Tears Against The Plague: A 17th Century Woman’s Devotional

A unique and important book for historians in religion, women’s studies, public health, and English history. A rare devotional text written in 1646 during an outbreak of bubonic plague. When a “gentlewoman of his acquaintance” complained that few devotional works were written by Protestants for women, John Featly, the exiled chaplain of King Charles I, wrote this in the voice of a woman seeking spiritual solace for seemingly inevitable holocaust. When the “Great Plague” struck London in 1665, someone known only as “S.K.” had Featly’s book reprinted for his (or her?) generation. It may have been an act of religious solidarity, or it may have been a profit venture. In this work, Featly offers pastoral counsel to the woman shut up in her house by quarantine. The authorities often marked red crosses on houses whose inhabitants had plague, to warn the community. Others quarantined themselves, fearing public contagion. Featly’s comfort takes the form of an extended treatise on sin, mourning and redemptive tears, a homiletic approach common in his day.