She was one of several prominent female activists in the early decades of the Society of Friends, notable also for originating a scheme to distribute aid to London prisoners.
"[2] Blackborow's importance to the history of social thinking and theology rests mainly on four tracts, which she published in London: These have been quoted and catalogued down the centuries.
Inverting the dominant reading, she cites St Paul in order to silence them: 'wherever they found either the Male or the Female out of the power, not learned of their Husband the Head, they were forbidden to Prayer or Prophesie.
'"[5] Apart from pressing for the admission of women into preaching and for their recognition in religious inspiration, she takes the argument into the established church camp in The Just... (p. 13), criticizing "the 'Priests' who 'teach the people to neglect the witnesses of God in their consciences, telling them it is of their nature, and persuading them it's not sufficient to... give power over sin,' [claiming] instead that Christ 'is become Teacher himselfe, and his Sheepe heare his voyce; and not one of them can follow a hireling, who are strangers to that Teaching.'"
[4] An account of the involvement of Blackberry or Blackborow with Nayler, whose ideas were rejected by most leading Quakers, and of an official rebuke she received in 1657, has been given by Kate Peters.