Scriptural exegesis, female prophecy, and radical politics in Mary Cary.

Publication: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900

Publication Date: 01-JAN-06

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Along with Anna Trapnel, Mary Cary, who flourished as a writer between 1647 and 1653, was one of two notable visionary women to emerge from the Fifth Monarchy movement, the ultraradical millenarian movement developing out of the turbulent years of civil war and revolution, and led by such fiery London preachers as Christopher Feake, John Simpson, and John Rogers; Fifth Monarchists were committed to the destruction of the Antichristian Fourth Monarchy prophesied in the book of Daniel and to the immediate establishment of Christ's kingdom on earth. (1) But unlike the much more flamboyant Trapnel, whose torrent of anti-Cromwellian prophecies uttered during a spectacular trance at Whitehall in January 1654 attracted much contemporary notice, (2) Cary has received little attention from literary scholars working on the writing of the English Revolution. Only recently has she begun to receive some sustained attention from scholars working on women writers of the early modern period. (3) Yet she still remains "one of the most interesting and least studied of the Fifth Monarchists," as Christopher Hill noted in 1993, though he himself did not examine her writings in any detail; (4) her visionary writings, exegetical practices, and radical religious politics thus surely deserve more serious and sustained consideration by literary scholars and cultural historians of seventeenth-century England and women prophets.

Cary's millenarian zeal, spiritual promptings, and political beliefs as a Fifth Monarchist visionary may not have stimulated her to lead a colorful, peripatetic prophetic career characterized by moments of ecstatic behavior, as in the case of Trapnel, who issued her sensational prophesies in the west of England as well as in such public spaces as Whitehall. (5) Instead, Cary's apocalyptic enthusiasm resulted in a different kind of engagement in contemporary political and religious debates: she produced some of the most elaborate and striking radical scriptural commentaries of her revolutionary age, notably The Little Horns Doom and Downfall combined with A New and More Exact Mappe, or Description of New Jerusalems Glory, both published together in the spring of 1651 and concluding with provocative political verses infused with apocalyptic language and symbolism. (6) Her fiery zeal was channeled into her intricate, systematic scriptural exegesis, which attempts to illuminate, in radical millenarian and polemical terms, the immediate history and crises of the civil war years; in her texts the Fifth Monarchist visionary aims "to make [her] present age more sensible of the late past, and present footsteps of God in the world, in order to the setting up of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus, and the making of all dominions to serve and obey him." (7)

We unfortunately know little about Cary's personal life, although one detail is especially revealing about her subsequent vocation as a radical exegete of scriptural prophecies and their application to her own age of civil war and revolution: she tells us that "by the Spirit of God" she began "a serious and continual study of the Scriptures" in 1636 at the age of fifteen and that this intense study especially concerned "the Book of the Revelation, and ... the Prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel, wherein so many things concerning these latter daies are spoken of." (8) We also know that at some point between 1648 and 1651 Cary's name changed to Rande, presumably because of marriage. (9) As for her development as a visionary writer, two of her earlier tracts, including A Word in Season to the Kingdom of England, printed for the radical bookseller Giles Calvert in 1647, begin to convey some sense of her later, more substantial work as a Fifth Monarchist prophetess and apocalyptic exegete, as she urged the rulers of England to let Jesus Christ reign over them as king and warned them not to "enact any law against" the saints (herself included) "exercising the gifts of the spirit, that are given to them in Preaching or prophesying." (10) Cary's The Resurrection of the Witnesses; and Englands Fall from (the Mystical "Babylon") Rome (1648; 2d edn., 1653), with its elaborate interpretation of Revelation 11 and its emphasis on the New Model Army's dramatic success (beginning in 1645) as a sign of the coming millennium, shows a more decisive shift in the direction of Fifth Monarchist prophecy, scriptural exegesis, and political interpretation; and indeed Cary draws upon this earlier text in The Little Horns Doom to explain, by means of mathematical speculation, the expiration of the beast's power over the saints in her age and the 1260 years of suffering and persecution they have endured. (11)

The pugnacious Fifth Monarchists began to emerge as a radical political and religious force in 1649, about the time that the Levellers were entering their decline and after the unprecedented events of Charles I's trial and execution, which escalated radical millenarian excitement and seemed to mark the end of the fourth earthly monarchy foretold in Scripture. Scriptural hermeneutics were therefore crucial to the definition of the zealous political and religious agenda of Fifth Monarchists, including their quest for a literal and physical rule of the saints promised in the book of Daniel. Their inspired readings of Daniel and Revelation led them to conclude that the thousand-year kingdom of the saints (a fifth and final monarchy) was imminent and that the Antichristian Fourth Monarchy was associated first with King Charles, then with the "apostasy" of the ungodly Rump and then, when the quasiregal Protectorate was established, with Oliver Cromwell himself, against whom they employed bitter apocalyptic rhetoric that alarmed Cromwell and many of his contemporaries. (12) Their distinctive brand of theocratic millenarianism emphasized that they were called to bring in the reign of King Jesus themselves--and to use force if necessary as a means to remodel society, abolish the ecclesiastical system, and purify the nation. Until he came, his kingdom was to be ruled by his saints--in other words, by militant saints like themselves. Surely one of the most remarkable Fifth Monarchist interpretations of the reign of Charles I, stimulated by the prophecies of Daniel, Revelation, and other scriptural passages, was undertaken by Cary in her ambitious apocalyptic exegesis of well over three hundred pages that appeared under the full title of The Little Horns Doom & Downfall: or a Scripture-Prophesie of King James, and King Charles, and of this present Parliament unfolded, and which was immediately followed by her detailed utopian description of the Fifth Monarchy in A New and More Exact Mappe. (13) All of Cary's prophetic works--A Word in Season (1647). The Resurrection of the Witnesses (1648, 1653), The Little Horns Doom, and Twelve Proposals (1653)--display varying degrees of ingenuity in scriptural interpretation and reveal considerable political and polemical boldness on Cary's part. (14) But by far the most elaborate and impressive of these texts--the ones that most crucially helped to shape and give voice to Fifth Monarchist beliefs and political aspirations--are The Little Horns Doom and A New and More Exact Mappe, which draw freely upon mathematical speculation, recent English history, and especially prophecies of the Bible in order to support Cary's elaborate interpretations justifying the regicide and envisioning the millennial age. In this essay I have chosen to focus especially on these two striking and lengthy exegetical texts, for they constitute Cary's most distinctive contributions to Fifth Monarchist political discourse, historical analysis, and hermeneutic practices. And although these texts have received only sporadic attention by recent scholars, they clearly aroused the strong interest and support of some of Cary's notable contemporaries, including leading godly women and prominent radicals.

Cary's two massive, interconnected works of scriptural hermeneutics are dedicated to several "Vertuous, Heroicall, and Honourable Ladies": these include the wives of parliamentary leaders and army grandees, notably Elizabeth Cromwell and Bridget Ireton (Cromwell's eldest daughter and the wife of Henry Ireton), as well as Lady Margaret Rolle, the wife of Henry Rolle, a parliamentary radical, prominent jurist, and a member of the Council of State in the new Commonwealth (A3r). (15) The Commonwealth, Cary suggestively writes, is now adorned "with so many precious jewels, and choice gemmes": these are the "pious, precious, prudent, and sage Matrons, and holy women" who appear in "some of the highest places of honour" and who thus help to preside over a new, godly order (A3v-4r). Cary's language here, applied to the godly women who support her exegetical work, anticipates her visionary language of the New Jerusalem on earth elaborated in A New and More Exact Mappe. It echoes the description of the "precious" foundation stones adorning the city wall of the heavenly...

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