Calvert, Elizabeth (d. 1675?), bookseller
by Maureen Bell
© Oxford University Press 2004–10 All rights reserved
Calvert, Elizabeth (d. 1675?), bookseller, was the wife of and sister-in-law of the Quaker . The Calverts' shop at the Black Spread Eagle at the west end of St Paul's Churchyard, London, was a major source of radical and Quaker publications during the periods of the civil war and Commonwealth. After the Restoration Elizabeth Calvert carried on the trade in republican, nonconformist, and oppositional literature. Of the Calverts' three surviving children, Elizabeth (b. 1639), Nathaniel (b. 1643), and Giles (b. 1653), the two sons were also booksellers.
After the Restoration, when Giles and other male stationers were under constant pressure from the government for oppositional publications, Elizabeth Calvert took a central role in arranging the printing and distribution of radical pamphlets. In 1661 while her husband was imprisoned she ‘went on with the Prodigies’ (that is, the ‘signs and wonders’ pamphlet, Eniautos terastios mirabilis annus), the very text which had led to Giles's incarceration (L'Estrange, Truth and Loyalty, 57). After the ‘Confederate knot’ of male stationers had been broken up by deaths and imprisonments, she and other book-trade wives and widows (Hannah Allen, Joan Dover (later Darby), and Ann(a) Brewster) carried on the surreptitious trade in anti-monarchy texts (L'Estrange, Considerations, 6). Elizabeth was arrested twice (in 1661 and 1663) before Giles's death in August 1663. In October of that year their son Nathaniel was freed as a stationer by his uncle, the bookseller George Calvert, and presumably joined his mother in the business. Several warrants for the arrest of Elizabeth, her maid Elizabeth Evans, her apprentice Mathias Stephenson, and her son Nathaniel were issued during 1662–3 in connection with the printer John Twyn's trial for treason, and Elizabeth was questioned about the printing of Mene tekel, or, A Treatise of the Execution of Justice and the Speeches and Prayers of the regicides. Committed to prison on 2 February 1664, she petitioned for her discharge to nurse Nathaniel, who after his own release from prison had become ‘dangerously sick’ (TNA: PRO, SP 29/95/98). Her request was refused, and a second petition shows that her release on 8 April came too late: Nathaniel was ‘ever since fryday morning dead and is yett unburied’ (TNA: PRO, SP 29/96/64).
Despite repeated imprisonments, deaths, consequent debts, and the destruction of her shop in the great fire of 1666, Calvert persisted in her trade, continuing to publish both openly and surreptitiously. She was apparently unmolested for her publication of works by nonconformists, Independents, and Quakers such as Richard Steele, John Owen, Benjamin Agas, Francis Howgill, and Thomas Wilson. Other publications, however, attracted harassment from the Stationers' Company and, more frequently, from Roger L'Estrange, the surveyor of the press, who was well aware that her distribution network stretched far beyond London. Both Richard Moone, a former apprentice of Giles's who had moved to Bristol, and Moone's wife, Susannah, were caught in possession of books sent by Elizabeth Calvert, and her pamphlets reached at least as far north as Flintshire and Carlisle. Although her name appears in only twenty-seven imprints she is known to have been responsible for many more ‘seditious’ works, including tracts about the great fire such as Benjamin Keach's A Trumpet Blown in Sion (1666), A True and Faithfull Account (1667), John Wilson's Nehushtan (1668), and Andrew Marvell's Directions to a Painter (1668). After the destruction by fire of her shop she moved to Duck Lane, returning to St Paul's Churchyard in 1669. Her secret press in Southwark had been discovered and broken up the previous year, but she continued her illegal trade. Early in 1670 she supplied the printer Samuel Simmons with the copy of Dyer's Christ's Famous Titles, which was interrupted and seized while at the press, and in December she was indicted for her publication in 1668 of Directions to a Painter. After her trial in March 1671 she absconded and pursuit of her fine seems to have been dropped. Circumstantial evidence suggests that she may have been protected by the earl of Carlisle, whose secretary was Andrew Marvell.
After the trial Calvert's trade seems to have been largely in old stock which had survived the great fire, in reprints, and a few new works of inoffensive character. One of her few secular works, William Rabisha's The Whole Body of Cookery, appeared in 1673. But assumptions that she turned to more innocuous publishing in her last years are belied by the survival of a warrant for her arrest in January 1674. Her offence is not stated, but it may have been in connection with the publication of the pamphlet Verbum sapienti. In February 1674 she bound the last of her four apprentices, on 19 October she made her will, and she died probably in early 1675, her will being proved on 5 February 1675. The 1675 edition of Rabisha's cookery book has, uniquely, the imprint ‘for E. C. And are to be sold by Francis SMITH, at the Elephant and Castle near the Royal Exchange in Cornhill’, presumably a posthumous title-page. The residue of her estate, after debts, was left to her only surviving son, Giles. Although he is described as ‘bookseller’ of the City of London, there is no evidence that he was active in the trade or that he carried on the business at the Black Spread Eagle.
Although Giles and Elizabeth had earlier been sympathetic to Quakers, there seems to have been a rift after the James Nayler incident of 1656, in which Giles's sister Martha had played a central part. After 1656 the Calverts published few Quaker works, and Elizabeth seems to have been regarded by Quakers as an enemy. In a letter of 1671 Ellis Hookes, clerk to London Friends, associates ‘Jesebell; Giles Calverts wife’ with a group of apostates and ‘Ranters’ including Robert Rich, John Pennyman, and Mary Boreman (Ellis Hookes to Margaret Fell Fox, 21 Oct 1671, Swarthmore MS, I.57). The best indication of her religious beliefs, however, is that in her will Elizabeth asked to be ‘decently buryed amongst the Baptists’ (TNA: PRO, PROB 11/347, sig. 12).
MAUREEN BELL
After the Restoration, when Giles and other male stationers were under constant pressure from the government for oppositional publications, Elizabeth Calvert took a central role in arranging the printing and distribution of radical pamphlets. In 1661 while her husband was imprisoned she ‘went on with the Prodigies’ (that is, the ‘signs and wonders’ pamphlet, Eniautos terastios mirabilis annus), the very text which had led to Giles's incarceration (L'Estrange, Truth and Loyalty, 57). After the ‘Confederate knot’ of male stationers had been broken up by deaths and imprisonments, she and other book-trade wives and widows (Hannah Allen, Joan Dover (later Darby), and Ann(a) Brewster) carried on the surreptitious trade in anti-monarchy texts (L'Estrange, Considerations, 6). Elizabeth was arrested twice (in 1661 and 1663) before Giles's death in August 1663. In October of that year their son Nathaniel was freed as a stationer by his uncle, the bookseller George Calvert, and presumably joined his mother in the business. Several warrants for the arrest of Elizabeth, her maid Elizabeth Evans, her apprentice Mathias Stephenson, and her son Nathaniel were issued during 1662–3 in connection with the printer John Twyn's trial for treason, and Elizabeth was questioned about the printing of Mene tekel, or, A Treatise of the Execution of Justice and the Speeches and Prayers of the regicides. Committed to prison on 2 February 1664, she petitioned for her discharge to nurse Nathaniel, who after his own release from prison had become ‘dangerously sick’ (TNA: PRO, SP 29/95/98). Her request was refused, and a second petition shows that her release on 8 April came too late: Nathaniel was ‘ever since fryday morning dead and is yett unburied’ (TNA: PRO, SP 29/96/64).
Despite repeated imprisonments, deaths, consequent debts, and the destruction of her shop in the great fire of 1666, Calvert persisted in her trade, continuing to publish both openly and surreptitiously. She was apparently unmolested for her publication of works by nonconformists, Independents, and Quakers such as Richard Steele, John Owen, Benjamin Agas, Francis Howgill, and Thomas Wilson. Other publications, however, attracted harassment from the Stationers' Company and, more frequently, from Roger L'Estrange, the surveyor of the press, who was well aware that her distribution network stretched far beyond London. Both Richard Moone, a former apprentice of Giles's who had moved to Bristol, and Moone's wife, Susannah, were caught in possession of books sent by Elizabeth Calvert, and her pamphlets reached at least as far north as Flintshire and Carlisle. Although her name appears in only twenty-seven imprints she is known to have been responsible for many more ‘seditious’ works, including tracts about the great fire such as Benjamin Keach's A Trumpet Blown in Sion (1666), A True and Faithfull Account (1667), John Wilson's Nehushtan (1668), and Andrew Marvell's Directions to a Painter (1668). After the destruction by fire of her shop she moved to Duck Lane, returning to St Paul's Churchyard in 1669. Her secret press in Southwark had been discovered and broken up the previous year, but she continued her illegal trade. Early in 1670 she supplied the printer Samuel Simmons with the copy of Dyer's Christ's Famous Titles, which was interrupted and seized while at the press, and in December she was indicted for her publication in 1668 of Directions to a Painter. After her trial in March 1671 she absconded and pursuit of her fine seems to have been dropped. Circumstantial evidence suggests that she may have been protected by the earl of Carlisle, whose secretary was Andrew Marvell.
After the trial Calvert's trade seems to have been largely in old stock which had survived the great fire, in reprints, and a few new works of inoffensive character. One of her few secular works, William Rabisha's The Whole Body of Cookery, appeared in 1673. But assumptions that she turned to more innocuous publishing in her last years are belied by the survival of a warrant for her arrest in January 1674. Her offence is not stated, but it may have been in connection with the publication of the pamphlet Verbum sapienti. In February 1674 she bound the last of her four apprentices, on 19 October she made her will, and she died probably in early 1675, her will being proved on 5 February 1675. The 1675 edition of Rabisha's cookery book has, uniquely, the imprint ‘for E. C. And are to be sold by Francis SMITH, at the Elephant and Castle near the Royal Exchange in Cornhill’, presumably a posthumous title-page. The residue of her estate, after debts, was left to her only surviving son, Giles. Although he is described as ‘bookseller’ of the City of London, there is no evidence that he was active in the trade or that he carried on the business at the Black Spread Eagle.
Although Giles and Elizabeth had earlier been sympathetic to Quakers, there seems to have been a rift after the James Nayler incident of 1656, in which Giles's sister Martha had played a central part. After 1656 the Calverts published few Quaker works, and Elizabeth seems to have been regarded by Quakers as an enemy. In a letter of 1671 Ellis Hookes, clerk to London Friends, associates ‘Jesebell; Giles Calverts wife’ with a group of apostates and ‘Ranters’ including Robert Rich, John Pennyman, and Mary Boreman (Ellis Hookes to Margaret Fell Fox, 21 Oct 1671, Swarthmore MS, I.57). The best indication of her religious beliefs, however, is that in her will Elizabeth asked to be ‘decently buryed amongst the Baptists’ (TNA: PRO, PROB 11/347, sig. 12).
MAUREEN BELL
Sources
M. Bell, ‘Elizabeth Calvert and the “confederates”’, Publishing History, 32 (1992), 5–49 · M. Bell, ‘“Her Usual Practices”: the later career of Elizabeth Calvert, 1664–75’, Publishing History, 35 (1994), 5–64 · E. C. Thomas, ‘A purveyor of soul-poysons: an analysis of the career of Giles Calvert, a publisher and bookseller in mid-seventeenth century London’, PhD diss., La Trobe University, 1999 · A. E. Terry, ‘Giles Calvert, mid-seventeenth-century English bookseller and publisher’, MA diss., Columbia University, 1937 · TNA: PRO, State papers · RS Friends, Lond., Swarthmore papers · files and minute books of gaol delivery, oyer and terminer and peace, CLRO, London sessions · R. L'Estrange, Truth and loyalty vindicated (1662) · R. L'Estrange, Considerations and proposals in order to the regulation of the press (1663) · TNA: PRO, SP 29/95/98; SP 29/96/64 · will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/347, sig. 12 · will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/312 [Giles Calvert], sig. 106 · IGI
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Maureen Bell, ‘Calvert, Elizabeth (d. 1675?)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Oct 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39670, accessed ]
Elizabeth Calvert (d. 1675?):
doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/39670
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