Dorcas Martin

Dorcas Martin (1537–1599) née Eccleston, Ecclestone or Eglestone was an English bookseller and translator.[1][2][3]

Life

Dorcas and her brother John Eccleston were the children of John Eccleston, citizen and Grocer in London, who died in December 1551 leaving property in All Hallows Honey Lane in Westcheap to his son John (then aged 12). He in 1562 having become citizen and Goldsmith granted it away in 1562.[4]

She married the goldsmith Richard Martin, later Lord Mayor of London, sometime before 1562, and they had five sons and one daughter.[5][6] In 1573 she was the licensed bookseller for Thomas Cartwright's A replye to An answere made of M. doctor Whitgifte, a response to John Whitgift's denunciation of Presbyterianism.[7] She translated a catechism for the use of mother and child that was included in Thomas Bentley's The Monument of Matrones (published in 1582), the first published anthology of English women's writing.[8][9] Dorcas and her husband were active in radical religious causes including the Admonition Controversy, part of an effort to encourage the queen to further reform Protestantism in England.[1] Her epitaph reads, "Here lyeth Interred the body of Dame DORCAS Martin The late Wife of Sr Richard Martin, Knight twise Lord Mayor of the Cittie of London The Davghter of Iohn Ecclestone of ye Covntie of Lancastar gent who had Issve by the said Sr Rich Martin V sones, & one davght: and deceased Ovt of this mortall life ye first day of Septemb : 1599."[6]

After her death her brother John Eccleston, who had become a notable figure in the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths,[10] fell heavily into debt, not least to Sir Richard Martin, and was imprisoned in the Ludgate Prison. To effect his release he conveyed away his title in the priory manor of Elsham, North Lincolnshire, to the puritan minister Anthony Earbury. In 1608 Sir Richard, who had hoped to make the same arrangement for the settlement of Eccleston's debts to him, brought suit against Earbury. Eccleston returned to prison and died there, and Martin received £200 in repayment.[11]

Her son Captain John Martin commanded the Benjamin under Drake in the 1585–1586 expedition. On his return, John Martin married Mary Brandon (born 1566), daughter of Robert Brandon, Chamberlain of London, on 23 May 1586 at St Vedast, Foster Lane.[12] John Martin became a Councilman of the Jamestown Colony of Virginia in 1607 and was the proprietor of Martin's Brandon Plantation on the south bank of the James River,[13] apparently named after his wife's family.

Another son, Richard (died 1616), served with his father as a master-worker at the mint from 1599 to 1607.[14]

Her daughter Dorcas[13] married Sir Julius Caesar, later Chancellor of the Exchequer and Master of the Rolls under James I.[15]

A two-sided silver portrait medallion of Martin and her husband by Steven van Herwijck dated 1562 is in the British Museum. The reverse portrait is inscribed "DORCAS EGLESTONE VX RICHARD MARTIN ÆT 25" (Dorcas Eglestone, wife of Richard Martin, 25 years old).[16][17]

References
  1. McQuade, Paula, Betty Travitsky, and Anne Lake Prescott (2008). Early Modern Catechisms Written for Mothers, Schoolmistresses, and Children: Essential Works for the Study of Early Modern Englishwomen. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 0-7546-5165-7., p. xxiv
  2. White, Micheline (1999). "A Biographical Sketch of Dorcas Martin: Elizabethan Translator, Stationer, and Godly Matron". The Sixteenth Century Journal. 30 (3 (Autumn)): 775–792. doi:10.2307/2544816. JSTOR 2544816.
  3. Carolyn Coggins (2006). Descendants of John Martin of Laurens County, SC. Laurens District Chapter of the South Carolina Genealogical Society.
  4. D.J. Keene and V. Harding, 'All Hallows Honey Lane 11/2', in Historical Gazetteer of London Before the Great Fire: Cheapside; Parishes of All Hallows Honey Lane, St Martin Pomary, St Mary Le Bow, St Mary Colechurch and St Pancras Soper Lane (London, 1987), pp. 15-19 (British History Online, accessed 4 October 2018).
  5. Rosalynn Voaden; Diane Wolfthal (2005). Framing the Family: Narrative and Representation in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. ISBN 978-0-86698-297-9.
  6. Dorcas Martin's epitaph reads "Here lyeth Interred the body of Dame DORCAS Martin The late Wife of Sr Richard Martin, Knight twise Lord Mayor of the Cittie of London The Davghter of Iohn Ecclestone of ye Covntie of Lancastar gent who had Issve by the said Sr Rich Martin V sones, & one davght: and deceased Ovt of this mortall life ye first day of Septemb : 1599." Cansick, Frederick Teague (1875). A Collection of Curious and Interesting Epitaphs, Copied from the Monuments of Distinguished and Noted Characteres in the Ancient Church and Burial Grounds of Saint Pancras, Middlesex. J. R. Smith., p. 52
  7. Felch, Susan M. (28 October 2003). "'Noble Gentlewomen famous for their learning': The Public Roles of Women in Elizabethan England" (PDF). Retrieved 30 December 2008.
  8. King, John N. (2005) "Thomas Bentley’s Monument of Matrons: The Earliest Anthology of English Women’s Texts." In Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy. University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0-472-09881-1, p. 216.
  9. Betty Travitsky; Anne Lake Prescott (2000). Female & Male Voices in Early Modern England: An Anthology of Renaissance Writing. Columbia University Press. pp. 192–. ISBN 978-0-231-10040-3.
  10. R. Ruding, Annals of the Coinage of Great Britain and its Dependencies, 3rd Edition (John Hearne, London 1840), Vol. 1, pp. 351-52 (Google).
  11. Chancery Final Decrees, Sir Richard Martyn v. Anthony Erburie, 6 May, 7 James I, Ref. C78/152/15. View images at AALT, C78/152 IMG 0004, 0005, 0006, 0007.
  12. Currer-Briggs, Noel (1986). The Search for Mr. Thomas Kirbye, Gentleman. Phillimore. ISBN 0-85033-532-9, p. 162
  13. Brown, Alexander (1890). The Genesis of the United States: A Narrative of the Movement in England, 1605–1616. Houghton, Mifflin.
  14. Challis, C. E. (1992). A new history of the Royal Mint. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-24026-3, p. 262
  15. Beaven, the Rev. Alfred B. (1913). "Chronological List of Aldermen in the Reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth". The Aldermen of the City of London, vol. II. Eden Fisher & Co., Ltd., London. Retrieved 28 December 2008.
  16. "Medal". British Museum. Retrieved 10 January 2017.
  17. "Object ID 952902 reverse". Retrieved 10 January 2017.

Further reading
  • White, Michelline. "Power Couples and Women Writers in Elizabethan England: the Public Voices of Dorcas and Richard Martin and Anne and Hugh Dowriche." In Framing the Family: Representation and Narrative in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods, eds. Diane Wolfthal and Rosalynn Voaden. Tempe Ariz.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2005, pp. 119–38.
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