Bathsua Makin

Bathsua Reginald Makin (c. 1600 – c. 1675) was a proto-feminist, middle-class Englishwoman who contributed to the emerging criticism of woman's position in the domestic and public spheres in 17th-century England. Herself a highly educated woman, Makin was referred to as "England's most learned lady", skilled in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, Spanish, French and Italian. Makin argued primarily for the equal right of women and girls to obtain an education in an environment or culture that viewed woman as the weaker vessel, subordinated to man and uneducable. She is most famously known for her polemical treatise entitled An Essay To Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts & Tongues, with an Answer to the Objections against this Way of Education (1673).

Makin's identity as the daughter of Henry Reginald has been confirmed by recent scholarship. Up until the 1980s, mistakes and oversights identified Makin wrongly as a sister of John and Thomas Pell. The evidence from the writings of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, a pupil of Reginald (Reynolds), was also lost to sight.

Makin's connection with John Pell, known as a mathematician, is documented in correspondence between the two. The John Pell manuscripts in the British Library reveal letters from Bathsua signed "your loving sister,” along with letters written by John Pell in which he refers to Bathsua as "sister". The identification of Bathsua as sister to Pell was in fact an anachronistic reading; Bathsua was Pell's sister-in-law, Pell having married Ithamaria Reginald, Bathsua's sister, in 1632. This realisation led to the tracing of a book of poetry attributed to Bathsua Makin. Musa Virginea, published in 1616, bears a title page which, in its translation, states: “The Virgin Muse {in} Greek-Latin-French, by Bathsua R{eginald}, (daughter of Henry Reginald, school master and language lover, near London), published in her sixteenth year of age.” This piece of writing is important in distinguishing Bathsua’s parentage and the year she was born. While Makin’s book of poetry names Henry Reginald as her father, scholars have difficulty in pinpointing exactly who he was, since there were several men by the name of Henry Reginald, or variants of Reginald, living around London in the early 17th century. He was a schoolmaster, though, as Bathsua points out on the title page of Musa Virginea, and probably taught at a school outside of London. Bathsua's training in classical and Modern Languages is then easily attributable to her father, the learned man and "language lover".

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