Women's Writing in Stuart England: The Mother's Legacies of Dorothy Leigh, Elizabeth Joscelin, and Elizabeth Richardson

It may peradventure ... appear strange to thee to recyve theas lines from a mother that dyed when thou weart born. So writes Elizabeth Joscelin to her unborn daughter, shortly before dying in childbirth on 12 October, 1622. As a godly woman, Joscelin was aware of her duty to instruct her child in religion. Prophetically fearing her death, she chose to embody her instruction in a text, a mother's legacy, through which she could (as it were) speak to her child from the dead. In 1624, a Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Goad, published Joscelin's legacy for a wider audience - but with significant changes.