Protestantism, politics, and women in Britain, 1660-1714

"This book is the study of how women writers, booksellers, spies, rebels, outlaws, poets, widows, wives, mothers, gentlewomen, shopkeepers, and one queen - all of whom were spiritually inspired - made a difference in the political events of the eras of Restoration and Revolution in Britain. It speaks to both Dissenting women at the margins of society and Anglican women at the centre, demonstrating that what mattered to women in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, and what propelled them into the political sphere, were issues of liberty of conscience and the survival of Protestantism at home and abroad in the face of an encroaching Counter-Reformation Catholicism at the Stuart court and in Europe."--Publisher's website.