Bridget Bennet

Bennet's birthplace and date are unknown, but she was the daughter of John Grobham Howe (1625–1679) and Lady Annabella Scroope (d. 1704).

Her husband Sir John Bennet was a Knight of the Bath[1] he was a Lieutenant of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms.

[2] Her new husband had been a member of Parliament for a decade and he had houses in Golden Square in Westminster and Dawley in Harlington, Middlesex.

[3] The lists show her changing interests, particularly towards medicine at the time that her daughter died, and also to the education of women.

She owned modern writings including dialogue concerning women, being a defence of the sex written to Eugenia by William Walsh in 1691, Nahum Tate's A Present for the Ladies: being an Historical Vindication of the Female Sex from the following year and John Dunton's book The Challenge sent by a young lady to Sir Thomas &c., or, The Female War which was published in 1697.