Anne Wentworth

Anne Wentworth was born c. 1629 or 1630 to a Lincolnshire family. She married William Wentworth of London in either 1652 or 1653 and gave birth to a daughter in the late 1660s. After eighteen years in an unhappy marriage, Wentworth had a visit from God around 1670, restoring her faith and propelling her to spend the next seven years writing and perfecting her prophesying. She published her first work, A True Account of Anne Wentworth’s Being Cruelly, Unjustly, and Unchristianly Dealt with by Some of Those People Called Anabaptists, in 1676 (generally known as A True Account of Anne Wentworth). In her first piece, Wentworth reflects upon and addresses her husband’s patriarchal authority and domination, viewing it as a punishment from God. Though it took Wentworth seven years to publish her first work, she did not go unrecognized as a prophetess. Fellow Anabaptists (now Baptists) and other friends and acquaintances, including her husband, started to persecute Wentworth during the time she was expressing her prophetic voice. Because of the backlash she received from her own congregation, Wentworth left the church in 1675. It is unclear whether Wentworth was excommunicated after writing critiques on the church or whether she left on her free will. It is clear, however, that the abuse from both her husband, who sometimes used physical force, and other Baptists increased to the point that she could no longer remain a part of that local church.

In 1677 another autobiographical work appeared, A Vindication of Anne Wentworth, narrating her experiences of persecution in an attempt to justify her prophetic voice as truly authentic. In this work Wentworth predicted that the coming Apocalypse would occur before New Year’s Day, 1678. She even sent letters to both King Charles II and the Lord Mayor of London warning them of the Apocalypse. Her actions angered her husband to the point that he enlisted the help of three family members to remove his wife from their home in the summer of 1677. When the prophecy failed, Wentworth lost much of her popularity. Nevertheless, she continued to write, publishing in short order England’s Spiritual Pill and The Revelation of Jesus Christ (1679), a narrative of her experience in being called to prophesy by Christ. That same year Wentworth returned home to her husband and family. After the publication of The Revelation of Jesus Christ, Wentworth’s pen fell silent. She may be the Anne Wentworth of St. John’s Court who was buried at St. James’s Church in Clerkenwell on May 22, 1693. Wentworth’s publications allowed her a public voice within London’s dissenting community that most women never enjoyed or exercised. She fearlessly addressed those who opposed and persecuted her, even from within her own household. Despite this adversity, Wentworth managed to publish a number of works that provoked religious discussion and opinions and left a mark for herself as a prominent voice among England’s prophetesses in the mid- to late seventeenth century. 

For more on Wentworth, see Curtis Freeman, A Company of Women Preachers: Baptist Prophetesses in Seventeenth-Century England (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2011); Rachel Adcock, Baptist Women’s Writings in Revolutionary Culture, 1640-1680 (Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2015); W. Johnston, “Prophecy, Patriarchy, and Violence in the Early Modern Household: The Revelations of Anne Wentworth,”  Journal of Family History 34 (2009), 344-68; Vickie Taft, “Anne Wentworth's Life and Works,” Emory Women Writers Resource Project, Emory University (online resource). 

For the text of Wentworth's True Account (1676), available now on this website, click here.