Any modern study of St Patrick must recognise the essential truth in Binchy's observation that while ‘ we certainly know a great deal about St Patrick the man and the servant of God… of the life and labours of Patrick, apart from a few data furnished almost by accident in the Confessio and Epistola, we know virtually nothing’.1 It might, however, be more positively phrased to the effect that while we do not know many facts about Patrick's life, we know a great deal about how he saw his life.

The consistory court of the bishops of Ely by the fourteenth century regularly held its sessions in Cambridge, the largest and most prosperous city of the diocese. Ely itself was small, little more than a hamlet, and physically isolated. Recurrent flooding in the fens often cut off the roads leading into the Isle of Ely, and even at the best of times Ely tended to be rather out of the way. Although Cambridge was flat and lowlying, it rose just far enough above the level of the fenlands to be secure from all but the worst flooding, while the River Cam gave the city ready access to the commercial networks of eastern and southern England.

This paper argues that Puritanism and gender interacted in dialectic fashion in seventeenth-century England and changed one another significantly as a result of that interaction.1 Such Puritan strategies as reliance on the experience of the individual, extensive use of literacy, and infusion of spiritual issues into all activities deeply affected women's spirituality and their conventional roles in the community. At the same time, changes in the traditional practices of gender altered the Puritan experience. Gender gave new reality to the Puritan emphasis on spiritual egalitarianism, the Puritan practice of godly communion and counsel, and the development of lay–clerical relationships. From the interaction between Puritanism and gender, new forms of reciprocity and alternative sources of authority emerged among the godly.

Neither charity nor charity sermons were new to the eighteenth century. Giving to the needy was a long–established feature of Christianity. In his ‘Rule and Exercise of Holy Living’ (1650), an extreme expression of such Christianity, Jeremy Taylor urged good Christians to ‘Give, looking for nothing again, that is, without consideration of future advantages: give to children, to old men, to the unthankful, and the dying, and to those you shall never see again; for else your Alms or courtesie is not charity, but traffick and merchandise.’ By the eighteenth century the City of London already had a tradition of sponsored annual sermons, called ‘spital’ sermons, for its own hospitals, i.e. St Thomas's, Barts, Bethlem, etc. However, as associated charities, charities conceived by, supported and directed by contributors, grew increasingly numerous in the course of that century, charity sermons also increased in number and importance. Associated or joint–stock voluntary charity welcomed its need for ongoing financial support; this, its supporters claimed, would ensure efficiency and accountability. The problem with such support, however, was not only that the charity needed to attract, and continue to attract, large numbers of donors, but also that it needed to convince those donors to repeat their contributions annually. The charity sermon became a central instrument in this process. Thus, usually on the anniversary of the establishment of the charity, the society would invite a prominent or popular clergyman to address present and potential donors, and a collection would be taken afterwards. After one such sermon on 9 July 1762, the governing committee of the Asylum for Orphaned Girls congratulated itself, well pleased with a collection of over £226 ‘and many new subscribers added’.1

The tortuous history of apocalyptic speculation took a new turn in the late eighteenth century, and one of its proponents was the ebullient bishop of Rochester, Samuel Horsley. The new and alarming ideas emanating from abstruse considerations of the Book of Daniel, of Revelation and the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah were puzzled over in a series of reviews in the Gentleman's Magazine, one of which was a review of the letter from an anonymous ‘Country Clergyman’ to the bishop. It was clearly the opinion of the ‘Country Clergyman’ that Horsley's views were novel.