Keywords

Introduction

Elizabeth Clinton (née Knevitt, also Knyvett), Countess of Lincoln (c. 1574–c. 1630), was the first woman to publish a tract advocating maternal breastfeeding. The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie (1622) was dedicated to Clinton’s daughter-in-law, Bridget Fiennes Clinton, who had chosen to nurse her own children rather than employing a wet nurse, as was usual for early modern elites (Fildes 1986). Clinton’s work was unique in its direct address to other women and its suggestion that women should choose maternal nursing despite their husbands’ wishes. Arguing that nursing one’s own child is both natural and godly, Clinton presents Bridget as an exemplar for all women and establishes herself and her daughter-in-law as authorities whose advice and practices are blessed by God.

Biography

Clinton was the daughter of Sir Henry Knevitt and Elizabeth Stumpe Knevitt, and married Thomas Clinton, Lord Clinton in or around 1584. According to the Nurserie, she was the mother of eighteen children, many of whom did not survive to adulthood. Thomas succeeded his father as third earl of Lincoln in 1616, but died three years later, leaving the title to Clinton’s eldest surviving son Theophilus. Theophilus and Bridget, dedicatee of the Nurserie and daughter of William Fiennes, first Viscount Saye and Sele, married in 1620 (Travitsky 2007).

The Clinton family appears to have played a leading role among Lincolnshire Puritans. Theophilus fought for Parliament during the Civil Wars, and two of Clinton’s daughters – Arbella and Susan – emigrated to New England in 1630 and 1635, respectively. The Clintons were closely allied with Thomas Dudley, his daughter Anne, and Anne’s husband Simon Bradstreet. Dudley was Theophilus’s steward, and Anne was raised at the Clintons’ estates at Sempringham and Tattershall. Dudley and the Bradstreets sailed with Arbella and her husband Isaac Johnson in 1630 (Luecke 2000; Wade 1971) (see Anne Bradstreet, Early Modern Women of the British Atlantic World).

Dudley continued to nurture his connection with the Clintons after his arrival in New England. A surviving letter from 1631 is addressed to Bridget and reports on the welfare of the recent emigrants, commemorating Lincolnshire’s foundational contribution to the emigrant project. In focusing on Bridget as a primary conduit of financial and moral support, Dudley confirms the position she holds in her mother-in-law’s nursing pamphlet: a spiritual exemplar and succor to the Lincolnshire godly (Bassnett 2016; Dudley 1802).

Work

The Countesse of Lincolnes Nurserie is Clinton’s only extant work, despite her suggestive identification of the pamphlet as “the first worke of mine that ever came in Print” (Clinton 1622, A2r). The blessing for Clinton’s unique contribution to this otherwise male-dominated field is given by medical practitioner and playwright Thomas Lodge, whose preface praises its “Rarity” and “Brevity” (Clinton 1622, A4r) (see Women and Medical Books in Print). Although the Nurserie has often been categorized alongside mother’s legacies and shares the genre’s concern with childrearing, it is not written from a deathbed perspective and speaks directly to other women rather than to the children the dying mother will leave behind (see Elizabeth Jocelin, Dorothy Leigh). Rather, the pamphlet’s specific focus on breastfeeding aligns it most directly with advice from medical practitioners and from Puritan divines such as John Dod, Robert Cleaver, and William Gouge.

Clinton’s voice is authoritative and direct, drawing on her own experience as a mother of many children. Although she admits she had relied on wet nurses for her own offspring, her pamphlet is in part an atonement. She blames her decisions on youthful inexperience and the “ill counsell” and wrongheaded “authority” of others, likely alluding to her husband and mother-in-law (Clinton 1622, C4v). In her new guise as breastfeeding advocate, Clinton aligns herself with God, citing biblical mothers, such as Eve and Mary, who nursed their own children. In contrast, wet nurses deny the natural and divinely ordained relationship between mother and infant. A woman who nurses her own child, Clinton claims, is exemplary for her virtue, beauty, and godliness.

Like other Puritan authors, Clinton believed that children ingested their mother’s spiritual and moral virtues through her breastmilk (Miller and Yavneh, 2000; Trubowitz 2012). Correspondingly, sucking faith through nourishment strengthened the religious community, expanding its religious and political base. Clinton signals this political intent through references to the book of Isaiah, particularly 49:23, which she rephrases in her suggestion that the newborn is “perhaps one of Gods very elect, to whom to be a noursing father, is a Kings honour; and to whom to be a noursing mother, is a Queens honour” (Clinton 1622, D1r). The nursing father role claimed by James I had already been challenged by Dorothy Leigh’s 1616 The Mothers Blessing (Gray 2001, 2007). Clinton’s dismissal of husbandly authority in favor of God’s “providence” and the “counsell of syncere, and faithfull Preachers” (Clinton 1622, C1v, D2v) evokes the early modern equation of family and state, and implicitly undermines the authority of the king. Holding up the new countess of Lincoln as the “noursing mother,” Clinton replaces James with a regional and female power (Bassnett 2016).

Conclusion

Clinton’s advice to mothers evokes many of the standard early modern tropes of virtue, nature, and health. But it also provides a remarkable example both of a woman’s medical and spiritual guidance and of her political investments. The Nurserie’s call for a return to maternal nursing among elites is also a call for community renewal that prefigures the transatlantic crossings of the 1630s. Recent work has suggested that Clinton was influential in encouraging Anne Bradstreet to imagine herself as a writer (Brackett 1995; Thickstun 2017). It is equally likely that Clinton inspired Bradstreet and her compatriots in their vision of Puritan colonialism.

Cross-References