Newly reunited memoirs by Alice Thornton, a 17th-century Yorkshirewoman, provide a “northern female perspective” on major political events, contrasting with the London-based diarist Samuel Pepys, according to an academic who has studied the writings.
Two of four autobiographical volumes were discovered by Cordelia Beattie, a history professor at the University of Edinburgh. One was handed by a descendant of Thornton to Beattie’s father in a pub in Ludlow, Shropshire, and the second was unearthed in the library of Durham Cathedral. They have been reunited online with two other volumes acquired by the British Library in 2009.
Thornton’s memoirs contain accounts of financial catastrophe, rumours of sexual impropriety, childbirth, attempted rapes and repeated interventions by God to deliver her from an early death. She lived to be 80, a remarkable age at the time. Born in Yorkshire in 1626, her family moved to Ireland, then returned amid the Irish Rebellion, becoming caught up in the civil war. As royalists, their estates were confiscated, and parliamentarian and Scottish soldiers were billeted on their land.
Thornton agreed to marry a parliamentarian to secure her family’s financial future. She gave birth to nine babies, later describing the dangers of childbirth and the deaths of six of her infant children. Her husband, William, died in 1668 without a will, leaving her heavily in debt. Beattie said Thornton was “particularly keen to restate her identity as a chaste wife” and to blame male family members for the family’s downturn in fortune.
In Book One, Thornton defends herself against rumours of a clandestine affair with the local curate, Thomas Comber, who was nearly 20 years her junior and engaged to her 14-year-old daughter. She also writes about two attempted rapes, including one by a captain in the Scottish army who “did swear to ravish me”. Beattie noted that the themes remain relevant, with a one-woman play based on the writings prompting one audience member to describe her life as a “17th-century EastEnders”.
