Elizabeth Ashbridge 

Elizabeth Ashbridge traveled from England to Ireland to America in the 1730s and eventually became a Quaker preacher, marrying several times along the way and embracing multiple forms of Christianity prior to adopting Quakerism. She wrote about her experiences in Some Account of the Fore Part of the Life of Elizabeth Ashbridge, a frank description of one woman’s religious travails in England and America in the first half of the 18th. century. She came to America in 1732 at the age of nineteen, a “stranger in a strange land.” Here she discovered that one’s religious journey toward God, or “TRUTH,” as she put it, could be long, arduous, cruel, and violent. She was rebellious as a young person, becoming her own worst enemy: strong-willed, impetuous, worldly, and naive. Although her Account described frequent occurrences of cruelty to women and religious intolerance and prejudice, especially toward Quakers, it also provides an example of how spiritual conversion, submission to God’s will, and the struggle to lead a victorious life of faith was indeed a Pilgrim’s Progress tale of warfare against Satan, withstanding numerous temptations (Catholicism, atheism, dancing, suicide, Anglicans, Presbyterians), enduring the affliction of Satan’s minions on earth (such as her husband), yet persevering as a good soldier of Christ.  Her Account also shows how her conversion narrative is closely linked to the captivity narrative: both genres entail removals, temptations, trials, afflictions, false hopes, indignities, humiliation, repentance, and extraordinary working of God’s Providence in the presence of hopeless despair. Though there are no Native Americans in her Account, Ashbridge is nevertheless constantly on the run, searching not so much for a good husband and home and civilization but for TRUTH and a spiritual home and community (eventually, this will be the Society of Friends). The saint must be ready to speak God’s message in truth and sincerity despite the severity of one’s experiences along the way.