The autobiographical writings and meditations of Katherine Ross and Jean Collace. : Religious writing; Memoir c. 1704.

Format:

Other

Contributor:

Adam Matthew Digital (Firm), digitiser.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prophecy.

Meditation.

Religious literature--Authorship.

Religious literature.

Autobiography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Marlborough, Wiltshire : Adam Matthew Digital, 2008.

Summary:

The manuscript appears to be an early eighteenth-century copy.

Notes:

AMDigital Reference:MS Adv. 32.4.4

Ross's and Collace's writings, though similar in their focus on the authors' religious affiliations, appear to have been composed for different purposes. Ross claims that her memoirs were written for the edification of others: "I having been often challenged for not setting down some remarkable passages of my life, to show (when I am gone from this life what a good God I had to do with) to those who have seen and heard of my afflictions" (fol. 27r). The public nature of her writing is further confirmed by her "general remarks" on the spiritual state of Scotland during the turbulent years 1679-80. In May 1679, covenanting activists assassinated Archbishop Sharp; this was followed by a brief rebellion, which ended in defeat for the Covenanters at Bothwell Bridge on 22 June 1679. Although this defeat and the subsequent repression quelled many of the Covenanters, a group of radicals used the one-year anniversary of the battle as an occasion to issue the Sanquhar Declaration, proclaiming their continued resistance and renouncing their allegiance to Charles II. Ross appears to have sided with the more moderate Covenanters. Her writings take on a prophetic tone as she urges the nation to repent, and concludes that the suffering experienced by the Lord's people is a punishment for sin, rather than a trial, and that they should therefore not resist their enemies by force. Collace's writings do not contain any comparable prophetic statements. She insists that her memoirs were composed for her "own use", and she concentrates primarily on her own experiences and acquaintances (fol.79v). In doing so, however, she frequently mentions the trials of well-known covenanting ministers, causing her memoirs to resemble the more explicitly public recollections of her sister. Collace's use of specific dates and her tendency to slip into the present tense when writing about the years 1675-6 suggest that this section of her memoirs may have been taken from a diary. Her meditations on her sisters' deaths also may have been diary entries. MS Adv. 32.4.4, fols.26-126 is an early eighteenth-century copy of both sisters' memoirs. It closely resembles MS Adv.34.5.19, fols.184-284, and the two manuscripts were probably copied either one from the other, or both from the same source. They contain the same basic text, as well as similar non-authorial insertions. Both manuscripts designate the writings as being "left under" the authors' own hands, indicating that the copies were not made until after the sisters' deaths. One of these copies might have served as the copy text for the edition of Ross's memoirs published in 1735. Although some of the wording in the printed memoirs differs from the existing manuscript copies, it contains a similar non-authorial note concerning the gap in Ross's narrative when she moves to Fife. Andrew Stevenson later drew on Ross's printed memoirs for his Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Thomas Hog (1756).

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