********************START OF HEADER******************** This text has been proofread but is not guaranteed to be free from errors. Corrections to the original text have been left in place. Title: The Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie, an electronic edition. Edited with an introduction by Kate McPherson Author: Lincoln, Elizabeth Clinton, Countess of Publisher: Place published: Date: ********************END OF HEADER******************** The Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie: A Critical EditionMcPherson, KateContents for The Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie: A Critical EditionIntroduction:I. "What a racket do Authors make about this": The Debate Over Maternal Breastfeeding in Early Modern England . . . iiII. "And to be short, the mothers milkmilke is most wholesome for the childchilde ": Medical Texts and Maternal Breastfeeding . . . iiiIII. "Sure if their breasts be drydrie . . . they should fast and pray together": Breastfeeding and Moral Advice Tracts in Early Modern England . . . viiIV. "We were sensible of the neglect of duty in not having nursed her": Personal Testimony about Breastfeeding . . . xiV. Joining the Discourse: The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie . . . xvVI. A Note on Editorial Practice . . . xxiiiVII. Biographical Essay: Elizabeth Knevet Clinton . . . xxivThe Text:The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie . . . 1Introduction I. "What a racket do Authors make about this": The Debate Over Maternal Breastfeeding in Early Modern EnglandIn the seventeenth century, the vast majority of noble- and gentlewomen employed commoners as wet nurses. This practice, in combination with rising religious conservatism, incited a socio-religious controversy about breastfeeding. Doctors, theologians, midwives, and one outspoken noblewomen all joined this often rancorous debate. That noblewoman, Elizabeth Clinton, the Dowager Countess of Lincoln, penned the 1622 pamphlet, The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie, which is the only female-authored text devoted entirely to the subject. Problematically, medical texts promoted maternal breastfeeding, yet simultaneously offered readers extensive directions for choosing a wet nurse. Moralistic literature, like The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie, countered this tacit endorsement of wet nursing by exhorting readers about the godliness of mothers nursing their own children. Nicholas Culpepper, an herbalist and physician, mocks the controversy:What a racket do Authors make about this! What thwarting and contradicting, not of others only but of themselves! What reasons do they bring, why a woman must needs nurse her own child? Some extorted from Divinity. . . Some they have haled it head and shoulders from reason. The Mothers milk is most convenient for the child because the child participates of her Nature. . . . Or else because the woman cannot love her child, except she give it suck her own self, which if she dodoe not more inhumane beast she.1Nicholas Culpepper, Culpepper's Midwife Enlarged (London, 1684), L4v.Culpepper mentions the primary reasons maternal breastfeeding was encouraged-religious duty, natural law, and maternal obligation--but he also perceives the selective use of these justifications. Although Clinton was not the first Puritan to preach about breastfeeding, she was the first woman to publish her views on the topic, providing a rare example of a woman contributing to the predominantly male discourse about proper maternal behavior.II. "And to be short, the mothers milkmilke is most wholesome for the childchilde": Medical Texts and Maternal BreastfeedingAlmost without exception, midwifery manuals published and written in the seventeenth century recommend that all mothers breastfeed their own children. The influential French physician Ambrose Paré, his student Jacques Guillemeau, and various English authors including Nicholas Culpepper and Jane Sharp all strongly recommend maternal breastfeeding. A 1540 manual, The Birth of Man-Kinde, which was reprinted numerous times in the seventeenth century, includes the medical reasons why mothers should nurse: "it shall be best that the mother give her childchildesucksuckeherselfherselfemilkmilke is more convenient and agreeable to the infant then any other woman'swomans & more doth nourish it, for because that in the mothers belly it was wont to the same & fed with it." 2Eucharius Rosselin, The Birth of Man-Kinde: otherwise named the Womans Booke. Trans. Thomas Raynald (London: 1616), L6v-L7r. Rosselin's text, originally published in Latin in 1540, was one of the early modern period's most popular obstetrical texts, going through numerous editions between 1540 and 1700. Physicians at this time believed that breast milk was a sort of refined blood, and since the child was used to the mother's blood, it would also thrive more on her milk. 3See Valerie Fildes, Breasts, Bottles, and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986), 99-116. Gail Kern Paster also discusses the importance of this theory in The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 198-208.Despite theories about the beneficial medical effects of breastfeeding, physicians more often discussed what they believed were the emotional effects of using a wet nurse: problems with the development of the child's character and the consequences of wet nursing on the mother-infant relationship. Consequently, these commentaries frequently stray from the realm of medical advice into moral instruction. Ambrose Paré, for instance, makes the following heated comment:And moreover, mothers ought to nurse their ownowne children, because of the most part, they are farfarrecarefulcarefull in bringing up and attending their children than hired and mercenary nurses, which dodoe not sosoe much regard the infant as the gaingaine they shall have by keeping it. Those that dodoe not nurse their ownowne children, cannot rightly be termed mothers: for they dodoe not absolutely performperforme the duty of a mother unto the child. . . . For this is a certaincertaine unnatural, imperfect and halfhalfekindkinde of a mothers dutydutie , to bearbeare a childchilde and presently to abandon or put it away as if it were forsaken.4Ambrose Paré, The Workes of that famous Chirurgeon Ambrose Pare, translated out of Latine and compared with the French. Trans. Thomas Gornson (London, 1634), Gggg4r-Gggg4v.Paré's rhetoric, with its emphasis on the unnaturalness of a non-nursing mother, seems designed to shame women into breastfeeding.Yet despite this strong endorsement of maternal breastfeeding, Paré details the characteristics and behavior of a good wet nurse:Both in eating, drinking, sleeping, watching, exercising, and resting, the nurses diet must be divers, according to the nature of the child. . . . let her live in pure and clearcleere air, let her abstain from all spices, and all salted and spiced meatsmeates, and all sharpsharpe things, wine, especially that which is not allayed or mixed with water, and carnalcarnall copulations; let her avoidavoyd all perturbations of the mind, but anger especially. . . .5Ibid., Gggg5v.In truth, his text devotes more space to choosing a wet nurse than to encouraging maternal breastfeeding. He moralizes at length about the virtues of nursing mothers but he also (perhaps realistically) acknowledges that religious, economic, and social factors resulted in many women using wet nurses for their children.Jacques Guillemeau likewise discusses physical and social factors that justify employing a wet nurse, although he also asserts that maternal devotion should lead a woman to breastfeed her own child:Though it were fit that every mother doth nurse her own child: because her milkMilke, which is nothing but blood whitened (of which he was made. . .) will always be more natural and familiar to him, than that of a stranger: and also by nursing him herself she shall be wholly accounted his mother, yet since they may be hindered by sicknesssicknesse, or for that they are too weak and tender, or else because their Husbands will not suffer them, therefore I say, it will very necessary to seek out another Nurse. . . .6Jacques Guillemeau, Childbirth, or the Happie Delivery of Women (London, 1635), Kk4r.Guillemeau moves skillfully from endorsing maternal breastfeeding to defending wet nursing: the mother may be too weak to nurse, but she may also be prevented by her husband (who will not "suffer" or endure her nursing because of the assumed avoidance of sexual intercourse by nursing women).7Valerie Fildes notes that ancient beliefs derived from Galenic medicine, which strongly recommended that all nursing women avoid sexual relations. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, "this injunction appears to have been applied only to wet nurses employed in the child's home." She believes that the taboo was rarely acknowledged by "British parents, or by medical and theological authors writing in English." See Breasts, Bottles, and Babies, 104. Elizabeth Clinton also glances at this taboo when she observes that her desire to nurse was "overruled by another'sanothers authority". See The Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie D1v. Guillemeau accepts that social pressures sometimes outweigh morality, but his equivocation would have left parents with no authority on which to depend.This apparent conflict between cultural practices and medical/moral recommendations survived the Restoration, resurfacing in Jane Sharp's Midwives Book, Or the Whole Art of Midwifery Discovered, which was the first female-authored book of midwifery advice and, besides The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie, the only other woman's published opinion about breastfeeding in the seventeenth century. 8Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book (London, 1671). I quote from the Brown University Women Writer's Project Draft in Process. Elaine Hobby has recently prepared a modern edition of The Midwives Book (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Sharp, however, differs distinctly from Clinton and more closely resembles (although she does not mimic) male writers of midwifery texts. Sharp's is a medical, not a moral, treatise and thus she includes only a brief discussion of the necessity of maternal breastfeeding, devoting a greater portion of her chapter, "Directions for Nurses," to choosing a wet nurse and treating diseases of the breast.However, Sharp also displays her awareness of the controversy over breastfeeding:The dispute about Nurses, who are fit for it, and who are not, is much handled by Physicians; and there be some that will tietye every woman to Nurse her own child because Sarah, the wife of so great a man as Abraham was, nursed Isaac: And indeed if there be no other obstacle the Argument may carry some weight with it; for doubtless the mothers milk is commonly best agreeing with the child; and if the mother do not Nurse her own child, it is a question whether she will ever love it so well as she that proves the Nurse to it as well as Mother: and without doubt the child will be much alienated in his affections by sucking of strange milk. . . .9Ibid., 145.Sharp equivocates about women's moral duty to breastfeed. She carefully hedges the religious argument, for instance, by saying the example of Sarah "may carry some weight," but only "if there be no other obstacle." Although she employs Biblical exempla, Sharp focuses her argument on the social (rather than the religious) ramifications of wet nursing. Sharp equivocation may result from her awareness that most privileged women believed breastfeeding limited mobility, lowered fertility, and raised the objections of their spouses and peers. 10For instance, Lady Anne Newdigate incurred the ire of both her father and the godfather to her child when she chose to nurse her baby in 1598; the godfather, Sir William Knollys, admitted that "play[ing] the nurse. . .argueth great love, but it breedeth much trouble to yourself and it would more grieve you if sucking your own milk it should miscarry, children being subject to many casualties." Knollys nods toward Newdigate's devotion to maternal duty, but intimates that she risks too much emotionally (and perhaps socially) by performing her "great love." This incident is reported in David Cressy's Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 90-91.Yet Sharp complicates her position on maternal breastfeeding by criticizing wealthy women who employ wet nurses unnecessarily. She comments:The usual way for rich people is to put forth their child to nurse, but that is a remedy that needs a remedy, if it might be had: because it changeth the natural disposition of the child and oftentimes exposes the infant to many hazards, if great care is not taken in the choice of the nurse.There are not many Women that want milk to suckle their own children. . . but multitudes pretend weakeness when they have not cause for it, because they have not so much love for their own, as Dumb creatures have. . . .11Sharp, The Midwives Book, 145 and 148.Clearly, Sharp believes women are morally obligated to breastfeed whenever they are able. But Sharp tempers her criticism when she notes that the hazards to the wet-nursed child occur only "if great care is not taken in the choice of a nurse." 12Ibid., 145. Since she gives extensive directions for choosing a nurse, presumably she believes that locating a qualified wet nurse is indeed possible. Sharp also wavers between using women's fear of losing their child's affections by its "sucking of strange milk" and compassion for the difficulties of childbirth and nursing. Her views, more flexible than those in many other medical texts from the period, reveal that she acknowledged the conflicted status of maternal breastfeeding, and strove to provide constructive advice to families on both sides of the divide. Not surprisingly, no such flexibility can be found in the numerous religious and moralistic tracts of the period which frequently sought to prescribe maternal behavior.III. "Sure if their breasts be drydrie. . . they should fast and pray together": Breastfeeding and Moral Advice Tracts in Early Modern EnglandLike Elizabeth Clinton, other seventeenth-century moralists used strong moral arguments against wet nursing to fill the void left by equivocating physicians. Their message was clear: any woman who did not nurse her child defied God's will and endangered her child. This serious moral condemnation of non-nursing mothers obviously clashed with entrenched custom in many high-ranking families, as well as with the recommendations about nurses prevalent in much medical advice. In his only sustained commentary on breastfeeding in The Family, Sex, and Marriage, 1500-1800, Lawrence Stone attributes the rising concern about maternal breastfeeding to these same Puritan authors:In the early seventeenth century the most popular and influential Puritan writers on household management, Perkins, Gouge, and Dod and Clever, strongly reinforced the traditional advice of the medical profession, and told mothers to feed their own children. They used the functional argument that nature had provided women with breasts to supply milk, not to serve as sexually exciting erogenous zones; they used the medical argument that the mother's milk was best; and they used the ancient superstition that by absorbing wet-nurses' milk, babies would also pick up their lower-class, and probably evil, character traits.13Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500-1800, Abridged Edition. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1979), 270.Although Stone identifies the many social arguments used by these Puritan writers, he neglects any exploration of the religious motivation for their concern. These writers appeal to nature, love, health, and above all Christian duty, to prove that all mothers who are physically able ought to breastfeed their children. In essence, they use every argument at their disposal to attempt to promote proper maternal conduct in an ideal Christian culture.14Such didactic texts did not, admittedly, originate in the seventeenth century. Erasmus' Colloquies or Familiar Discourses, which was initially published in 1522 in a Latin edition, features a fictional dialogue to discourage wet nursing. See Colloquies. . .Rendered into English by H.M. (London, 1671). Erasmus employs both moral and emotional arguments to dissuade women from using wet nurses. His commitment to maternal breast feeding, and the language he uses to express it, are only a shadow of the extreme rhetoric about breast feeding that permeated moral tracts in the seventeenth century. For instance, the 1612 conduct manual John Dod and Roberts Clever's A Godly formforme of Household Government includes breastfeeding as part of "What the dutydutie of a Wife is toward her Husband." In addition to citing Biblical examples of wifely silence and submission, the writers address the wife's duty to breastfeed her children in order to "be a helpmeet unto her husband in suckling the child common to them both."15John Dod and Robert Cleaver, A Godly formforme of Household Government for the Ordering of Private Families (London, 1612), Q2v. They accuse women who employ wet nurses of being "nice and unnaturalunnaturall mothers. . .[who] make themselves but half-mothers, & so break the holy bond of nature."16Ibid., P5r. The intensity of their rhetoric peaks when they attack wealthy women who feign a lack of milk:But whose breasts have this perpetual drought? Forsoothe it is like the goutgoute, no beggars may have it, but citizens or Gentlewomen. In the ninth chapter of Hosea, drydrie breasts are named for a curse: what lamentable happe have Gentlewomen to light upon this curse more than others? Sure if their breasts be drydrie, as they say, they should fast and pray together that this curse may be removed from them.17Ibid., Q2v. It should be noted that this passage is taken verbatim from Henrie Smith's sermon, A Preparative to Marriage (London, 1591), G8v-H1r.Clearly, Dod and Clever are extremists who want women to abandon an entrenched childrearing practice in favor of their strict interpretation of the Bible.William Gouge's 1622 volume, Of Domesticall Duties, is similarly unyielding. Gouge uses many of the same arguments employed by Dod and Clever to encourage godly women to breastfeed their own children. Published in the same year as The Countesse of LincolnesNurserie, Gouge's lengthy treatise is a comprehensive discussion of Puritan household management. 18William Gouge, Of Domesticall Duties: Eight Treatises (London, 1622), K3v. When discussing nursing, he uses the examples of Sarah, Hannah, and Mary to prove that good women always nursed their children. Part of his idea of goodness is also tied to maternal self-sacrifice. He carefully stresses that pain and injury do not obviate the woman's duty to her child: "a mother with enduring a little more pain may safely give the child sucksucke. Many mothers have given their children sucksucke when bloodbloud hath runrunne by the mouth of the child by reason of sore nipples, and yet both mother and child have done very well."19Ibid., L3r. Gouge's graphic depiction of a mother suffering to nurse her child vividly illustrates his rigid standards of maternal behavior.Gouge also believes, though, that "many husbands will not suffer their wives to nurse their children themselves." 20Ibid., K4v. Gouge does not, of course, recommend disrupting the patriarchal household order, but he does add that "[t]he dutydutie on a fathers part in this respect is required that he encourageincourage his wife, and helphelpe her with all needful things for the performance of this duty." 21Ibid., L1r. Paternal objections, such as "trouble, disquiet, and expenseexpence carry little weight with Gouge. 22Ibid. He strongly censures those husbands who prevent their wives from nursing:The mothers painpaine is the greatest: it is in comparison but a small thing that father can endure therein. Their fault therefore must be the greater, if in any way they be an occasion of their childrenchildes putting forth to nurse: which I have the rather noted because husbands for the most part are the cause that their wives not nurse their ownowne children. . . . If husbands were willing that their wives should performperforme this dutydutie and would persuadepurswade and encourageincourage them thereto, and afford them what helpshelpes they could, where one mother now nurseth her childchilde, twenty would do it.23Ibid., L1v.Though, Gouge pushes women to nurse their children, he also impels men to support the practice so that both mother and father can perform their "bounden duty."Like the medical controversy over wet nurses, the Puritan effort promote maternal breastfeeding survived the Restoration. Reverend Henry Newcome's 1695 The Compleat Mother, Or an Earnest Perswasive to all Mothers (especially those of Rank and Quality) to Nurse their Own Children makes a sustained appeal to end wet nursing. It is the only seventeenth-century text besides The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie devoted exclusively to the duty of mothers to nurse their own children, and it is similarly directed at women of "Rank and Quality." Labeling wealthy women who use wet nurses "impious," Newcome makes exceptions only when nursing would endanger either the mother's or the child's health. 24The Compleat Mother, Or an Earnest Perswasive to all Mothers (especially those of Rank and Quality) to Nurse their Own Children (London, 1695), G2r-G5v.Like most of the other moralistic tracts about breastfeeding, The Compleat Mother argues that wealth and position affect a mother's choice to breastfeed. 25Wealthy women were often singled out as violating codes of proper maternal behavior. One 1671 midwifery manual includes the following diatribe:Their own mothers surely (if they are able) both by duty and nature, being the most fit to nurse their own children, which the greatest Ladies may do, with the greatest conveniences, by reason of their plenty of all things; besides, their attendance of servants, who can bring their nurserynurseries to them at all hours, be it day or night, and take them againagaine, not to disturb their rest: which also they may intend at their own pleasure. The author, James Wolveridge, like most other writers with Puritan leanings--including the Countess of Lincoln--blames the prevalence of wet nursing on the laziness and selfishness of women of quality. Newcome follows their lead in his attack. See Wolveridge, Speculum Matricis Or The Expert Midwives Handmaid Catechistically Composed (London, 1671), L5r. Newcome points out that children of the "Nobility and Gentry" are more likely to be put out to nurse:The Poor Tenants Child is for the most part nursed in its own Mothers bosom, and cherished by her breasts, whilst the Landlord's heir is turnedturn'd out, exiled from his Mothers embraces as soon as from her Womb, and assigned to the Care of some Stranger. . . .Thus the Infants of the best Families are most hardly used, and vast numbers of them undoubtedly destroyed.26Newcome, The Compleat Mother, B4r.Newcome appeals to two emotional issues here: the aristocratic concern with a successful lineage and mothers' love and fear for their children. Newcome takes his persuasive task seriously, moving beyond exhortations of biblical duty and into direct emotional appeals to parents, and to women in particular. Although The Compleat Mother, and other texts like it promoted maternal breastfeeding across class lines, such polemics had little measurable effect. Wet nursing continued to be the norm among the higher ranks, as many diaries and memoirs attest.IV. "We were sensible of the neglect of duty in not having nursed her": Personal Testimony about BreastfeedingAgainst the background of the various medical and moral treatments of nursing discussed above, it is crucial to examine actual representations of breastfeeding experiences in early modern English families of rank. Valerie Wayne comments that "early modern mothers were taught that their own salvation depended on nurturing children. . . ." 27Valerie Wayne, "Advice for women from mothers and patriarchs" in Women and Literature in Britain, 1500-1700, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 56-79), 62. Precisely how those children were nurtured (or nursed) can reveal to what extent the ambivalence of doctors and the certainty of moralists affected the use of wet nurses. Valerie Fildes notes that wet nursing reached its height during this period in England, when mothers from royalty through the lower merchant classes employed wet nurses. 28Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (London: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 79. Other historians, including Dorothy McLaren, argue that it was during this time that the breast became eroticized and thus nursing (which emphasizes the functional rather than the sexual aspect of the breast) was almost wholly shunted onto women of the lower ranks, who were necessarily less concerned with vanity. 29See Dorothy McLaren, "Marital Fertility and Lactation, 1570-1720" in Women in English Society, 1500-1800, ed. Mary Prior (London: Methuen, 1985. 22-53), 27-28. See also Marilyn Yalom, A History of the Breast (New York: Knopf, 1997). But, as Gail Kern Paster observes, a gentle- or noblewoman's choice was also complicated by issues of conflicting medical advice, as well as concerns regarding fertility, beauty, and association with a type of economic production. 30See Paster, The Body Embarrassed, 208 for a lucid discussion of these complications.Personal testimony reveals, not surprisingly, that maternal nursing enjoyed only mixed popularity among the upper ranks in the seventeenth century. These families, faced with the barrage of moral advice and its conflict with custom in their peer group, frequently acted according to their religious preference, i.e., with nonconformist or Puritan mothers breastfeeding and Anglican mothers employing wet nurses. 31For instance, the nonconformist minister's wife, Jane Josselin, nursed her children unless she was too ill postpartum to do so. (See The Diary of Ralph Josselin, ed. Alan Macfarlane. London: The British Academy for Oxford University Press, 1976. 50, 112-116). On the other hand, Lady Mary Verney sends her newborn son to stay with a nurse who "looks like a slattern" and says "if sheshee takes the child sheshee will have a mighty care of it." (The Memoirs of the Verney Family during the Seventeenth Century, ed. F.P. and M.M. Verney. London, 1907), 361.) Paster notes that "the rhetorical energy aroused by the question of maternal breastfeeding also suggests that in social classes that had a degree of personal choice. . . any infant feeding practice was capable of contestation and challenge on a number of grounds." 32Ibid., 198. The frequency of these challenges and their limited success demonstrates the sporadic effectiveness of expert advice about breastfeeding, and further illustrates that religious efforts to regulate maternity never took firm hold.For instance, both Lady Elizabeth Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater, and Lady Elizabeth Carey, Viscountess Mordaunt, record long sections regarding pregnancy and childbirth in their writings. 33See True Coppies of certaincertaine Loose Papers left by ye Right Honorable Elizabeth, Countess of Bridgewater. Collected and Transcribed together here since Her Death, Anno Domini 1663 (BL Egerton MS 607) for Egerton's meditations on childbearing, and The private diary of Elizabeth, Viscountess Mordaunt (Duncairn, 1856) for Mordaunt's prayers and poems on childbirth. Each left lengthy prayers, several short poems, and numerous meditations on successful childbirth and infant mortality, demonstrating that they reflected on motherhood and its obligations. Additionally, both women were pious adherents of the Church of England, and nothing in their diaries indicates any degree of religious dissent. As energetic as they were about recording other aspects of their maternal experience, neither makes any mention of nursing her children, a fact that suggests they, like most gentlewomen, probably hired wet nurses. For them, the practice was so customary that it passed without notice.Alice Thornton, a gentlewoman from Yorkshire,34Thornton, who lived from 1626-1710, was the daughter of Sir Christopher Wandesford, a secretary to the Governor of Ireland. See The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (ed. Virginia Blain et al., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). however, quickly abandoned using a wet nurse when she discovers that the nurse's presence in the family home (rather than in the nurse's village) endangers the baby's life. Thornton records that her daughter was,one night delivered from beingbeeing overlaid by her nurse, who laid in my deardeare mother's chamber a good while. One night my mother was writing pretty late, and heard my deardearechildchilde make a groaninggroaningetroublesomelytroublsomly, and steping immediately to the nurse's bed side, she saw the nurse fallen asleepe, with her breast in the child's mouth; at which, she beeing affrighted, pulled the nurse suddainly from her, and soe preserved my dearechilde from beeing smothered.35The Autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton of East Newton, Co, York, ed. Charles Jackson (London: Surtees Society, 1875), 91.As Thornton's case demonstrates, dangers to wet-nursed children were not merely emphasized by many conduct books for rhetorical purposes. And, just as moral writers like Gouge or Newcome recommended, Alice Thornton changed her behavior when her next child was born.The fear inspired by her first child's near fatal overlaying led Thornton to nurse her next child, Betty, although she was very ill after the birth. She notes, "I recovered my milke, and was overjoyed to give my sweet Betty sucke, which I did. . . . 36Ibid., 91-92. Thornton also nurses a later child, Robert, "all along while I was with childe and till about a fortnight before my delivery" of her eighth child, Joyce, in 1665. 37Ibid., 144-145. Custom and medical advice aside, she seems highly motivated to nurse her children.Thornton comments about nursing her sixth child, William, born in April of 1660, are particularly illustrative:[M]y pretty babe was in good health, suckeing his poor mother, to whom my good God had given the blessing of the breast as well as the womb, of that childe to whom it was no little satisfaction, while I injoyed his life; and the joy of it made me recrute faster, for his sake, that I might do my duty to him as a mother. But it pleased God to shorten this joy, least I be too much transported. . . .38Ibid., 124.Thornton again displays her unequivocal commitment to breastfeeding in this passage. She suggests that nursing gave both her and her son great joy, so much that God felt it necessary to curtail that joy by taking the boy's life after only a few days. But nursing is also connected to her sense of maternal obligation--she wants to "do [her] duty to him as a mother," just as the moral advice tracts recommend.Belying Thornton's rank, her Autobiography records that she also nursed all her subsequent children, one until the age of two. Her entries about childbirth consistently mention nursing, suggesting she felt it noteworthy many years after her children were grown. This focus on nursing also seems to be at odds with Thornton's professed Anglican and Royalist beliefs; although she may have been influenced by the Puritan climate of the 1650s, none of her commentaries about political events demonstrates any sympathy for Parliamentary forces or for nonconformist religious practice. Yet she nursed (and recorded her feelings about nursing) just as Puritan texts recommended. So, despite her social milieu and the pervasive disapproval of women of rank lowering themselves to breastfeeding, Thornton nursed her children whenever she was physically able because it made her feel like a dutiful mother. Although she suffered from a variety of serious illnesses, ranging from gangrene of the breast to jaundice, she never employed a wet nurse for her children unless illness physically prevented her from nursing. This devotion to breastfeeding seems to imply that, as the moralists recommend, Thornton equated breastfeeding with good motherhood.Few women were as deeply committed to maternal breastfeeding as Alice Thornton. Despite the numerous moralistic tracts of the seventeenth century--of which The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie discussed below is a primary example--Thornton's and other women's experiences demonstrate that families responded individually to the discordant messages about breastfeeding. The ambivalence of medical texts, combined with the intense rhetorical efforts to promote maternal breastfeeding in moral advice tracts, created a battle between custom and conscience. As part of the concerted effort to define and regulate maternal behavior during the seventeenth century, the conflict over breastfeeding is a powerful example of how hard the battle was fought, and how far short of victory the moralists often fell.V.Joining in the Discourse:The Countesse of Lincolnes NurserieLike Alice Thornton, who so intimately connects breastfeeding with good motherhood, Elizabeth Clinton's The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie directly links maternal nursing with being a good mother. Furthermore, as part of the frequently antagonistic seventeenth-century debate over breastfeeding, Clinton's tract is a more important contribution than has hitherto been acknowledged. Clinton's published views indicate both her Puritan tendencies 39See the Biographical Essay, xxiii. and her participation in the lively cultural debate carried on throughout the century. The power and variety of her prose reveals not only her belief in the duty, benefit, and joy of maternal nursing, but also the rhetorical skill and energy she devoted to the cause.Much of The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie explicitly concerns the spiritual--not just medical or social--duty of a woman to breastfeed her children. But because she is a mother, she mourns her personal failure to breastfeed. Remorse for employing a wet nurse for all eighteen of her own children, for (as she says later) bidding another woman to "unlove her owne to love [mine]" 40Elizabeth Clinton, The Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie (London, 1622), D2r. remains a small but important factor in The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie. Part of what drives the tract, along with the author's desire for spiritual reform, is Elizabeth Clinton's yearning for expiation of her personal failure to nurse. As a sincere Christian, Clinton wants to exculpate herself, and by doing so, prevent other women from committing the same sin. She admits, "I knowe and acknowledge that I should have done it, and having not done it, it was not for want of will in my self, but partly I was overruled by anothers authority,. . . partly I had not so well considered of my duty in this motherly office, as since I did, when it was too late for me to put it into execution." 41Ibid., C4r-D1v. A victim of custom and youth, Clinton allowed her maternal instincts to be "overruled." She further admits to being "pricked in hart for my undutifulness, this way I study to redeeme my peace."42Ibid., D1v. Thus, promoting maternal breastfeeding in her old age helps Clinton enact a sort of restitution for sins of her youth.But her focus on a personal transgression is far from being Clinton's only rhetorical tool. Although she uses her own failure to nurse as a persuasive tactic, Clinton also musters her social status to attack other women who shun breastfeeding for frivolous social reasons. For what she calls the "vain lusts" of convenience, extra sleep, beauty, and prestige, she attacks her peers who abandon their duty to breastfeed. She scornfully addresses the common objections to maternal nursing:Secondly it is objected, that it is troublesome; that it is noysome to ones clothes; that it makes one looke old, &c. All such reasons are uncomely, and unchristian to be objected: and therefore unworthy to be answered, they argue unmotherly affection, idlenesse, desire to have liberty to gadd from home, pride, foolishnesse, lust, wantonnesse, & the like evills. . . . behold most nursing mothers, and they be as cleane and sweet in their cloathes, and carry their age, and hold their beautie, as well as those that suckle not and most likely are they so to doe, because keeping God's Ordinance, they are sure of Gods Blessing: and it hath beene observed in some women that they grew more beautifull, and better favoured, by very nursing their owne children.43Ibid., C2v.Although Clinton employ religious arguments here, she focuses on women's vanity; but, she links this same vanity to a series of moral failures, including "pride, lust, and wantonness," paralleling failure to nurse with two of the seven deadly sins. Finally, she also asserts that the idleness of these wealthy, vain, non-nursing mothers leads to their greater independence, "a desire to have liberty to gadd from home." Clinton wants to show that hiring a nurse leads down a path that no Christian woman ought to tread.The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie eventually becomes personal in its assault on wealthy women, perhaps because the author was literally speaking to her peers. Clinton proclaims:And this unthankfullness and unnaturalness is oftner the sinne of the Higher and the richer sort then of the meaner, and poorer, except some nice, and proud idle dames, who will imitate their betters. . . . And this is one hurt which the better rankedoe by their ill example; egge and imbolden the lower ones to follow them to their losse: were it not better for Us greater persons to keepe God's ordinance & to shew the meaner their dutie in our good example? I am sure wee have more helpes to performe it, and have fewer probable reasons to alleage against it then women that live by hard labour and painfull toile.44Ibid., C2r.Clinton sees the consistent use of wet nurses by the nobility and gentry as a social evil, with the ill-advised customs of the wealthy corrupting the lower ranks. Speaking to her peers, "Us greater persons," she tries to convince these women that maternal nursing is an important demonstration of social, as well as religious, responsibility.Clinton does, however, seem to show some sympathy to women whose duties include both their daily work in the fields or home and the nursing of children. Her concern with the economic discrepancies involved in breastfeeding becomes evident when she pleads with wealthy women, "Therefore no longer be at the trouble, and at the care to hire others to doe your owneworke .. . . bee not accessary to that disorder of causing a poorer woman to banish her owne infant for the entertaining of a richer womans child, as it were, bidding her unlove her owne to love yours." 45Ibid., D2v-D2r. Clinton's perspective on wet nursing is clearly skewed by her social position, but her status does not prevent her from seeing the problems it creates on all economic levels. Although Clinton employs a variety of social and economic approaches for rhetorical purposes, much of her treatise promotes spiritual reform: she wants to recall mothers to their Christian duty. In the dedicatory letter to her daughter-in-law Briget Clinton, she calls breastfeeding "a duty, which all mothers are bound to performe" in order to be to be answerable to "all holy commands of the Holy God." 46Ibid., A3r. Clinton also ties maternal breastfeeding to the essence of being a good Christian woman and the performance of the duty as a daily lesson in right living: "Thinke again how your Babe crying at your breast, sucking heartily the milke out of it and growing by it, is the Lords owne instruction, every houre, and every day that you are suckling it, instructing you to shew that you are his new borne Babes, by your earnest desire after his word. . . . 47Ibid., D3v. The figurative nursing performed by God to all Christians, which is referred to in Peter 2:2, 481 Peter 2:2-3 states "As newborne babes desire the syncere milk of the word, that ye may growe thereby. It so be that ye have tasted how bountifull is the Lord." See The Geneva Bible: A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition, Introduction by Lloyd Berry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969). It seems likely from an examination of other Biblical allusions in Clinton's work that she used the Geneva Bible so popular among nonconformists, rather than the Authorized Version. is strengthened by the literal nursing relationship between a mother and child. Clinton wants women to do their duty to God, to their children, and to their own souls by breastfeeding whenever they are able.Clinton also couches the choice not to breastfeed as willful disobedience to God's words, castigating those women who chose "their own pleasures" above the "expresseordinance of God that mothers should nurse their owne children." 49The Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie, B2v. Clinton, however, carefully delineates who is excused from the duty:O doeknowe that the Lord may deny some women, either to have any milke in their breasts at all, or to have passage for their milke, or to have any health, or to have a right minde: and so they may be letted from this duty, by want, by sicknesse, by lunacy, &c. But I speake not to these: I speake to you whose consciences witnes against you, that you cannot justly alleage any of those impediments.50Ibid., D1r.Clinton addresses women directly, clearly indicating her audience and her mission as a preacher. Her direct address to women, "you whose consciences witnes against you," marks her text as a lecture, even a sermon.Clinton's language becomes more intense as her argument about the spiritual necessity of breastfeeding progresses. She actively worries about the state of women's souls, crying out "Oh what peace can there be to these womens consciences, unless through the darknesse of their understanding they judge it no disobedience." 51Ibid., B2v. At the height of her lecture, Clinton exclaims:Oh consider, how comes our milke? Is it not by the direct providence of God? Why provides he it, but for the child? The mothers then that refuse to nurse their owne children, doe they not despise Gods providence? Doe they not deny Gods will. . . . Oh impious, and impudent unthankfullness; yea, monstrous unnaturalness, both to their owne natural fruit borne so neare their breasts, and fed in their wombes, and yet may not be suffered to sucke their ownemilke.52Ibid., C2v-C2r.Moving away from the sympathy of earlier passages, Clinton's tone becomes noticeably strident. She is, in essence, preaching. Instead of framing her argument in terms of women's modesty and duty, she turns the use of wet nurses into a bona fide sin.It is clear from even a brief examination of other Puritan texts about breastfeeding that Elizabeth Clinton, by writing and publishing The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie, contributes to the lively early modern cultural and religious debates about appropriate maternal behavior. Twentieth-century historians have not been so willing to allow Clinton a role in these discursive efforts to regulate maternity. Antonia Fraser, for instance, believes that Clinton wrote her tract merely because she, like so many other women, had encountered neglectful nurses and wanted to prevent any further loss of life; she elides Clinton's intense religious motivation, and the preaching it inspired. Other feminist studies relegate Clinton's work into the limiting category of a woman writing to other women "for the benefit of their own sex." 53Patricia Crawford, "The Construction and Experience of Maternity in Seventeenth Century England," in Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England, ed. Valerie Fildes (London: Routledge: 1990), 3-38. See also Suzanne Hull, Chaste, Silent, and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475-1640 (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1982). Large portions of Clinton's tract have been recently reproduced and lightly edited in two volumes of primary documents about early modern women. See Kate Aughterson's Renaissance Woman: A Sourcebook, Constructions of Femininity in England (London: Routledge, 1995. 116-120); and Lay By Your Needles Ladies, Take the Pen: Writing Women n England, 1500-1700, ed. Suzanne Trill, Kate Chedgzoy, and Melanie Osborne (London: Arnold Press, 1997. 119-124). However, analysis of how influential Clinton's preaching and this same-gender interaction might have been is lacking in all modern critical works about The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie.Margaret King, for instance, places severe limitations on Clinton's work:Such works [women authored texts] were private and personal, and did not claim to enter upon the masculine territory of literary production. They drew on personal experience and were addressed to an intimate circle. As the English Countess of Lincoln Elizabeth Knevet Clinton explained, amid pages of exhortation to her daughter in law about the proper care and nurture of her children, "I leave the larger and learneder discourse here-of unto men of art, and learning: only I speak of so much as I reade and know in mine owne experience, which if any of my sexe and condition do receave good by, I am glad."54Margaret L. King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 214.By concluding that Clinton herself restricted her work, King neglects an important literary trope. Although Clinton's meek "I leave the larger and learneder discourse here-of unto men of art" seems to efface her authority as a writer, it is, in fact, a standard ploy of the woman writer (and of many male writers, too) in the early modern period. As Margaret Ezell observes, "Read in this company [of amateur male writers], women authors seem no more modest than their male contemporaries; rather than pleading pressing business or spiritual concerns which prevent the author from attempting true scholarship as many male writers do, they simply plead their sex." 55Margaret J.M. Ezell, The Patriarch's Wife: Literary Evidence and the History of the Family (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 88. In this context, Clinton finesses a literary tactic to make her writing more effective. By partially obscuring her own authority, Clinton seems less strident and thus more feminine, which in turn authenticates her voice and her opinions.By rhetorically manipulating her femininity, Clinton knows she confers authority on her tract:Because it hath pleased God to blesse me with so many children, and so caused me to observe many things falling out to mothers, and to their children; I thought it good to open my minde concerning a speciall matter belonging to all childe-bearing women, seriously to consider of: and to manifest my minde the better, even to write of this matter, so farre as God shall please to direct me.56Clinton, The Countess of Lincolnes Nurserie, B1r.At this point, she specifically situates herself as a mother speaking to other mothers--her maternal experience provides justification for publishing her views, and she does so only "so farre as God shall please to direct" her. By the end of the tract, though, she states that her purpose in writing is "by doing my endeavor to prevent many Christian mothers from sinning in the same kind, against our most loving and gratious God." 57Ibid., D1v. Her impetus to prevent sin by publicly lecturing women is only marginally tempered by her claim that "I write in modestie." 58Ibid., C3v. Although she is "direct[ed]" by God, Clinton asserts herself and her moral beliefs to teach her peers.In this light, then, Elizabeth Clinton, the Countess of Lincoln, is not merely a woman writing to other women, or a concerned mother hoping to save her daughters and grandchildren from sin and danger. In part, she is a Christian voice speaking out to other Christians, exhorting and preaching to them about their duties to God; in part, she is a noblewoman using her place and her authority to appeal to her peers; and in part, she is a writer working to stabilize the vexed position of parents affected by the cultural ambivalence about maternal breastfeeding. The annotated text that follows clearly demonstrates that through effective and varied rhetoric, Clinton inserts herself, her voice and opinions, into a discourse on proper and godly childbearing.VI. Editorial PracticeI have designed the edition which follows with both the scholar and student of early modern literature in mind. I have left the original punctuation and spelling as they appear in the 1622 first edition. I have, for the sake of clarity, silently emended i/j, f/s, u/v, and vv/w. I have also retained the original orthography and italicization since they covey emphasis unavailable in purely Roman typeface.When annotating the text, I provided extensive Biblical citation and quotation to allow the reader to more fully grasp the rich tapestry Clinton weaves using Scripture as her guide; from personal experience I also know that a reference to a Bible chapter and verse is not as instructive--due to basic laziness--as the full text of one is. I likewise gloss unusual vocabulary, as well as references to further reading, when I believe it would be helpful.VII. Biographical EssayElizabeth Knevet, daughter of Sir Henry Knevet and Anne Pickering, was born in Charlton, Wiltshire, in 1574, the year her father was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I. Although her birth is not recorded in the parish register for Charlton, it is recorded in the family Bible. 59The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (eds. Virginia Blain et.al., New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) lists her mother as Elizabeth Stumpe. The Encyclopedia of British Women Writers (eds. Pal Schulter and Jane Schulter. New York: Garland, 1988) gives the name Anne Pickering, as well as including the information about dating Clinton's birth. The Knevets were a genteel family of some fortune, although generally unimportant in court; Elizabeth's brother Thomas did rise to power in the reign of King James I, when he became a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to James, as well as receiving a baronetcy on July 4, 1607 for his role as Justice of the Peace for Westminster in helping to unmask the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. 60Sir Bernard Burke, Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerages (London: Harrison Booksellers, 1883), 472. Her sister, Susanna, was married to the powerful nobleman, Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk. Clearly, the Knevets commanded sufficient status and wealth to ensure that their male children obtained rank and privilege through politics, and that marriage did the same for the female offspring.Elizabeth Knevet's date of birth is corroborated by a statement in the Knyvett Letters that at the age of ten, Elizabeth Knevet was married to Thomas Clinton in 1584. 61The Biographical Dictionary of British Women Writers, 1580-1720 (ed. Maureen Bell. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1990) lists the Knyvett Letters (Norfolk Records Society, 1949) as the source of information about Clinton's marriage. Her husband, Thomas Clinton, was born in 1571, and was the Eleventh Baron Clinton and Third Earl of Lincoln; he inherited these titles at the death of his father in 1610, before which he and his wife were simply Lord and Lady Clinton. The Clintons are, according to Burke's Dormant andExtinct Peerages, the ancestors of the extant Dukes of Newcastle. 62Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerages, 472. As Lady Clinton and Countess of Lincoln, Elizabeth Clinton bore her husband, according to her own account, eighteen children. She states near the end of her essay that "of all those [nurses] which I had for my eighteene children, I had but two which were throughly willing and carefull." The Female Spectator notes that the children were seven sons and nine daughters, "few of whom survived childhood." 63Mary R. Mahl and Helene Koon, The Female Spectator: Women Writers Before 1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977) 88. Thomas Clinton died in 1618, and at the probating of his will in 1620, the couple had seven surviving children: one son, Theophilus, who inherited his father's title and lands, and six daughters, Fraunces, Arabella, Susan, Dorcas, Sara, and Elizabeth. One of them, Arabella, emigrated to New England with the John Winthrop party in 1629, but died shortly after arriving at the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 64Ibid., 89.Elizabeth Clinton was thus Dowager Countess of Lincoln when she composed and published The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie, which she dedicated to her daughter-in-law, Briget Clinton. Through Briget, Clinton had nine grandchildren, and it is their mother's virtuous behavior that inspires the treatise. Although Clinton styles the tract "the first worke of mine that ever came in Print," none else survive. Clinton herself died in 1630, eight years after the publication of The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie, and is buried in the parish church in Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire. 65Encyclopedia of British Women Writers, 109.The Countesse of Lincolnes NurserieClinton, Elizabeth KnevetTHE COUNTESSE OF LINCOLNES NURSERIEAT OXFORDPrinted by John Lichfield and James Short, Printers to the famous Universitie, 1622.To the Right Honorable, and approved vertuous Lady, Briget, Countesse of Lincolne1Briget Clinton, Countess of Lincoln, was the author's daughter-in-law, that is, the wife of Elizabeth Clinton's son Theophilus, who succeeded as fourth Earl of Lincoln at his father's death in 1619. Accordingly to William Oldys, the editor of The Harleian Miscellany (Vol. IV. London: White and Co., 1809), Briget Clinton had two sons and seven daughters.For the better expressing & keeping in memorie of my Love, and your Worthines, I do offer unto your Ladyship: the first worke of mine that ever came into Print 2This statement would seem to imply that Elizabeth Clinton has other literary works; none are known extant. See the entry on Clinton in Paul Schuleter and June Schuleter, eds. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers (New York: Garland, 1988) 109.; because your rare example, hath given me an excellent approbation to the matter contained in this Booke; for you have passed by all excuses, and have ventured upon, & doegoe on with that loving act of a loving mother; in giving the sweetemilke of your owne breasts 3Although this line has a Biblical savor, no applicable Biblical quotations have been located. The focus on the sweetness of the milk is consistent, however, with medical literature of the time. See The Complete Midwife's Practice (1663), as well as Jane Sharp's The Midwives Book (1671) which notes that breast milk "must be white and sweet scented, if it smell sowr or burnt, it will corrupt the stomach" (Brown Women Writers Project Draft in Process, 151.) The statement is thus both literal and figurative., to your owne child; wherein you have gone before the greatest number of honourable Ladies of your place, in these latter times. But I wish many may follow you, in this good work, which I desire, to further by my kind persuasion. And such women as will vouchsafe to read this little treatise; may be put in mind of a duty, which all mothers are bound to performe; and I shall be glad if any will consider, and put in practice, that which is both naturall and comfortable. I hope they will at the least commend with me such as do this good deede, and no more speakescornefully of that which is worthy of great praise; and for my part I thinke it an honour unto you, to doe that which hath proved you to be full of care to please God, and of naturall affection, and to bee well stored with humility, and patience, all of which are highly to be praised; to give praise to any person or thing deserving praise, I dare doe it, & and for this lovely action of yours I can with much thankfulnesse praise God, for all his gracious gifts of grace and Nature, whereby he hath inabled you, to doe the same: desiring also with my heart, that you may ever, and every way honour God, who hath honoured you many wayes, above many women; and I rejoice, that I can bearewitnes, that God hath adorned you with faire tokens of his love 4I.e., children. and mercy to your soule; As the practice of true Christian religion; dedicating your selfe to Gods service; answerablenesse to all holy commands of the holy God, which are Testimonies of Gods love, and doth challenge a very great esteeme from me, amongst the rest, that can truly judge and rightly discerne what is best 5Clinton seems to be paraphrasing Luke 12:57 here: "And why judge ye not of your fellows what is right?" In general, Clinton seems to quote or paraphrase the 1561 Geneva Bible, rather than the Authorized Version of 1611.; I am full of thoughts in this kind or of this matter: yet I say no more but this, Goe on and prosper, Hold fast all that is good, trust in God for strength to grow 6A general tenet, but also an oblique reference to 1 Peter 2:2-3, "As newborne babes desire the syncyremilke of the word, that ye may growe thereby. It so be that ye have tasted how bountifull is the Lord." and continue in faithfull obedience to his glorious majesty, And I will not cease to intreat the Lord of heaven, to powre7I.e., pour.aboundantly all Blessings of heaven and earth upon you, and your children, as they increase in number.Your Ladyship: in the best and fastest 8In this sense, "fastest" means earnest and steady (OED). The Harleian Miscellany reprints it as "safest," but in the UMI microfilm of the 1622 edition, it is clearly an "f." love ELIZABETH LINCOLNE.Preface to the Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie: TO THE COURTEOUS, chiefly most Christian, ReaderTO THE COURTEOUS, chiefly most Christian, Reader.The Generall Consent of too many mothers in an unnaturall practise, (most Christian Reader) hath caused one of the Noblest and Fairest hands in this land to set pen to paper. As ashamed to see her sex farther degenerate; desirous for the glory thereof, to have all both rightly know, and answere their kind,9"Kind" here means more than just "type." It carries the additional meanings of "nature," "birth (i.e. nobility)," and "gender" (OED). hath made Honour it selfe stoop to these paines; which now shee sends thee to peruse. Three things easily invite to read what to view is offred. Eminency, or Interest in the Author, rarity in the handled Matter; Brevity in the quicke dispatch. These three meet in this won.10Apparently a printer's error or alternative spelling. I believe the sense supports "one." The Author so eminent in Honor; thou canst hardly be anciently Honourable; and not be interested in her Honours acquaintance; scarcely not Alliance. Next for the Rareness, a peculiar tract of this subject, I believe, is not in thine hands. 11Lodge is correct here. Only one other exclusive treatment of this topic has been located, Henry Newcome's 1695 treatise, The Compleat Mother, or an Earnest Perswasive to Mothers. . . Other discussions of the necessity and godliness of maternal breastfeeding are all embedded in longer moral tracts and medical works, such as William Gouge's popular Of Domestical Duties (London, 1622). See the Introduction, Section II for further discussion. Lastly, it is so briefe, as I am perswaded, it smoothly gliding thee along in the reading, Thy sorrow will be, it lands12"Lands" in the sense of brings to shore, thus ending a journey. thee so soone. What may give satisfaction of a Reader, let me acquaint thee next, is here to be found. These are two things; Usefulness of the subject; Fulness 13"Fulness" here means "completeness" or "perfection" (OED). See, for instance the phrase from the Book of Common Prayer, "the fulness of thy grace."for the prosecution. If method and soundnessecan make Full, this is Full. What not alone Confirmation ushering in the Assertion, but Refutation, for ushering out Objections can doe to making Sound and Through, this is Such. 14A difficult phrase due to its Latinate syntax. I believe Lodge is saying "This work is sound and thorough since not only are the author's assertions confirmed, but also any objections are carefully ushered out."The Accommodation to these particulars (Gentle Reader) I Leave to thy selfe, least because I am tedious while I am honoring Brevity. The Pay assure thy selfe, will bee larger then the promise. The Wine much better than the Bush. 15An apparently proverbial statement, but its source is unknown.This one word, and Ile stand out of the gate, thou mayst goe in. If Noble who readest, (likenesse is Mother and Nurse of liking 16A proverbial expression. The Dictionary of Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Proverbs, ed. Morris Tilley Palmer, ( Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1950) cites Clinton as an example of this phrase.) this comes from Nobility; Approve the rather, and practise. If meaner; blush to deny what Honour becomes speaker to purswade to, president 17"President" used as an adjective, i.e. "one who presides over or superintends" (OED).to lead the way to. And so I either humbly take my leave; or bid farewell.Blest is the land where sons of Nobles raigne.Blest is the land where Nobles teach their traine. 18"Traine" meaning "band of followers to a noble" (OED).To church for blisse great Kings, Queenes, should Nurses be. 19Lodge paraphrases Isaiah 49:23, "Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and Queens shall be thy nourses."To state its blisse great Dames Babes nurse to see.Go then, Great booke of Nursing plead the Cause.Teach High'st, lov'st all, it's Gods and Natures lawes.Thomas Lodge 20The Brown Women Writers Draft in Process of the Nurserie lists the initials only here. The UMI microfilm gives the author's full name, Thomas Lodge. Lodge (1558-1625) was a recusant Catholic solicitor, author, privateer, and physician. He is most famous for his 1590 romance, Rosalynde, one of Shakespeare's sources for As You Like It.THE COUNTESSE OF Lincolnes NurserieBecause it hath pleased God to blesse me with many children, and so caused me to observe many things falling out to mothers, and to their children; I thought good to open my minde concerning a speciall matter belonging to all childe-bearing women, seriously to consider of: and to manifest my minde the better even to write of this matter, so farr as God shall please to direct me 21This is the traditional pose of the Renaissance woman writer-she must use God's direction as an impetus to write. See Charlotte Otten's English Women's Voices, 1540-1720 (Miami: Florida International Press, 1992) for multiple examples, especially in the sections on mother's advice books and the female prophets of the seventeenth century.; in sume, the matter I mean, Is the duty of nursing due by mothers to their owne children.In setting downe whereof, I wil first shew that every woman ought to nurse her ownechilde; and secondly, I will endeavour to answere such objections, as are used to be cast out against this dutie to disgrace the same.The first point is easily performed. For it is the expresseordinance of God that mothers nurse their owne children, 22Clinton derives this injunction from many scattered Biblical passages, one of most obvious being Isaiah 49:15, "Can a woman forget her child, and not have compassion for the son her womb?" She does, however, neglect to use the following verse ("Though they shuld forget, yet I [God] will not forget thee") which implies that the maternal bond is breakable. The Authorized Version inserts the word "sucking" before "child," so it is possible Clinton was thinking of it as well. & being his ordinance they are bound to it in conscience. This should stop the mouthes of all replyers, for God is most wise 23[Author's note: Isaiah 31:2] The Scripture reads "But he is wisest." and therefore must needs know what is fittest and best for us to doe: & to prevent all foolish feares, or shifts, we are given to understand that he is also All sufficient 24[Author's note: Genesis 17:1] The Scripture cited by Clinton here discusses the covenant of circumcision, so her note is incorrect. 2 Corinthians 12:9, in which God says, "My grace is sufficient unto thee, for my power is made perfect through weakness" seems more applicable., & therefore infinetely able to blesse his owne ordinance, and to afford us meanes in our selves (as continuall experience confirmeth) toward the observance thereof.If this (as it ought) bee granted, then how venterous 25"Venter" has become "venture" in modern spelling, and thus Clinton means "adventurous" in the sense of foolish and rash. are those women that dare venter to do otherwise, and so to refuse, and by refusing to dispise that order, which the most wise and allmighty God hath appointed, and in steed therof to chuse their owne pleasures? Oh, what peace can there be to these womens consciences, unlesse through the darknesse of their understanding they judge it no disobedience?And then they will drive me to prove that this nursing and nourishing of their owne children in their own bosoms is Gods ordinance; they are very willfull, or very ignorant, if they make a question of it. For it is proved sufficiently to be their dutie, both by Gods word, and also by his works.By his word it is proved, first by Example, namely the example of Eve. For who sucked her sonnes Cain, Abel, Seth, &c. but her selfe? Which shee did not only of meere necessity, because yet not other woman was created; but especially because shee was their mother, and so sawe it was her duty: and because shee had a true naturall affection, which moved her to do it gladly. 26Genesis says nothing of Eve's nursing or her happiness at fulfilling her maternal role. Next the example of Sarah the wife of Abraham 27[Author's note: Genesis 21.7]. The passage reads "And she [Sarah] said, 'Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would have given children sucke? for I have borne him a sonne in his old age.'"; for shee both gave her sonne Isaac suck, as doing the dutie commanded of God: And also took great comfort and delight therein, as a duty well pleasing to herselfe; whence she spake of it, as of an action worthy to be named in holy rejoicing. 28Clinton is referring to Sarah's words in Genesis 21:6, "And Sarah said 'God has made me to rejoyce; all that heare shall rejoyce with me.'" Now if Sarah, so great a Princesse, did nurse her ownechilde, why should any of us neglect to doe the like, except (which God forbid) we thinkescorne to follow her, whose daughters it is out glory to be, 29[Author's note: 1 Peter 3:6]. Verses 5 and 6 are applicable: "As Sarah obeyed Abraham, and called him Syr: whose daughters ye are, whiles ye do wel." and which we be only upon this condition, that we imitate her well-doing. Let us looke therefore to our worthy Pattern, noting withal, that shee put her selfe to worke when she was very old, 30In Genesis 18:17, Sarah is reported to be ninety years old. and so might she better have excused her selfe, then we yonger women can: being also more able to hire, and keepe a nurse, then any of us. But why is shee not followed by most in the practise of this duty? Even because they want 31I.e., "Lack." her vertue and piety. This want is the common hinderance to this point of the womans obedience; for this want makes them want love to Gods precepts, want love to his doctrine, and like step-mothers, want due love to their own children.But now to another worthy example, namely that excellent woman Hannah, 32[Author's note: 1 Samuel 1:23] The passage reads "Elkanah her husband said unto her, 'Do what seemeth thee best, tary until thou hast weaned him'. . . So the women abode and gave her sonnesucke until she weaned him." who having after much affliction of minde obtained a sonne of God, whom she vowed unto God, shee did not put him to another to nurse, but nursed him her owneselfeuntill she had weaned him, & carried him to be consecrate unto the Lord: As well knowing that this duty of giving her childesucke, was acceptable unto God, as for the cause thereof shee did not sinne in staying with it at home from the yearly sacrifice: but now women, especially of any place, 33I.e., women from the nobility and gentry. and of little grace, doe not hold this duty acceptable to God, because ut us unacceptable to themselves: as if they would have the Lord to like, and dislike, according to their vaine lusts. 34Clinton is paraphrasing 1 Timothy 3:6 here, which is a discussion of sinful men and women. It particularly mentions "captive simple women, laden with sinnes, and led with divers lusts."To proceed, take notice of one example more, that is, of the blessed Virgin: as her womb bare our blessed Savior, so her pappe gave him sucke. 35See Luke 1:39-2:7 for a narrative of Jesus's birth. The Scripture does not note Mary's breastfeeding Jesus; however, at the Crucifixion, one of the daughters of Jerusalem cries out "Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the papps thou hast sucked" (Luke 11:27). Now who shall deny the owne mothers suckling of their own children to bee their duty, since every godly matrone hath walked in these steps before them: Eve, the mother of al the living, 36Eve is called "mother of all living" in Genesis 3:20. Sarah the mother of al the faithfull, Hannah so gratiously heard of God, Mary blessed among women, 37This appellation appears in Luke 1:42, immediately before the Magnificat, when Elizabeth cries out "Blessed art thou among women because the fruit of thy womb is blessed." and called blessed of al ages. And who can say but that the rest of holy women mentioned in the holy Scriptures did the like, since no doubt the speech of that noble dame, saying, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah should have given children sucke? 38[Author's note: Genesis 21:7] See Note 27 for the Scripture. was taken from the ordinary custome of mothers in those lesse corrupted times. And so much for proofe of this office, and duty to Gods ordinance, by his own Word according to the argument of Examples: I hope I shall likewise prove it by the same word from plainePrecepts39[Author's note: 1 Timothy 5:14] The "plaine Precepts" Clinton refers to concern women's roles: "I wil therefore that younger women marie, and beare children, & govern the house, and give none occasion to the adversarie to speake evill.". First from that Precept, which willeth the younger women to marry, and to Beare children, that is, not only to Beare them in the wombe, and to bring the forth, but also to Beare them on their knee, in their armes, and at their breasts 40[Author's note: Ver. 10] She references the reader to 1 Timothy 5:10, which states, regarding a widow's virtue "And wel reported of for good workes if she hath nourished her children.": for this Bearing a little before is called nourishing, and bringing up: and to inforce it the better upon womens consciences, it is numbered first of the good workes for which godly women should be well-reported of. And well it may be the first, because if holy Ministers, or other Christians doeheare of a good woman to be brought to bed, and her child to be living, their first questions usually is, whether she her selfe give it sucke, yea or no? if the answere be she doth, then they commend her: if the answere be she doth not, they are sorry for her. 41This anecdotal evidence of a social practice does not occur in the Bible, nor do any of the Puritan treatises (Gouge, Dod and Clever) mention it.And thus I come to a second Precept. I pray you, who that judges aright; doth not hold the suckling of her ownechilde the part of a true mother, of an honest mother, of a just mother, of a syncere mother, of a mother worthy of love, of a mother deserving of good report, of a vertuous mother, of a mother winning praise for it? 42Clinton makes this passage gender and role specific, modeling it on Philippians 4:8, "Furthermore, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever, things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are pertinent to love, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be anievertue, or if there be anie praise, thinke on these things." All this is assented to by any of good understanding. Therefore this is also a Precept, as for other duties, so for This of mothers to their children, which saith, 43[Author's note: Philippians 4:8.] See Note 45. what soever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are worthy of love, whatsoever things be of good report, if there be any vertue, if there be any praise, thinke on these things, these things do and the God of peace shall be with you.So farre for my promise, to prove by the word of God, that it is his ordinance that women should nurse their owne children: now I will endeavour to prove it by his workes: First by his workes of judgement; if it were not his ordinance for mothers to give their children sucke, it were no judgement to bereave them of their milke, but it is specified to be a great judgement to bereave them thereof, & to give them dry breasts, 44This is the curse of the Israelites against their captors: "O Lord, give them; what wilt thou give them? give them a barren wombe & dry breast" (Hosea 9:14). therefore it is to be gathered, even from hence, that it is his ordinance, since to deprive them of meanes to doe it, is a punishment of them. I adde to this the worke that God worketh in the very nature of mothers, which proveth also that he hath ordained that they should nurse their owne children: for by his secret operation on the mothers affection is so knit by natures law to her tender babe, as she findes no power to deny to suckle it, no not when she is in hazard to lose her owne life, 45See The Autobiography of Alice Thornton (ed. Charles Jackson. Surtees Society, 1875), 92 for a vivid illustration of this. Thornton, suffering from almost a year's post-partum weakness after her daughter Betty's birth, worries that the cries of her ill older daughter Alice will "lessen my milk" and rejoices when, two weeks later, she recovers and is "overjoyed to give my sweete Betty sucke." by attending on it, for in such a case it is not said, let the mother fly, and leave her infant to the perill, as if she were dispensed with: but only it is said woe to her. As if she were to be pitied, that for nature to her child, she must be unnaturall to her selfe: now if any then being even at liberty, and in peace, with all plenty, shall deny to give sucke to their owne children, they goe against nature: and shew that God hath not done so much for them 46[Author's note: Lamentations 7:3] There is no chapter 7 in Lamentations, thus Clinton's (or the printer's) reference is in error. See Note 47 for the applicable passage. as to worke in any good, no not in their nature, but left them more savage then the Dragons, 47See Lamentations 4:3, "Even the dragons drawe out the breasts & give sucke to their yong, but the daughters of my people is become cruell like ye ostriches in the wildernes." and as cruell to their little ones as the Ostriches. 48Clinton here paraphrases Job 39:16-19 as well as the Lamentations passage above, where the ostrich is berated because he "sheweth himselfe cruell unto his yong ones, as they were not his, and is without feare, as if he had travailed in vain." The gloss to the passage adds that the bird is "without naturall affection toward his yong," i.e., precisely Clinton's argument.Now another worke of God, proving this point is the worke of his provision, for every kinde to be apt, and able to nourish their own fruit: there is no beast that feeds their young with milke, but the Lord, even from the first ground of the order of nature, Growe and multiplie, 49Part of the Israelites covenant with God is that "he will love thee and blesse thee, & multiplie thee: he will also blesse the frute of thy wombe" (Deuteronomy 7:13). hath provided it of milke to suckle their own young, which every beast takes so naturally unto, as if another beast come forward to offer the office of a Damme unto it, they show according to their fashion, a plaine dislike of it: as if nature did speake in them, and say it is contrary to Gods order in nature, commanding each kinde to increase, and multiplie in their owne bodies, and by their owne breasts, not to bring forth by one Damme, and to bring up by another: 50Gouge's Of Domesticall Duties states that God "hath made it a matter of impossibility for women to beare and bring forth their children by another" (L12v). but it is his ordinance that every kinde should both bring forth, and also nourish its owne fruit.Much more should this work of God prevaile to purswade women, made as man in the image of God, 51This is the description of man from Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in our own image." and therefore should be ashamed to be put to schoole to learne good nature of the unreasonable creature. In us also, as we knowe by experience, God provideth milke in our breasts against the time of our childrens birth, and this he has done ever since it was said to us also, Increase and multiply, so that this worke of his provision sheweth that hee tieth us likewise to nourish the children of our ownewombe, with our owne breasts even by the order of nature: yea, it sheweth that he so careth for, and regardeth little children even from the wombe, 52Perhaps an oblique reference to Psalm 127:3, "Behold children are the inheritance of the Lord, and the frute of the wombe his reward." that he would have them nursed by those that in all reason will looke to them with the kindest affection, namely their mothers; & in giving them milke for it, hee doth plainly tell them that he requires it.Oh consider, how comes our milke? 53Compare Clinton's religious emphasis with the ancient medical ones discussed in Thomas Lacquer's Making Sex: The Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1990) where breast milk is viewed as a refined form of menstrual blood. See also Gail Kern Paster's The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1993), especially Chapters 4 and 5 for a discussion of nursing and humoral theory. is it not by the direct providence of God? Why provides he it, but for the child? The Mothers then that refuse to nurse their owne children, doe they not despise Gods providence? Doe they not deny Gods will? Doe they not as it were say, I see, O God, by the meanes thou hast put in to me, that thou wouldst have me nurse this child thou hast given me but I will not doe so much for thee. Oh impious, and impudent unthankfullnesse; yea monstrous unnaturalnesse, both to their own natural fruit borne so neare their breasts, and fed in their ownewombes, and yet may not be suffered to sucke their ownemilke. And this unthankfullnesse, and unnaturalnesse is oftner the sinne of the Higher, and the richer sort then of the meaner and the poorer, except some nice 54"Nice" in the sense of overly precise, foolish, wanton, fastidious. (OED). and prowd idle dames, who will imitate their betters, till they make their poore husbands beggars. And this is one hurt which the better rankedoe by their ill example, egge, and imbolden the lower ones to follow them in their losse: were it not better for Us greater persons to keepe Gods ordinance, & to shew the meaner their dutie in our good example? I am sure wee have more helpes to performe it, and have fewer probable reasons to allege against it, then women that live by hard labour, & painfull toile. 55The economic issues involved with maternal versus wet nursing are well-documented in both Renaissance sources and modern historiography. See Valerie Fildes's Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), Chapters 4-6 for a thorough summary. If such mothers as refuse this office of love, & nature to their children, should hereafter be refused, despised, and neglected of those their children, were they not justly requited according to their unkind dealing? I might say more in handling this first point of my promise, but I leave the larger, and learneder discourse hereof unto men of art, and learning: only I speake of so much as I reade, and knowe in my owne experience, which if any of my sexe, and condition do receave good by, I am glad: if they scorne it, they shall have the reward of scorners. I write in modestie, and can reape no disgrace by their immodest folly. 56The most obvious connection of writing, which is tantamount to public speech, and immodesty appears in 1 Timothy 2:11-12, "Let the woman learne in silence with all subjection. I permit not a woman to teache, nether to usurpeauthorite over a man, but to be in silence."And so I come to the last part of my promise, which is to answere objections made by divers 57I.e., diverse or many. against this duty of mothers to their children.First it is objected that Rebeckah had a nurse, and that therefore her mother did not give her sucke of her owne breasts, 58There is no direct narrative of Rebeckah's childhood in Genesis. She first appears, apparently an adolescent accompanied by servants, as a prospective wife for Isaac. See Note 61. and so good women, in the first ages, did not hold them to this office of nursing their owne children. To this I answer, that if her mother had milke, and health, and yet did not put this duty from her to another, it was her fault, & so proveth nothing against me. But it is manifest that she that Rebeckah calleth her nurse, was called so, either for that she most tended her while her mother suckled her: or for that she weaned her: or for that during her nonage, 59I.e., legal infancy or youth. and childhood, shee did minister to her continually such good things as delighted, and nourished her up. For to any one of these the name of a nourse is fitly given; whence a good wife is called her husbands nourse: and that Rebeckahsnourse60[Author's note: Genesis 24:61] Clinton's version is almost an exact quotation: "Then Rebeckah arose, and her maides." was only such a one, appeareth, because afterward she is not named a nourse, but a maide, saying: Then Rebeckah rose and her maides, now maides give not suck out of their breasts, never any virgin, or honest maide61Clinton expressly conflates the meaning of maid as both servant and virgin here to serve her argument. gave suck, but that blessed one from an extraordinary & blessed power. 62I.e., The Virgin Mary.Secondly it is objected, that it is troublesome; that it is noysome63"Noisome" means both harmful or offensive and ill-smelling (OED). to ones clothes; that it makes one looke old, &c. 64These objections are also raised and refuted in Erasmus's "'The Woman in Childbed" (Colloquies. London: 1671) V2r, Dod and Clever's A Godly Forme of Household Government (London: 1612) O2r, and in Gouge's Of Domesticall Duties (London: 1622) L12r. All such reasons are uncomely, and unchristian to be objected: and therefore unworthy to be answered, they argue unmotherly affection, idlenesse, desire to have liberty to gadd from home, pride, fool finesse, lust wantonnesse, & the like evills. AskeSarah, Hannah, the blessed Virgin, and any modest loving mother, what trouble they accounted it to give their little ones sucke? behold most nursing mothers, and they be as cleane and sweet in their cloathes, and carry their age, and hold their beautie, as well as those that suckle not and most likely are they so to doe, because keeping God's Ordinance, they are sure of Gods Blessing: and it hath beene observed in some women that they grew more beautifull, and better favoured, by very nursing their owne children. But there are some women that object feare; saying that they are so weake, & so tender, that they are afraid to venter to give their children sucke, least they indanger their health thereby. 65See Fildes's Wet Nursing (London: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 88-90 for a discussion of women's fears about nursing. Of these, I demand, why then they did venter to marry, and so to beare children, and if they say they could not chuse, and that they thought not that marriage would impaire their health, I answere that for the same reasons should they set themselves to nurse their owne children, because they should not chuse but doe what God would have them to doe: and they should beleeve that this worke will be for their health also, seeing it is ordinary with the Lord to give good Stomache, health, and strength to almost all mothers that take this paines with their children. 66What Clinton phrases as a commonplace has not been located in midwifery treatises; Gouge, however, does employ the phrase "The drawing forth of a womansmilke by her childe is a means to get and preserve a good stomach, which is a great preservative of good health" (Of Domesticall Duties, L12r). One answere more to all the objections that use to be made against giving children sucke, is this, that now the hardness, to effect this matter, is much remooved by a late example of a tender young Lady, 67It is unknown whether Clinton meant a specific unnamed woman or her daughter-in-law Briget. and you may all be encouraged to follow after, in that wherein she hath gone before you, & so made the way more easie, and more hopefull by that which shee findeth possible and comfortable by Gods blessing, and no offense to her Lord nor her selfe: she might have had as many doubts, and lets, 68I.e., hindrances or obstructions (OED). as any of you, but she was willing to try how God would enable her, & he hath given her good successe, as I hope he will doe to others that are willing to trust in God for his helpe.Now if any reading these few lines returne against me, that it may bee I my selfe have given my own children suck: & therefore am bolder, and more busie to meddle in urging this point, to the end to insult over, & to make them bee blamed that have not done it. I answer, that whether I have, or have not performed this my bounden duty, I will not deny to tell my owne practise. I knowe & acknowledge that I should have done it; it was not for want of will in my selfe, but partly that I was overruled by anothers authority, 69This biographical information is vague, but it is likely that Clinton means her husband, who would have objected to abstaining from sexual relations with his wife while she lactated, so that she produce as many children as possible for heirs. See Valerie Fildes Breasts, Bottles and Babies (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1986) 152-210. She may also be referring to her mother-in-law, with whom she resided; because Clinton was only ten when she married and fifteen at the birth of her first child, the older woman likely had significant influence on her youthful daughter-in-law. and partly deceived by some ill counsell, & partly I had not considered so well of my duty in this motherly office, as since I did when it was too late for me to put it into execution. Wherefore being pricked in hart 70See Acts 2:37, "Now when they heard it, they were pricked in their hearts and said unto Peter and the others, 'Brethren, what shal we do?'" for my undutifullnesse, this way I study to redeeme my peace, first by repentance towards God, humbly and often craving his pardon for this my offence: secondly by studying how to shew double love to my children to make them amends for neglect of this part of love to them, when they should have hung on my breasts, & have been nourished in mine owne bosome: thirdly by doing my endeavour to prevent many christian mothers from sining in the same kinde, against our most loving and gratious God.And for this cause I add unto my performed promise, this short exhortation: namely I beseech all godly women to remember, how we elder ones are commanded to instruct the yonger, to love their children, 71See Titus 2:3-4, "The Elder women, likewise, that they be in such behavior that becometh holiness . . . . That they may instruct the younger that they love their husbands, that they love their children." now therefore love them so as to do this office unto them when they are borne, more gladly for love sake, then a stranger, who bore them not, shall do for lucre sake, 72The Biblical scorn for "filthy lucre" is recorded in 1 Timothy 3:3, Titus 1:7, and 1 Peter 5:2. Also I pray you to set no more so light by Gods blessing in your owne breasts, which the holy Spirit ranketh with other excellent blessings, if it be unlawfull to trample underfeet a cluster of grapes, 73See Numbers 13:24, "when they cut downe a branch with on cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two. . . . " in which a little wine is found; then how unlawfull is it to destroye and drie up those breasts, in which your owne child (and perhaps Gods very elect, to whom to be a nourishing father, is a Kings honour; and to whom to be a nourishing mother, is a Queens honour) 74The phrase "nursing father" appears in Numbers 11:12, but the specific reference here is Isaiah 49:23, "And Kings shall be thy nursing fathers and Queens shal be thy nourses. . . ." might finde food of synceremilke, 75See Note 8 for the Scriptural reference here. even from Gods immediate providence, untill it were fitter for stronger meat? 76Clinton condenses and cleverly applies a series of verses from Hebrews 5: 12-14 here: ". . . yet have ye nedeagaine yet we teche you the first principles of the worde of God: and are become suche as have need of milke, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milke, is inexperte in the worde of righteousnesse, for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of age, which through long custom have their wittes exercised, to discerne both good and evil." I doeknowe that the Lord may deny some women, either to have any milke in their breasts at all, or to have any passage for their milke, or to have any health. or to have a right minde so that they may be letted from this duty, by want, by sicknesse, by lunacy, &c. 77All the Puritan writers who address the subject of breastfeeding do allow for exceptions in the case of extreme ill-health or madness. See Fildes' Breasts, Bottles, and Babies 406-407 for statistics regarding exceptions. But I speake not to these: I speake to you, whose consciences witness against you, 78See Romans 2:15 and 9:1 for the use of the phrase "consciences bearing witness." that you cannot justly alleage any of those impediments.Doe you submit your selves, to the paine and trouble of this ordinance of God? trust not other women, whom wages hyres to doe it, better then your selves, whom God, and nature ties to do it. 79See the seventeenth-century proverbial expression about the greed of wet nurses, "Nurses put one bit in the child's mouth and two in their own" (Dictionary of 16th and 17th Century Proverbs, ed. Morris Palmer Tilley). I have found by grievous experience, such dissembling in nurses, pretending sufficiency of milke, when indeed they had too much scarcitie; pretending willingnesse, towardnesse, wakefullnesse, when indeed they had been most wilfull, most froward, and most slothfull, 80The catalogue of a nurse's faults is a standard part of this genre. See Fildes Babies, Breasts and Bottles 168-184 and Wet Nursing 79-100 for a survey of these faults in both moral and medical tracts. as I feare the death of one or two of my little Babes came by the defalt of their nurses. Of all those which I had for eighteene children, I had but two which were but throughly willing, and carefull: divers have had their children miscarry in the nurses hands, 81Infant mortality among nurslings was especially high due to the delay in feeding while a nurse was found, the lack of specific trans-placental immunity, and to "overlaying." See Fildes' Wet-Nursing 90-100. and are such mothers (if it were by the nurses carelessnesse) guiltless? I know not how they should, since they will shut them out of the armes of nature, and leave them to the will of a stranger; yea to one that will seeme to estrange her selfe from her ownechilde, to give sucke to the nurse-child. This she may faine to doe upon a covetous composition, but she frets at it in her minde, if she have nay naturall affection.Therefore be no longer at the trouble, and at the care to hire others to doe your owneworke: bee not so unnaturall to thrust away your owne children: be not so hardy as to venter a tender Babe to a lesse tender heart: bee not accessary to that disorder of causing a poorer woman to banish her owne infant, for the entertaining of a richer womans child, as it were, bidding her unlove her owne to love yours. 82See Gouge's Of Domesticall Duties, "For who are commonly chosen as nurses? even poore simple countrie women which have mucheworke to doe and little helpe, and so are forced to let their children lie and crie, many times til it burst again" (L1v). Wee have followed Eve in transgression, let us follow her in obedience. When God laid the sorrowes of conception, of breeding of bringing forth and of bringing up her children upon her, 83See Genesis 3:16 for Eve's burden: "I wil greatly increase thy sorrows & thy conceptions. In sorow thou shalt bring forth children. . . ." & so upon us in her loynes, did shee reply any word against? Not a word; so I pray you all mine owneDaughters, 84Clinton refers to her six grown daughters here. See Mary R. Mahl and Helene Koon, The Female Spectator: English Women Writers Before 1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977) 88-89. and others that are still child-bearing reply not against the duty of suckling them, when God hath sent you them.Indeed I see some, if the wether be wet, or cold; if they way be fowle; if the Church be far off, I see they are so coy, so nice, so lukewarme, they will not take paines for their own soules. alas, no marvell if these will not bee at trouble, and paine, to nourish their childrens bodies, but feare God, bee diligent to serve him; approove all his ordinances; seeke to please him; account it no trouble, or paine to do any thing that hath the promise of his blessing; and then you will, no doubt, doe this good, laudable, naturall, loving duty to your children. If yet you be not satisfied, inquire not of those that refuse to doe this: consult not with your owne conceit; advise not with flatterers: but aske the counsell of sincere, and faithfull Preachers. If you be satisfied; then take this with you, to make you do it cheerefully. Thinke always, having the child at your breast, and having it in your arms, you have Gods blessing there. For children are Gods blessings. Thinkeagaine how your Babe crying for your breast, sucking hartily the milke out of it, and growing by it, is the Lords owne instruction, every houre, and every day, that you are sucking it, instructing you to shew that you are his new borne Babes, 85See Note 6 for the text of this Scripture from 1 Peter 2:2. by your earnest desire after his word, & the sincere doctrine thereof, and by your daily growing in grace and goodnesse thereby, so shall you reape pleasure, and profit. Againe, you may consider, that when your childe is at your breast, it is a fit occasion to move your heart to pray for a blessing on that worke; and to give thanks for your child, and ability & freedom unto that, which many a mother would have done and could not; who have tried and ventured their health, & taken much paines, and yet have not obtained their desire. But they that are fitted every way for this commendable act, have certainly great cause to be thankfull: and I desire that God may have glory and praise for every good worke, and you much comfort, that doeseeke to honour God in all things. Amen.FINIS