was relatively new in the mid- to late 17th century; as an organised movement, it had emerged only in the early 1650s. A number of laws, including the Corporation Act 1661, the Act of Uniformity 1662, and the Conventicle Acts 1664 and 1670, limited freedom of religion for Nonconformist Protestants such as the Quakers.

Many Quaker women published in the mid-17th century, in no small part due to progressive beliefs among the Friends as to gender equality. They were frequently jailed, assaulted, and publicly humiliated for preaching and adhering to Quaker liturgical practices.

Life and activism Townsend was frequently jailed for preaching and speaking publicly on behalf of the Quakers.

In A Testimony Concerning the Life and Death of Jane Whitehead (1676), she uses prophetic language—which would likely have been subject to censorship under a system implemented within the Quaker movement, starting in the early 1670s. A 1717 chronicle by Willem Sewel recounts another episode of prophecy, in which 'by order of the justices Thomas Cutler and James George, she being seized in the street, said to the latter, "that the Lord would plead her cause, and that what measure he meted, should be measured to him again"'. According to this account, George's wife died shortly thereafter.

In her 1687 work A Word of Counsel, she adopts an antinomian view.

Works