T rapnel, A nna

Abstract

Anna Trapnel ( fl . 1642–60) was a sectarian visionary whose six prophetic and autobiographical works, four of which were published in 1654, were incendiary interventions in the religious and political debates of mid‐seventeenth‐century England. The daughter of a shipwright from Poplar, Stepney, Trapnel was brought up within Puritan circles. After early despair regarding her salvation, she had her first visionary experience of grace in 1642, while listening to the sermon of an Independent minister, John Simpson. Her spiritual assurance was tested following the death of her mother, whose last words were ‘Lord! Double thy spirit upon my child.’ Trapnel subsequently experienced raptures, in which God shone ‘hot upon [her] spirit… melting [her] into tears’, alongside bouts of suicidal despair.