Prayer
In the early modern period, there were no rigid boundaries between science, religion and magic. Astrology is a good example of a practice that blended scientific and magical theory. And religious beliefs underpinned most divinatory methods: they worked by God’s grace to reveal his will. Prayer is perhaps not typically considered a divinatory practice, but some early modern men and women employed it as such. Astrologers might pray for their clients; in 1624, the clergyman and physician Richard Napier recorded that Lady Dimmock had requested his ‘prayers & astrolog[ical] observ[ations]’.1Quoted in Lauren Kassell and Robert Ralley, ‘Prayer and Physic in Seventeenth-Century England’, Early Science and Medicine 26 (2021), 480-50, at p. 504. Other individuals brought their queries personally to God, and sometimes they got answers.
As described in Eikon Basilike (1649), a work purportedly by Charles I, prayer was the soul’s ‘immediate converse with the divine majesty’.2Eikon Basilike (London, 1649), p. 125. Protestant theologicans typically agreed that God heard and answered prayers, but warned that humans could not expect the kind of direct communications recorded in the Bible. At most, God might infuse certain emotions into the soul, or bring pertinent passages of Scripture to mind. Some denominations, such as Quakers and Methodists, were more ready to countenance different forms of divine inspiration, but even relatively open-minded theologians were often wary. In the 1740s, a minister involved in the Scottish evangelical revivals expressed doubt about a recent convert: ‘I think this person should be cautioned … about not being hasty in regarding every impression on his mind, or occasional thoughts, as if they were all from the Lord’s Spirit’.3Quoted in D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2005), p. 211.
Inevitably, some individuals were unperturbed by the clerics’ cautions. Goodwin Wharton (1653-1704) had extensive internal conversations with God. In 1687, God allegedly advised him on how to play at the gambling table. He also promised to ‘be [Goodwin’s] pimp’, and assured him that he would seduce some five hundred women. These women included Goodwin’s stepmother, who recoiled from Goodwin’s advances, and Queen Mary of Modena (consort of King James II), who probably didn’t notice them.4See Wharton’s autobiography, British Library, Add. MSS 20,006–7 (2 vols); quoted in Frances Timbers, The Magical Adventures of Mary Parish: The Occult World of Seventeenth-Century London (Pennsylvania, 2016), p. 147.
David in prayer, from a psalter of 1501-2.5Detail from Girolamo dai Libri, psalter illustration, David in prayer (1501-2), Met Museum.
The story of Rachel Brown (b. 1712) and George Drummond (1687-1766)7From Edinburgh University Library, Dc.1.82-83 (2 vols), quotations at 1:234, 1:25, 1:34, 1:38, 1:5, 1:27, 1:232, 2:35, 2:169. See Martha McGill, ‘Seeking the Lord, Seeking a Husband: Navigating Marginality in the Diary of Rachel Brown (1736-38)’, in Allan Kennedy and Susanne Weston (ed.), Life at the Margins in Early Modern Scotland (Woodbridge, 2024).
Image credits:
1) George Cattermole, Dowie’s Tavern, Libberton’s Wynd (c. 1854), Wikimedia Commons.
2) George Drummond by George Chalmers (c.1720-c.1791), The Signet Library.
3) William Hoare, woman drawing (c. 1760), National Galleries of Scotland.
4) William Hoare, head study (c. 1760), National Galleries of Scotland.
5) Allan Ramsay after Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531), Madonna and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John (1754), National Galleries of Scotland.
6) George Drummond by Alexander Bell (c. 1752), National Galleries of Scotland.
7) William Hoare, woman wearing a bonnet looking down (c. 1760), National Galleries of Scotland.
8) William Hoare, woman standing (c. 1760), National Galleries of Scotland.
Between 1736 and 1738, a young Edinburgh woman called Rachel Brown kept a diary. Brown was educated and respectable, but she was impoverished. Her mother was dead; her brother was imprisoned for his debts. Brown herself regularly vomited blood, had feverish fits, and suffered from ‘looseness’ (diarrhoea). A committed Presbyterian, she found comfort in religion, and wrote at great length of her dealings with the deity. (Images are generic, excepting those of Drummond.)
Brown’s diary survives because it was transcribed by her friend George Drummond, a politician who served six times as Lord Provost of Edinburgh. He was a widower with ten children, and was chronically short of funds at the time of Brown’s writing. Drummond was twice Brown’s age, but the two had a very close relationship, founded on their mutual piety. In Drummond’s eyes, Brown was a saint.
Much of Brown’s diary chronicles wild fluctuation between a joyous belief in God’s love, and a dismayed conviction of her own wickedness. This was standard in spiritual writing from the period. However, Brown also developed an idiosyncratic relationship with God, detailing conversations in which he spoke freely with her and visions that would doubtless have raised eyebrows among Edinburgh’s more orthodox godly.
God advised Brown on her concerns. When she complained that ‘Mrs C.’ had ‘taken up a new pet’ at her, he vowed that ‘I will speak more fully to you about all her concerns than ever, and I will make her acknowledge that she has wronged you’. He also declared that ‘I’ll tell you as much of the secrets of my providence as ever I told a creature’, and offered to ‘[abide] in Scotland while sun and moon endures’ because of his love for her.
Through Brown, God promised to aid Drummond, and proffered advice on Drummond’s business affairs - although Drummond’s suggestion that he buy a lottery ticket, so that God could ‘work a complete deliverance’, met with disapproval. In July 1736, Brown had a vision in which she and Drummond were married. God declared: ‘I’ll make you mutual blessings to one another’, and vowed that their children would have uncommon honour and riches.
Drummond acknowledged that ‘I view [Brown] as my partner by Gods designation and appointment, she is therefore my choice’. However, he was waiting for God to clear their way on the financial front. The delay did not trouble him. In August 1738, he thanked God for the fact that ‘I see her every day with no more desire, then if we were of the same sex ... Thus blessed be his name we converse together in a holy innocence’.
There was worse to come. In October 1738, a friend of Drummond’s called Mrs Fenton suggested that he marry a rich widow, Hannah Parson. Drummond demurred, noting that the Lord (speaking through Brown) seemed to disapprove. However, Mrs Fenton then mentioned that she had prayed, and heard ‘What do you know if this woman’s money is not given to her, to be a blessing to him’. Drummond agreed to meet Parson, and found ‘nothing disagreeable either in her manner or person’.
Drummond stopped his own diary and his transcription of Brown’s in November 1738, and married Parson the following January. Brown’s alleged ability to divine God’s will through her prayers had given her a meaningful degree of influence - she had circumvented the barriers of womanhood and poverty in proposing marriage to Drummond - but did not, in the end, offer an actual escape. Her fate thereafter is unknown. Presumably she continued to turn to God for fortitude in the face of her difficulties.
Passage published in 1636 by the English Puritan theologian Thomas Goodwin, explaining how humans can detect God’s communications.8Thomas Goodwin, The Returne of Prayers (London, 1636), pp. 93-117.
[God’s] speaking to the heart in prayer may be discerned by these particulars … When God quiets, and calms, and contents the heart in prayer, which is done by speaking something to the heart, though what is spoken be not always discerned … If whilst thou art a-praying, God doth draw nigh to thy soul, and revealeth himself to it … God smiles upon thee, welcomes thee: falleth about thy neck and kisseth thee … When God stirs up in the heart a particular faith in a business … When God doth put a restless importunity into the heart.
Praying hands, by Albrecht Dürer (1508).9Wikimedia Commons.
1741 letter by the Welsh Independent minister Edmund Jones to the Methodist Howel Harris, describing predictions based on communion with God by his wife Mary.10National Library of Wales, MS 386D.
My dear spouse, who hath had the presence of the Lord last Thursday, from about 10 o clock till about sunset, in such a manner as made her cry out wonderfully, so that I never in my life saw the like before, tells me positively that the Lord will yet raise my head, and will yet own me to cast a light about me; and which I cannot but believe, because God was immediately with my dear spouse, yea, and she tells me God will help in building up the meeting house, and when it is finished, give his presence in it.
