Anne Wentworth

Anne Wentworth was a seventeenth-century English prophetess and writer. Although a poor woman, she found followers and a patron prepared to fund the publishing of her religious writing. She was separated from her husband; their unstable relationship being the cause of her prophecies. Early years Most of what is known about Anne Wentworth has been derived from her four extant texts, which are autobiographical in nature. They do not give specific details of her early life but do suggest that she was born into a Lincolnshire family between 1629 and 1630. Career In 1652/1653, she married William Wentworth of London (Gill 115). In the late 1660s, Wentworth gave birth to a daughter (Taft). Several years later, around 1670, Wentworth experienced a restoration of faith in God after eighteen years in her unhappy marriage. After this "visitation" from God, Wentworth spent almost seven years writing and perfecting her craft, before publishing her first work, a pamphlet entitled, A True Account of Anne Wentworth's Being Cruelly, Unjustly, and Unchristianly Dealt with by Some of Those People Called Anabaptists (1676), more commonly referred to as A True Account of Anne Wentworth (Taft). In this piece, Wentworth reflects on the patriarchal domination of her husband, understanding it as punishment from God (Taft). Despite the seven years it took for Wentworth to finally publish her first work, her life as a prophetess did not go unrecognized (Taft). Her husband and fellow Anabaptist comrades (today referred to as Baptists) began to persecute Wentworth during this time as she expressed her prophetic voice. In 1675, it is unclear whether Wentworth was excommunicated from their church after writing critiques on it (Gill 115) or whether she left it of her own free will (Taft); however, it is clear that the abuse from her husband and fellow Anabaptists intensified after she no longer belonged to their local church.