Introduction

“Not so much open professed enemies as close hypocritical false-hearted people”: Lucy Hutchinson’s manuscript account of the services of John Hutchinson and mid-seventeenth-century factionalism

“…While not autobiographical, and thus excluded from the category of "life-writing" explored in Michelle M. Dowd and Julie A. Eckerle's edited collection, Genre and Women's Life Writing in Early Modern England, this biographical account may also show "the ways in which early modern women made use of formal and generic structures to constitute themselves in writing". 136 While not writing of herself directly, Hutchinson has, nevertheless, recoursed to an established genre in the construction of her text, demonstrating "early modern women's familiarity with various aspects of an increasingly textual world". 137 Raymond, among others, has studied how women used pamphlets as a "vehicle for negotiating the limitations on women's speaking" -that is, female involvement in pamphlet culture has been seen to spring from an interest in defending their sex.…”