Rose Thurgood

Presented in an epistolary and autobiographical format, the "Lecture" exhibits how Thurgood reacted to her change in fortune within her religion: opening with a revitalisation in religious zeal, she subsequently begins to "rage & swell" at God's judgement of her, then fearing herself damned for her "debt bill" of sins.

During this despair, she encounters the religious dissenters, John Bull and Richard Farnham who preach the lack of agency of man on his fate, before God's divine grace and judgement.

With this, he accompanying evidence of the lives of lower-class Puritans has been discussed: referring to the way these dissenters would have read the Bible, understood Calvinist theories of agency, and reconciled their femininity within religion.

[2][1][3] After her marriage, and the birth of at least four children (the eldest, named Mary), Thurgood's high social status decayed, as she and her family began to regress into "extreame povertie and want".

[2][1] The precise cause or timing of this bereavement is not given, with Thurgood blaming it on her "bad husband", but the turbulent economic climate of the early-17th-century would have made such financial fluctuations typical.

This extreme turn in fortune made her question God's benevolence or existence, leading a personal experience with radical Nonconformist preachers, and later self-proclaimed prophets, John Bull and Richard Farnham.

The "Lecture" is introduced as a letter from Thurgood to her mother, who she had not seen for ten years, later adding to this address, her "sisters & friends or whatsoever thou art".

Living in "extreame povertie and want", Thurgood declined into requiring her own "poore labours" to feed her, now malnourished, young children, dreading their starvation.

[3]Thurgood's immediate response was outrage at these Nonconformist teachings but she eventually came to internalise them: "Theise and such words would they saye when I talked with them, but now I cared not what they said to mee, though I were angry before with them: for now my desire was to understand and knowe the Grounds of Religion".

[11] Thurgood recalls one particular episode where she lay in bed with a "burning fever", tormented by the cries of her malnourished family, and feeling as if she could 'not abide this life any longer'.