Jane Sowle (fl. 1680)

Abstract jane was a Quaker, the wife of andrew Sowle, a one-man Qµaker publishing industry. Sowle suffered frequent harassment by the authorities, and on one occasion ‘about a thousand reams of printed books’ were seized. He was imprisoned several times and Sir Richard Brown, the Lord Mayor, even threatened to have him executed. He died in 1695 at his house in Holywell Lane, aged 67. Jane was described as a printer and bookseller. She was the mother of two daughters, Tace Sowle and Elizabeth, later Bradford (who also wrote verse, see no. 255), both of whom were trained as printers. Tace was made free of the Stationer’s Company shortly after her father’s death and, assisted by her mother, and later her husband and a foreman, managed the Sowle press for fifty-four years. From 1695, Tace printed works in her own name (including the poems of Mary Mollineux: see nos. 223-5), but though she was practically speaking in charge, she ensured that her mother Jane always had ‘The chief command of the house’. Few elderly widows of the seventeenth century can ever have been so honoured and cherished.