The Devotional Writings of Dorothy Calthorpe

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Notes

¹ According to William White, the Ampton branch of the Calthorpe family “became extinct in the person of Sir Henry Calthorpe, K.B., who, dying in 1788, devised all his estates to . . . [his nephew] . . . on condition that his nephew should assume the surname of Calthorpe” (302).

² The sculpture takes the form of “a female figure, dressed in the fashion of the time, and in a kneeling posture before a desk, with an open book” (Proceedings 195). Although it is likely that this book represents the Bible and thus Calthorpe's piety, it is tempting to read it as an acknowledgement of her learned and/or authorial identity.

³ The monument is described on pages 2–3 and the “bason” on page 4. Calthorpe's will is Prob 11/417 of The National Archives of the Public Record Office.

⁴ All references are to Julie Eckerle's transcription of Calthorpe's manuscript, which has never been published. With the exception of line breaks, Calthorpe's manuscript has not been modernized. A modernized version of Calthorpe's “Discription” will be included in Dowd and Festa's forthcoming anthology.

⁵ On the distinction between the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, see Genesis 3.22–23 (KJV): “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”

⁶ The bracketed “n” indicates an unclear letter in the manuscript.

⁷ See for example Raymond Williams's analysis of English country house poetry from this period. Williams notes that in these poems, “the provident land is seen as Eden,” as a paradise in which “all things come naturally to man, for his use and enjoyment and without his effort” (31).

⁸ For a modern anthology that includes these and other accounts of the Fall by women writers from this period, see Dowd and Festa.

⁹ Significantly, in the year before Calthorpe's death, her brother James also made a important contribution to Ampton life by founding a school for local poor boys.

¹⁰ This moment also recalls the similar request (and subsequent rebuke) made by the Redcross Knight on the Mount of Contemplation in Book 1 of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.

¹¹ The ink of the likely word “to” here is so smudged in the manuscript as to be indecipherable.

¹² The bracketed “s” is obscured by ink in the manuscript.

Calthorpe, Dorothy. Writings [1672–1684]. Ms Osborn b21.v.1. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Lib., Yale University.