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The author of this paper is Ann Jennison who was working towards a doctorate in the School of Arts, Birkbeck College, University of London. This is the piece she was working on when she died in May 2013. It is a work in progress, not a finished paper. I have given the piece a title and removed her comments but have not changed the piece in any other way. Ann wanted her work to be used. Please cite this work as:

Ann Jennison, ‘Hugh Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy and changing ideas of the child’

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Ann Jennison, ‘Hugh Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy and

changing ideas of the child’

In the six weeks between his arrest on 31st August 1660

and trial on 12th October, which resulted in his execution

four days later, Hugh Peter wrote the document printed in

1660 as A Dying Fathers Last Legacy to an Onely Child: or Mr. Hugh Peter’s

Advice to his Daughter.1 The Legacy ran to three more editions,

being reprinted in 1661, 1665 and 1683. The daughter was

Elizabeth, Peter’s child from his second marriage, who

was aged twenty at the time of her father’s death and who

according to the DNB visited him daily in prison.

The advice portion of the text, with which this

analysis is largely concerned, occupies the first three-

quarters of its seventeen-thousand words and consists of

thirty-one numbered sections, each approximately three to

1 The DNB uses the surname Peter. The entry states that the ‘family [...] emigrated from Antwerp about 1543 and at the endof the sixteenth century adopted the name Peter, subsequently often rendered Peters.’ In the 1660, 1665 and 1685 editions the title page uses the possessive apostrophe in ‘Peter’s Advice’, whereas it is lacking in the 1661 edition. The apostrophe is lacking in the dedication on p.1 ‘For Elizabeth Peters’ in all editions. The DNB preferred version is used here because of the ambiguity of nomenclature.Carla Gardina Pestana, ‘Peter, Hugh (bap. 1598, d. 1660)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22024, accessed 4 March2013]

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five hundred words.2 The topics which Peter addresses

range from theological explanations to advice on both

general and specific behaviours and the difficulties that

will inevitably beset his daughter as one of the godly.

The thirty-one sections are followed by a ‘poem’, in

rhyming, tetrameter couplets, which ostensibly provides a

précis of the topics.

In the absence of the original manuscript, it is

unclear how much of the published text is Peter’s own

work. As the publication history of Lord Burleigh’s

Precepts for his son demonstrates, publishers were not

averse to adding unattributed material to an original

manuscript.3 In the Legacy, the précis poem’, which is

section thirty-two but not numbered as such, is followed

by another prose section, numbered thirty-three to

thirty-five, running to three-thousand words. This

contains an autobiographical account, a justification of

Peter’s actions within the political sphere and returns

briefly to reprise some advice to this daughter. The text

concludes with two poems. The first one ‘My Wishes’

appears to be addressed to his daughter, while the second

is titled ‘For England, &c.’ The final page of the book

is headed ‘Whosoever would live long and Blessedly, let

2 In the 1661 edition which is used for this analysis, Section 12 is misnumbered as 11. The number 11 appears twice.3 Advice to a Son: Precepts of Lord Burghley, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Francis Osborne Ed. Louis B. Wright, (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1962) p. xviii.

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him observe these Following Rules, by which he shall

attain to that which he desireth.’ The page is similar to

an aide memoir where, using the same imperative sentence

structure, eleven features of life are summarised in

three adjectives. The first admonition for instance reads

‘Let thy Thoughts Be Divine, Awful, Godly’.4 It is

possible that the other poems and the final page are not

Peter’s work but were added to improve reader appeal by

breaking up the prose sections with more accessible and

varied forms.

It is possible to argue that there is a general

structure to the advice portion. The first section lays

down the underpinning principle for the whole, which is

that ‘Union with Christ’ must be the focus for life. The

first stage is the acquisition of knowledge and

understanding which is to be achieved through reading,

especially of the scriptures but also godly literature,

through taking good advice and through prayer and self-

reflection.5 Sections six to eighteen are concerned with

her interaction with society and how to manage her

behaviour in the world, while sections eighteen to

twenty-eight place the failings of even the most godly

within a more theological context. The final three

4 Hugh Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy to an Onely Child: or Mr. Hugh Peters Advice to his Daughter (London: G. Calvert and T. Brewster, 1661), p. 122. The other topics are Talk, Works, Manners, Dyet, Apparel, Will, Sleep, Prayers, Recreation, Memory.5 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 2-3.

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sections focus on the last things of death, judgement and

the nature of heaven.6 The sense of order is underpinned

by the way each section, apart from the first, ends with

a direct address to his daughter, containing advice or an

aspiration for her future.7 This technique provides

structure but it could be indicative of the end of a

train of thought rather than by prior design. It is also

possible that the numbering is not Peter’s, although he

does show a fondness for numbered lists within the

sections, but that it was added by the editors. Finally,

the impression of clarity and precision created by the

contents-list ‘poem’ is belied by the fact that most of

the topics are categorised using words or phrases taken

from the opening of the section, which does not

necessarily reflect the overall thrust of the unit.

The overall impression in fact created by the prose

elements is that they were written in an extemporary and

largely unplanned manner. Concepts and opinions reappear

in different topics, often through association rather

than logical argument. Peter’s phrasing at the beginning

of some sections also suggests that he is writing

spontaneously rather than to a scheme, as in the

introduction to section twenty-nine which begins ‘In the

next, (which looks like the last)’ but is then followed

6 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 15-54, pp. 54-86, pp.86-94.7 See p. 13 for further details.

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by two further sections.8 The style, even within a

section, can be disjointed, moving rapidly between

different registers, from assertive declaratives and

imperatives to the use of exhortation, apostrophe and

exclamatio, and from scriptural references to domestic

and quotidian metaphors. He also makes frequent use of

ellipsis, anaphora, zeugma and list structures. The

effect is linguistically energetic but it can be

difficult to follow the line of reasoning. The reader

oscillates between the emotional appeal of the rhetoric

and being anchored by a number of reoccurring key terms,

such as duty, honour, prayer and scripture.

The attitudes and behaviours for which Peter

recommends his daughter should strive and which she

should avoid emerge, nevertheless, with some clarity,

despite the rather unwieldy nature of the text. His aim

it to give her advice on how to ‘live the Life of the

Godly’ in which there is to be nothing ‘commonplace’ but

‘ a few practical thoughts.’9 Given his view of himself as

committed to the ‘Honest, Old, Godly, Puritan

Professing’, it is unsurprising that he does not give

guidance on how to live successfully in the world.10 While

he considers some of the topics found in a standard

advice book, for instance the importance and nature of

8 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 86. See also p. 54, the opening to section 19.9 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p.88, p. 19. 10 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 69.

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true friendship or how to avoid failure in marriage,

Peter always approaches them from within the parameters

of his religious faith and beliefs.11

**********

The context within which Peter offers his advice is

an anatomisation of human nature in which all adults,

including himself, are categorised as essentially

childish. This is not an original concept as Herbert’s The

Collar illustrates.12 However, Peter sees no childlike

innocence or reflection of the divine but humankind

besotted by the ephemera of the world, lacking self-

discipline and emotional restraint, and failing to

understand the providential nature of experience. He does

not explicitly present the doctrine underlying this

perspective but it is evidently a result of mankind’s

fallen state. In a section on the ubiquity of sin, he

comments that the soul has been ‘left to Sin the Keeper,

as to Satan the Jaylor, by the Fall’.13

Peter has little interest in actual childhood

describing it as inconsequential in spiritual terms. This

is encapsulated in the remark he makes when discussing

the number of years available to live a self-aware, godly

11 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 48-51, section 17; pp. 43-5, section 15.12 13 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 52.

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life. He dismisses ‘the first Fifteen, even for Child-

hood, till when ordinarily little is minded that is

solid’.14 This is the only use of the epithet ‘solid’ in

the Legacy and can be contrasted with his much more

frequent use of the word ‘change(s)’, either as a noun or

verb, to characterise the instability of life within the

temporal world. The ‘great Change’ is death but this is

preceded by a life subject to the changes of God’s

providential will, as well as the self-generated

instabilities of attitude and behaviour. Human beings

are thus ‘the children of Changes’, who ‘live in daily

waiting and expectation of Changes’.15 The child’s lack of

awareness of death and inability to exercise self-

reflection, therefore, renders childhood morally

insignificant. The implication is, however, that adults

delude themselves into believing that the physical

transition from child to adult is mirrored by a similar

shift in temperament. Peter suggests that, while children

can be dismissed along with ‘Fools’ and the ‘Prophane’ as

beings whose advice is never to be sought because they

have no true understanding, the same may be true of most,

if not all, adults.16

Peter’s defines the temptations of the world, which

are the manifestations of Satan, in ways familiar to his

readers. He connects ‘the World and the Flesh’, a pairing14 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 13.15 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 89, p. 32, p. 60. 16 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 49.

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recognisable from the Bible, the Prayer Book and the

Directory.17 The material world is a place of ‘Vanity’,

expressed through mankind’s obsession with ‘Clothes,

Meats, Trades, Salutations’ and ‘Dyet, Clothes,

Recreations’, although, if a single reference can be

taken as indicative, young women appear to be

particularly susceptible to the lure of the theatre.18

Peter also includes factors which might be considered as

indicative of some moral virtue or greater ethical worth,

such as ‘Friend, Name, Credit, Estate, Beauty, Honour.’19

His comment, however, that ‘Riches have Eagles wings, and

Beauty but skin-deep; Honour in anothers Keeping: Frinds

(sic) all, are but waking dreams’ emphasises the sense

that humans live in a world of delusion, wishful thinking

and fantasy.20 The spiritual danger of such

misapprehension is captured in the simile of the world as

‘like a Sea of Glasse, it soon cracks, although it

glisters’. The alluring and apparent solidity of the

world’s rewards are actually fragile and dangerous. In

truth the world is ‘a dunghil’.21

17 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 90. See 1 John 2:16; ADirectory For The Publique Worship of God, 1644 p. 47; The Book of Common Prayer (London: Everyman’s Library, 1999), p. 271. 18 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 48, p. 37, p. 30, p. 35, where a ‘Maid was possest’ because the ‘Devil found her inhis own house’ viz: a Play-house’.19 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 39. 20 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 25-6. 21 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 46, p. 93.

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For Peter, fear is a further defining component of

mankind’s psychological makeup.22 Our devotion to that

which is mutable results in a constant state of

bafflement and frustration. Peter comments that ‘the

overweening some Comforts we enjoy, our overvaluing them

breeds much trouble in the loss of them’. This

bewilderment is marked by the continual dread of the loss

of that which we have, even as we know it to be

impermanent and ‘partial’.23 We lack the humility of

spirit and the understanding to resolve this paradox. The

implication that the instability in the material world

both creates and is essentially the same as the

instability and fear in the internal world of the human

mind is captured in the image of the ‘trembling world’

which Peter says only free grace can ‘steady’.24 The

personification emphasises the causality between the

insecurity of the material world and the constant fear

which besets the little world of each human.

Peter’s argument is not that man should not feel

fear but that the fear of material loss, ‘the Corruption,

especially which is dear to you’, is a false fear. The

‘proper channel’ for fear is the fear of God because

anxiety over the loss of worldly goods and status is

simultaneously a distraction from and a reflection of the

22 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 61-4, section 21.23 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 58, p. 92. 24 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 83.

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greater terror of death.25 This seems implicit in the

metaphor ‘All your under-moon Refreshings, or Comforts,

are too short, and too narrow beds for Content to lye

in’.26 The satisfactions of this world will not provide

any lasting contentment not only because they are

transitory but because they divert our attention from the

narrow bed of the grave and its reminder of the need to

live a godly life in this world.

Doubt is the other major response on which Peter

focuses. He believes that this besets all humans, even

the godly, because we cannot always accept that whatever

we experience is a result of God’s will: when ‘Promises

seem to speak one thing, and Providence another; Under

which the best Saints have had great and strange sinking

of spirit.’27 Rather than accept that doubt is a

consequence of our fallen natures, humankind in Peter’s

view displaces uncertainty onto God, doubting his good

intentions towards us. In fact, man is so arrogant and

demanding he behaves ‘as if the Lord was in our debt

[...] we grow weary and peevish’.28 Such lack of insight

into the self can lead to a loss of faith, or as Peter

terms it the ‘great Dissertion’, and potentially to

atheism, the growth of which he describes as ‘the Master

25 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 62, p. 63. 26 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 25. 27 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 57-8. 28 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 12.

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mischief of this Age’.29 For him loss of faith results in

emotional indiscipline which leads to a loss of faith:

‘Oh we believe not! Anger rageth, Lust provokes,

Covetousness cozens etc. and all is, We believe not’.30

The repetition underlines the reiterative nature of the

cycle.

Mankind’s relationship with the world, however, is

that not only do we deceive ourselves about the effect

which it has upon us but we are also duplicitous in our

dealings with others. Peter’s view is that the human

facility for deception is our legacy from ‘the Father of

Lies’. It is ‘as if we were Lyars in the Womb’. He sees

particular danger in our capacity for the self-deceiving

lie of hypocrisy, the ‘Leaven of the Pharises’.31 The

material world is also in its nature a place of deceit.

As Peter says ‘all things on this side (of) Christ a

Lie’. Man expresses the treacherousness of the temporal

sphere through his actions since ‘All the World is hung

with lyes, and all of man proclaims so much’.32 The world

is therefore the bait that draws us from our true focus

on God, misleading us with its temptations to which we

respond with guilty justifications of our behaviour.

However, it is also possible to see the material world as

29 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 58, p. 31. 30 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 85.31 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 38. P. 69. See also Luke 12:1. 32 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 38, p. 37.

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shaped by humanity’s fallen nature being made of the same

substance as each individual’s internal world:

unreliable, unstable and distracting.

The psychological disorientation produced by our

reluctance to acknowledge the insubstantiality of the

world and to abandon our adherence to it is caused by and

reflected in displays of emotional incontinence. Peter

adopts the standard figure of the heart as the source of

emotion although initially he asserts that being the

organ of ‘inordinate Passion’ it ‘bears the name of all

sin’, largely because it leads to dishonesty: ‘The Root

(of lies) is the Heart, from whose abundance the Tongue

speaketh. Oh the falseness and deceit of this little

thing!’ However, his sense of the destructive effect of

unrestrained emotion on the everyday life of all humans

is best expressed in the metaphor drawn from the bustle

of urban life: ‘O the Hurreys of our Hearts: the

Thorowfare that carries crooked Thoughts through us, the

Vanity, Folly, Obliquities of our Spirit’. 33 He argues

that the reactions of the undisciplined heart inevitably

lead to the loss of focus on the individual spiritual

life and on the duties which are owed to God. Duty is one

of Peter’s fundamental anchor words. He comments that ‘I

know the sad experience of Passion, how it barrs the door

against Prayer and other duties’. At the other emotional

extreme, frivolity or what Peter terms ‘a trifling loose

33 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 27, p. 38, p. 11.

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heart’ has identical consequences because ‘When the heart

is Proud, Lazie, or Frothy’ it ‘neglects communion with

God, duty, and exactness‘.34 The disorientation and

distraction produced by man’s overweening attachment to

the world leads to dereliction of duty and a loss of

faith in God’s grace because ‘you are loth to part with

that the Lord would have you let go, or would part with

that the Lord would have you keep’.35

Mankind as a consequence wilfully ignores the

continuous examples of God’s providence, exacerbating his

situation because ‘we make our Case worse than god doth,

as by our refusing the Lords Comforts [...] or where we

let loose the Reins of Passion’. 36 In Peter’s view the

only possible alleviation is for God to instill an

awareness of the continuing need to strive for self-

control through his providential acts, as one would

discipline a recalcitrant child. As he asserts the heart

must be broken and ‘whipt to the Duty, so it must be

bound fast to it’.37

For Peter all humans, even the most godly, are

essentially as children in relation to God. We are

wilful, self-absorbed, demanding and unable to be

truthful. Adulthood is largely a repetition of these

34 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 28, p. 30, p. 68.35 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 61-2.36 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 59, p. 54.37 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 27, p. 28, p. 5, p. 11,

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behaviours, with no obvious transition from childhood and

no essential growth. There is only the accumulation of

experience from which individuals can learn to recognise

their mistakes, although they lack the capacity to avoid

repeating them.

**********

Peter’s view is that God alone can bring comfort to

the vexed human spirit through the promise of salvation

and his gift of free grace. This is made clear in an

extended metaphor in which a ‘pitiful, nasty, ragged,

fatherless, friendless Child, is lying dying in a ditch’

but is saved by a ‘noble bountiful hand’. The Lord

instructs his servants in the treatment of the child and

their actions are then paralleled with the various stages

of salvation; for instance the servant who is bidden to

admit the child is ‘Vocation’ who ‘opens the door’.38 ‘God

in Christ’, as the embodiment of care appears in the

metaphor of a nurse quieting a child crying in its cradle

at night because of fear of the dark, ‘because there is

more of comfort in the Nurse, than fear in the dark’. God

has also given mankind access to himself through his Word

which as Peter comments is that ‘which his Childe

dilights to hear, and read’.39 However, as Peter’s

analysis of human nature makes clear our capacity to

38 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 79-80, Section 26.39 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 63, p. 8.

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trust God’s good intentions is continually undermined by

our inability to sustain an understanding of the true

nature of self, the world or God.

Peter, nevertheless, is not without hope that at

times the human can find within himself the capabilities

to rediscover a sense of faith. He identifies two

faculties of human nature which potentially can be

activated against disruptive emotions. This is the focus

of the first advice section in which he stresses‘That the

necessity of a Christ (which the understanding

discovers), will set the Will on work to all duty, and

[...] will make the Will delight: unless these two

Faculties be thus wrought upon by the Word and Spirit,

you will be at a constant loss’.40 Reason or understanding

is not a negative quality but one which - if properly

applied - can bring the will under control and enable the

fulfilment of ones duties to God.

This is the basis on which Peter gives his daughter

advice. He hopes that through understanding she will come

to experience ‘an even and equal spirit, and the root of

it Integrity’, which includes the moral principles of

truth and fair dealing.41 Understanding will energise her

resolve and enable her to steady her emotions thus

preventing her from being ‘unwilling to know your duty,

so you will be unwilling to practice it when you know 40 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 2-3. 41 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 63-4. See OED for a definition of ‘integrity’, explanation 3b.

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it’. As a result, she might be able to detach herself

from the snares of the world and to use it ‘as if you

used it not’.42 She might also be able to judge or measure

her ‘self according to the judgment of God’.43

Peter, therefore, wishes to provide her through the

Legacy with ‘the summ of true practical Divinity’, which

appears to be encapsulated in a number of behavioural

principles.44 The term ‘Rule’, which is always capitalised

in the printing, is one of Peter’s anchor words,

suggesting not only the standards governing individual

conduct but those of religious discipline. These

behavioural parameters are essential in combatting the

inherent instability of the human being. As Peter

comments ‘where men are not guided by a Rule, they will

prove the children of Changes’.45 The rules that he

advocates centre on the obligations of ‘Sabbath,

Sacraments’, ‘Prayer, commmunion of Saints, fasting, and

holy duties’ and following the ‘Tables’ or commandments.46

For Peter, however, this cannot be a matter of formal

conformity. He implicitly returns to his opening

observations that understanding is the catalyst to the

will, stating that ‘This Work must have Time,

Seriousnesse, Composure’; for instance ‘Before Prayer’ he

42 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 62, p. 48.43 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 19. 44 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 77.45 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 32. 46 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 14, p. 32, p. 17.

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comments ‘you need to study God, your self, and the way

to him’.47

The implication is that in the following of ‘Rules’

there is a self-reinforcing cycle of discipline that can

lead to the re-establishment of faith. Serious study will

engender an appreciation of the duties necessary to

create a sense of ‘Effectual Calling’.48 The recurrent

performance of the duties stimulates in the observant

mind further understanding. Peter summarises this as ‘We

know no more than we Practise, yet we shall never

practise without Knowledge’.49 To awaken her

understanding, he recommends educational study. She must

read, listen and learn: ‘Hear the best Men, Keep the best

Company, Read the best Books, especially make the Grounds

of Religion your own’.50 He provides throughout the Legacy

key biblical references and contemporary writers to

read.51 He also re-presents the standard advice topic of

friendship within a Christian context, suggesting that if47 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 10, p. 11.48 OED definition Humble Advice Assembly of Divines concise Shorter Catechism· 1647 Effectual Calling is the work of Gods Spirit, whereby,..he doth perswade and inable us to imbrace Jesus Christ.49 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 6. 50 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 4.51 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661. The specific books which Peter appears to reference are: Thomas Shepard, Sincere Convert, 1640, p. 3; Daniel Rogers, A practicall catechisme, 1632, p. 3; John Ball, A Short Catechism, 1615, p. 4. Peter also referencesthe following authors but does not specify texts: Hooker p, 3;p. 4; p. 10, p. 12, p. 16, p.24, p. 31, p. 37, p. 43, p. 51, p. 58, p. 71, p. 74,

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in her reading of the scriptures she finds a point she

does not understand she should discuss them with a ‘soul-

friend [...] An experienced Christian Friend’.52 He argues

that she needs to develop constant self-appraisal, aided

by the keeping of a spiritual journal which she should

write every night since ‘this Watch well kept, fits for

Prayer, Fastings, Sabbath, Sacraments and Death: upon

which Judgement follows’.53 He particularly stresses the

importance of keeping the Sabbath as a time for

reflection not merely observance.54 Such processes will

awaken conscience which again she is to ‘study’ since ‘it

eats, drinks, walks, sleeps, buyes, sells, accompanies

you to every duty, service, work, doing or suffering’.

Only conscience will be considered in the judgement after

death; every thing else ‘will get no hearing’.55

Therefore, she must ‘hear, beg, pray, weep, fast, seek,

labour, strive, use violence, read, ask, wish, sigh’ to

enable the growth of the ‘mustard seed of faith’ to

‘enliven a dead heart’.56 The process is therefore not

simply about right actions but also being able to re-

direct emotional responses from self-indulgence to the

service of God. Only through self-restraint will she be

able to acknowledge that God ‘is wise, to give what he

52 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 49-50. 53 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 14. 54 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 70-4, section 24. 55 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 18-9, p. 90.56 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 86.

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will, how he will, and when he will: for the godly heart

for temporals cries, Lord, what thou wilt: and in

spirituals, When thou wilt: and in both, How thou wilt’.

Only then will she be able to curb her frustration with

the material world and acknowledge ‘I am where the Lord

would have me to be’.57

The Legacy, however, illustrates a particular problem

in relation to women with the requirement of the

Christian to be both the obedient supplicant to God and

the militant warrior against Satan. Peter urges meekness

in relation to God but robustness in fighting against

sin, resolving the ambiguity by arguing that they exist

in two different spheres ‘Nor do I oppose Meekness to

Zeal, but would have you allow both their perfect work’.58

However, the implicit contradiction is highlighted in the

contrasting metaphors he uses when discussing how to deal

with sin: ‘On with all your Armour speedily: and when you

find it hath bespotted you, do as a good houswife with

her linnen, get a Washing-day, I mean a Fasting-day’.59

While the metaphor is explicated in religious terms, the

washing image places her in the domestic sphere as set

against the armoured reference with its echo of the

‘whole Armour, Ephes.6’.60 A similar linguistic

57 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 60, p. 36. 58 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 27. 59 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 53. 60 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 51; Ephesians 6: 13-17.

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awkwardness is evident in a discussion of meekness. Peter

apostrophises ‘Oh that you might be God-like, Christ-

like, Moses-like; Michael contesting with the Dragon,

maintained his meekness’. The list of male exemplars at

first reading appears to include Michael, until reaching

the end of the sentence it is clear that he is selected

to epitomise the combination of meekness and zeal.61 The

overall effect, however, is to associate her with an

active and powerful male principle.

Peter’s view appears to be that the sexes too have

their complementary but separate spheres of work.

Marriage is to be Elizabeth’s natural expectation,

although given her ‘present estate’ this may be

‘hopeless’ and, although he stresses that he would not

dictate her choice of husband, he points out that if she

does marry then her role as a wife ‘must be Subjection’.62

He identifies fear as a particular characteristic of the

female condition, although he does acknowledge that she

may have some justification for that and while he

counsels meekness as a way of avoiding crises in general

he argues, following Paul, that it is particularly ‘the

womans ornament’.63 If she does not marry she may have to

have ‘content in low condition’ and enter service.

Because she is female, she can have no expectation of ‘a

61 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 28-9. 62 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 43, p. 45, p. 44.63 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 29; 1 Peter 3:4.

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lawfull Calling’.64 However, he desires that she should be

an assiduous almost scholarly reader, not merely studying

but questioning her own understanding of what she

studies. At the opening of the Legacy he not only mentions

the many books ‘which I have often Commended to you’ but

that ‘though your pains the greater, in searching and

studying them, which next to the Scriptures, I conjure

you to acquaint yourself withal; for never Age was so

pregnant that way since our Saviour came in flesh’.65 If

Elizabeth’s Christian militancy is to lie anywhere,

therefore, it appears to be as a reading women and yet

this might run counter to her role as the obedient wife

or the faithful and diligent servant.66 However, this is

not an issue which Peter addresses, perhaps because he

does not perceive it as problematical or because it is

too complex to confront.

******

The advice sections generate a sense of a close

relationship and genuine intimacy between father and

daughter. This is despite much of it covering generalised

material about human nature and religious belief and the

possibility that Peter might have envisaged the Legacy

64 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 24, p. 116, p. 43. 65 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 1-2. 66 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 43.

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being printed, since much of his previous writing had

appeared in print.

Their relationship is emphasised by the way in

which he addresses her. Her christian name does not

appear apart from the dedication ‘For Elizabeth Peters’,

which may be editorial in origin. The text proper begins

‘My Dear Child’, giving it the quality of a letter.67 The

structure of the advice sections further reinforces the

sense of intimacy throughout the text. Apart from the

first section, all the other advice sections end with a

direct address, summarising the topic or giving advice,

where he addresses her with a variant on the phrase ‘My

Child’, such as ‘My Dear Child’, ‘My dear onely Child’,

‘My poor Child’, ‘My dearest Child’, ‘Dear Child’ and in

three cases ‘My dear Heart’. Even though she is twenty,

the use of ‘child’ places the emphasis on their emotional

rather than their blood relationship, which would have

been implied by the use of term ‘daughter’. The second

person pronoun also always seems to be addressed to her,

despite it possibly being addressed to a non-personal

‘you’.

For his part, Peter is open about his failings,

especially in the autobiographical section of the Legacy.68

This of course could be attributed to his desire to

improve his reputation for posterity or in the hope to 67 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 1.68 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 97-118, sections 33-35.

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ameliorate his punishment. For instance, he argues that

he had no part in the death of either Archbishop Laud or

the King and that he ‘never unchurcht any Parish where a

godly minister was’. His comment ‘I confess I did what I

did strenuously, though with a weak head, being over-laid

with my own and other troubles’ can look like special

pleading.69 However, Peter is aware that this may seem

partial - ‘my white side only’ - and he writes that he

will attempt to ‘deal in all plainness with you.’ It is,

therefore, possible to see the text as an exercise in

self-assay of the kind which he urges his daughter to

undertake. He claims that in the Legacy he is ‘ripping my

whole heart to you’ and that he is ‘Preaching the life of

Faith to my self’.70 He acknowledges a vanity in his

character, writing ‘I wish I had never been vain in a

vain World’ and that even ‘my profession of the Gospel

hath been with much folly, weakness, and vanity’. He

admits to frothiness in his own behaviour with the remark

‘For my spirit it wanted weight, [...] my head that

composure others have, credulous, and too careless’ and

apologises that ‘If in the prosecution of these I have

used any of my wonted rudeness, or unguided zeal, I am

heartily as sorry’.71. Finally he acknowledges his fear in

the face of the physical reality of death, despite this

69 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 103, p. 107, p. 104.70 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, pp. 106-7, p. 114. 71 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. p. 48, p. 108, p. 113,p. 112.

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being the desired end of the godly life extolled in the

Legacy. 72

The advice which he gives her is, therefore,

presented less with the authority of the father and more

from his experience as a fallible human being. He

comments ‘I need let you know what I know’, underlining

the implications of the text’s opening sentence: ‘My Dear

Child, I Have thought to leave you the Extract of all my

Experiences, so far as may concern your Self’. 73 In the

penultimate section, Peter returns to his concerns about

her circumstances and their practical implications. He

reprises his advice about friendship, service and duty,

as well as suggesting that she might return home to New

England. The language is much more direct and

straightforward than in the major section and the whole

ends with a plea to her and an admission of his

inadequacy: ‘pity the feebleness of what I have sent,

being writ under much, yea very much discomposure of

spirit’.74

The sense of the relationship is underpinned by the

effect of Peter’s writing technique. The loose, varied

style with its vivid metaphors creates the impression of

a voice. The text, therefore, is not only a repository of

his opinions and advice but also a metonym for his being.

The sense of his fatherly care and love for her is made 72 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 87. 73 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 67, p. 1. 74 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 118.

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accessible through the characteristics of his language.

Through re-reading the text she can renew her memory of

him and in some way recover his presence and their bond.

The Legacy allows Peter, whether he was aware of it or

not, not only to give her guidance but to maintain their

relationship beyond his death, leaving her always able to

access his self and his fatherly concern. He reamrks in

one of the advice sections ‘Next I am to remember you’,

but the whole of the Legacy can be read as a constant

reminder of his presence.75

*****

Sue, What follows is very tentative but I think some of

the following ideas might be fruitful to pursue. I aim to

do some general reading for context to see if they are

sustainable. Suggestions for reading material (how very

Hugh Peter) would be welcome.

The Legacy can be read as an indicator as to why the

independent sects, apart from possibly the Quakers,

failed to thrive post-Restoration. Of course the

political context was actively hostile to their

continuance. Religious differences had been one of the

factors which had plunged the country into the Civil

Wars, and the Commonwealth and Protectorate had seen the

75 Peter, A Dying Fathers Last Legacy, 1661, p. 21.

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sweeping away of to many the comfortable anchor of the

Anglican church rituals. The return of the Stuart

monarchy marked a recognition of the failure of the

republican experiment and large parts of the populace

were either indifferent or antagonistic to enthusiastic

religious practice. The demise of the independent

churches was confirmed by the passing of the Act of

Uniformity of 1662 and the Conventicle Act of 1664. Peter

was certainly consumed by a sense that the Reformation

had failed and the world was descending into a state of

decay and atheism.

But it is also possible to argue that the post-

Restoration period was a time when the rather limited

view of human nature propounded by a text such as the

Legacy was increasingly undermined, not only by political

circumstances, but by the consequences of economic and

intellectual developments during the seventeenth-century.

These are the potential areas that I think might be

worth considering:

1. The trend which increasingly saw the child as

born innocent and corrupted by society. This is

the intended focus for Chapter 2.

2. The view that human beings were childish

sinners unable to effect change in their own

behaviours except through the religious

discipline of subordination was challenged by

the increasing tendency to see our mental

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processes as legitimate objects of

philosophical and possibly scientific study.

3. The concept of the material world as dangerous

and threatening was undermined by increased

material prosperity, which gave people new

opportunities and by scientific developments

that enabled increased control over natural

processes.

4. The valuing of reading of the Scripture by the

godly lead to a growth in literacy amongst the

middling sort but once people gained the

confidence to express their views it was

difficult to contain the tendency to think

independently as well.

5. The view of women as under the intellectual

control of their husbands or male religious

leaders was at odds with increasing female

literacy. This lead to the anomalous position

of someone like Elizabeth Peter who was

expected to be educated but silent.