Translation, Tragedy and Treatise 1450-1670

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 'I am young, no scholar and what I write I write by nature not by art' 
Elizabeth Polwhele, in The Faithful Virgins


At Dowriche House, home of Anne Edgcumbe Dowriche's husband's family.

Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Henry VII's Mother, is a translator of several texts. She owns huge estates in Devon and stays in Sampford Peverell circa 1488, at about the time when she requests Caxton to have the Romance Blanchardine and Eglatine printed.

Anne Locke Prowse, a protestant living in Exeter, circa 1590, translates Taffin's Of the Markes of the Children of God.

Anne Dowriche, born Anne Edgecumbe, spends all her life in the county and marries Hugh Dowriche, the Vicar of Lapford and Honiton. In 1590 she writes the epic poem, The Family Historie.

Anna Trapnel, a Fifth Monarchist prophet, travels down through Devon on her way to Cornwall in 1654: for her the stark landscape of Dartmoor is a sign of God.

Quakers Priscilla Cotton and Mary Cole are imprisoned in Exeter in 1655; they co-write the treatise To the Priests and People of England.

Susanna Parr, Religious apologist, defends herself against the tirade of Lewis Stuckely in 1659 in a treatise titled Susanna's Apologie Against the Elders.

Elizabeth Polwhele, who may have been born in Devon, possibly at Tiverton, or Whitchurch, composes the tragedy The Faithful Virgins, in the 1660's.

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