Maude Royden

Agnes Maude Royden, CH (23 November 1876 – 30 July 1956), later known as Maude Royden-Shaw, was a preacher and suffragist.

Maude was born in Mossley Hill, Liverpool, the daughter of Sir Thomas Bland Royden, 1st Baronet, of Frankby Hall, Birkenhead. She was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Whilst in Oxford she started a lifelong friendship with fellow suffragist Kathleen Courtney who had the same alta mater. Afterwards Royden, for some years, did settlement work in Liverpool.

She also lectured on English literature for the university extension movement and in 1909 was elected to the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. From 1912 to 1914 she edited the Common Cause, the organ of the union.

She broke with the NUWSS over its support for the war effort. She became the secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation with other Christian pacifists. Although unable to travel to the women's peace congress in the Hague in 1915, when the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was established there, she became the vice-president. Her friend Kathleen Courtney had attended.

In a 1917 speech she used the oft-cited phrase: "The Church [of England] should go forward along the path of progress and be no longer satisfied only to represent the Conservative Party at prayer."

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