The controversy, besides, has an
interest of its own, in view of later controversies.
John Knox, from 1556 to 1559, was resident in Geneva, as
minister, jointly with Goodman, of a little church of English
refugees. He and his congregation were banished from England
by one woman, Mary Tudor, and proscribed in Scotland by
another, the Regent Mary of Guise. The coincidence was
tempting: here were many abuses centring about one abuse;
here was Christ's Gospel persecuted in the two kingdoms by
one anomalous power. He had not far to go to find the idea
that female government was anomalous. It was an age, indeed,
in which women, capable and incapable, played a conspicuous
part upon the stage of European history; and yet their rule,
whatever may have been the opinion of here and there a wise
man or enthusiast, was regarded as an anomaly by the great
bulk of their contemporaries. It was defended as an anomaly.
It, and all that accompanied and sanctioned it, was set aside
as a single exception; and no one thought of reasoning down
from queens and extending their privileges to ordinary women.
Great ladies, as we know, had the privilege of entering into
monasteries and cloisters, otherwise forbidden to their sex.
As with one thing, so with another. Thus, Margaret of
Navarre wrote books with great acclamation, and no one,
seemingly, saw fit to call her conduct in question; but
Mademoiselle de Gournay, Montaigne's adopted daughter, was in
a controversy with the world as to whether a woman might be
an author without incongruity.
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