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Anne Royall
1769 – 1854
Anne Royall (1769 – 1854)
was an early example of the coherence of anti-clericalism, feminism and
liberal attitudes to social progress.
In her book Women Without
Superstition*, Annie Laurie Gaylor describes the life and work of
this courageous and outspoken pioneer of criticism of Christianity,
secularism and human rights, (before such views were respectable). An
"Eccentric author, passionate defender of the Enlightenment, and an
ardent foe of "Christian party in politics." Calling their aim
of electing only Christians to government, outright treason.
Her husband, 28 years her
senior who had employed her impoverished mother as a servant, was an
admirer of the radical liberal progressives of his day, and his library
informed Anne Royall’s ideas. Having been made penniless after her
husband’s death, by relatives contesting his will, she had to keep
herself by selling her books
She published a virulent
attack on missionaries at home and abroad, that she wrote in 1829 –
describing their cunning and greed, and the way they were able to buy
influence, by their control of the press and its distribution. Writing
of them she said "They swarm like locusts, getting money by trick
and cunning, the more they get the more they want"
Anne Royall reviled
religion, missionaries, piety, and sabatarianism, fought evangelicals in
congress and destroyed Sunday school tracts, (though she called herself
a deist – a common label of the era.).
In 1821, she wrote
"What think you, Matt, of the Christian religion? Between you and
I, and the bedpost, I begin to think it is all a plot of the priests. I
have ever marked those professors, whenever humanity demanded their
attention, the veriest savages under the sun"
She wrote and researched -
exposed corruption in public office, opposed flogging, slavery, and
promoted the rights of native American Indians, labourers and women, and
supported ‘fallen’ women (though she did not call herself a
feminist!) She also supported public investment, scientific research,
and adequate income support in illness and old age.
For this she was called a
virago and a monomaniac. She was harassed by neighbouring evangelists,
threatened with the ‘ducking stool’ and arrested and convicted as’
a common scold’ And was feared and abused because she castigated
individuals who snubbed her.
Below is part of the
exerpt from Annie Royall’s ‘Missionaries’ chapter, in Black
Book, volume III (1829) published now in *Women
Without Superstition, No Gods, No Masters – The Collected Writings
of Woman Freethinkers of the 19th & 20th Centuries.
Edited by Annie Laurie Gaylor. Published
by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Madison, Wisconsin.
Missionaries
"If those millions
squandered on designing missionaries had been de-posited in funds for
the support of yourselves, when old age, misfortune, or sickness (from
which none are exempt,) overtakes you, or for the distressed of your
race, what a heaven of happiness you would have created on earth: ye
would now be an ornament to your sex, and ages to come would call you
blessed. But it is in vain to try-a priest-ridden female is lost to
reason. Why? because she has surrendered her reason to the
priests-missionaries I mean-the orthodox; they are the grand
deceivers....Fanaticism and bigotry require any food but common sense,
and reason, which would break the charm of those spellbound
fanatics....
I find that the whole
weight of relieving human misery and distress falls on the shoulders
of those Heretics and Infidels; and though great part of this
distress has been occasioned by those ravening wolves' hopeful
converts, if the amount of a piece of bread would save the life of a
fellow man, he might perish in the street for them, who ever saw them
relieve the poor. These Heretics are the men that feed the
hungry, cloth the naked, take in the stranger, visit the sick and the
prisoner....
These bible people
remind me of another calamity similar to this missionary scheme, when
our people, or any christian power would go to Africa for the pious
purpose of kidnapping negroes, the mother would cry out to her
children "run, run, the christians are coming," so
when ever you hear "bibles," run for your life, if you do
not want your pockets picked, or to be insulted and slandered as I was
... and if you hear "hopeful convertions" [sic] or
the "gospel," don't stop to look behind you
... Do these
Presbyterians, or orthodox ... think we have forgotten what use they
made of power, when they had it? Do they think we have forgotten how
they drenched England in blood, created a civil war, (what they are in
a fair way to do here) and, when they could no longer retain the power
of killing there, came over to this country, and began it
afresh-dipping their hands in the blood of harmless, unresisting
people? Do they think we have forgotten how they whipped, branded,
banished, and imprisoned the innocent Quakers? Five of those who were
banished, happening to return privately, to settle some private
business, were taken and hung by those monsters, at one time.
Do they think we have forgotten how they put innocent men, women, and
children to death, in cool blood, under the pretence of witchcraft?
"Even refused to bury the victims of their inhuman barbarity; but
left them hanging on the gibbets, exposed to wild beasts, and birds of
prey." The innocence of youth, the infirmities of old age, virgin
modesty, fortune, honor, virtue, and the most dignified employments of
the state, were no security; they hung a lawyer, because he refused to
plead against those innocent sufferers; they hung seventeen in one
day. Children of ten years of age were put to death; young girls were
stripped naked, (by God's people, the ministers,) and the marks of
witch- craft searched for, on their bodies, with the most indecent
curiosity. Those spots of the scurvy, which age impresses upon the
bodies of old men, were taken for evident signs of the infernal power.
When witnesses failed, those blood-spilling monsters put the innocent
creatures to tortures, to extort confessions dictated by their
executioners, themselves; and they have the impudence to dictate to us
now, to go to blood-spilling again; nothing else, under heaven. What
else is it? They are in full possession of every liberty, but that of
hanging heretics.... What did Calvin, their leader, do? Did he not
burn an innocent man, by piece-meal-kept him three days in torture, by
the flames-was this monster a Christian? True, all sects have been
persecutors; but these persecutions were the acts of their tyrannical
kings, pontiffs, and rulers. Not so those bloody Calvinists: they,
when they have the power, devour their equals, their fellow men, with
that wanton, savage ferocity, with which wild beasts destroy each
other; and worse; for the wild beast only kills to satisfy his hunger;
but those monsters of hypocrisy kill for the pure pleasure of seeing
blood flow. It is bred in them; it is in their grain, and will never
be extinguished; it is in the nature of their tenets, and a
distinguishing trait of this sect.... Instead of inculcating those
virtues which ennoble human nature, enlarge the powers of thinking, or
advance their future happiness by a liberal course of improvement,
they are taught that sordid avarice, and haughtiness, is religion;
they tell the student that hating his neighbor, is religion; that all
sects but his own are heretics, and must be exterminated to make way
for God's people...."
See also on
www.workshop3.freeuk.com/Women_Without_Superstition.htm
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