Elizabeth Jocelin (1596–1623) was an English woman, known now for her maternal death

Maternal death

Maternal death, or maternal mortality, also "obstetrical death" is the death of a woman during or shortly after a pregnancy. In 2010, researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, estimated global maternal mortality in 2008 at 342,900 , of...

 and subsequent publication (in edited form) of her writings as The Mother's Legacie to her Unborne Childe (1624).

Life

She was the daughter of Sir Richard Brooke of Norton, Cheshire, and his wife Joan, daughter of William Chaderton

William Chaderton

William Chaderton was an English academic and bishop. He also served as Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity.He was born in Moston, Lancashire, what is now a part of the city of Manchester. He matriculated at Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1555, and graduated M.A...

, bishop of Lincoln

Bishop of Lincoln

The Bishop of Lincoln is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Lincoln in the Province of Canterbury.The present diocese covers the county of Lincolnshire and the unitary authority areas of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. The Bishop's seat is located in the Cathedral...

. Her parents separated, and her mother returned home. Elizabeth's childhood was therefore passed in the house of Bishop Chaderton, who educated her. According to her editor Thomas Goad

Thomas Goad

Thomas Goad was an English clergyman, controversial writer, and rector of Hadleigh, Suffolk. A participant at the Synod of Dort, he changed his views there from Calvinist to Arminian, against the sense of the meeting.-Life:...

, she had an exceptional memory.

In 1616 she married Tourell Jocelin of Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...

. Foreboding her death in childbirth, she wrote a letter which gently but earnestly exhorted her son or daughter to piety and good conduct; and a letter to her husband, giving him advice as to the bringing up of the child. These works are thought to have been written at Crowlands, Oakington

Oakington

Oakington is a small village 4 miles north-west of Cambridge in Cambridgeshire in England, and belongs to the administrative district of South Cambridgeshire. The village falls into the parish of Oakington and Westwick.-History:...

. She bore a daughter on 12 October 1622, and died nine days afterwards. The child, named Theodora, became the wife of Samuel Fortrey

Samuel Fortrey

Samuel Fortrey , was an English author.Fortrey was the author of ‘England's Interest and Improvement, consisting in the increase of the Store and Trade of this Kingdom,’ Cambridge, 1663...

.

The Legacie

The Legacie was first published in 1624 with a long Approbation by Thomas Goad giving some account of Elizabeth Jocelin's life. The second edition is dated 1624 and the third 1625. An exact reprint of the third edition, with an introduction by an anonymous Edinburgh editor, appeared in 1852. The edition printed at Oxford, 'for the satisfaction of the person of quality herein concerned,' in 1684, and reprinted at the end of C. H. Cranford's Sermons in 1840, is an altered one, the editor having made changes in religious matters. The manuscript of the Legacie is in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 27467). It is still somewhat contentious whether the manuscript is by Jocelin, and whether Goad's editorial work brought in substantive change in the content.

Further reading

• Jean LeDrew Metcalfe (editor) (2000) The mothers legacy to her vnborn [i.e. unborn] childe [i.e. child] By Elizabeth Jocelin. This edition reproduces the manuscript original.
• Sylvia Brown, The Approbation of Elizabeth Jocelin. English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700, 9 (2000), 129-64. ISSN 09578080