Marching through history – Elizabeth St. John on women as healers in the 17th century

In 2024, Liz St.John’s latest’s book, The King’s Intelligencer, was selected as Book of the Year by the Coffee Pot Book Club. So well-deserved! It was one of my top three reads in 2024, and it is set in the late 17th century, seguing on to Liz’s excellent series of books portraying her St. John ancestors woes and adventures during the political upheaval of the 17th century, a time of civil wart, of executed kings and a somewhat vindictive restored monarchy. Warmly recommended, all of them! Today, Liz joins us with a guest post about two of her female ancestresses and their healing skills.

Women as Healers in the 17th Century – Lucy Apsley and Lady Johanna St.John

In the 17th century, women’s contributions to medicine extended well beyond the domestic sphere, reflecting a critical engagement with health and wellbeing at a time when medical knowledge was rudimentary and access to physicians limited. Women were often the primary caregivers in their families and communities, developing skills in healing that were both practical and innovative. Lucy Apsley and her niece, Lady Johanna St. John, exemplify this indispensable role, leaving behind a legacy of medicinal expertise, intellectual curiosity, and resilience in the face of the unknown.

Medicine in those times represented a fascinating intersection of science and mysticism. Remedies often incorporated symbolic or exotic ingredients believed to hold curative powers. This duality is exemplified in Sir Walter Raleigh’s collaboration with alchemists like Adrian Gilbert and Patrick Ruthven. During Raleigh and Ruthven’s imprisonment in the Tower, Lucy supported these experiments, including the use of her henhouse for alchemical pursuits.
Anna: *chuckles* Because, obviously, a hen house is the perfect environment for such experiments…

The era’s transitional nature is evident in the work of practitioners like Lucy and Johanna, who combined practical healing with philosophical approaches, bridging medieval traditions and the emerging scientific revolution.

Lucy Apsley: The Lady of the Tower
Lucy St. John, wife of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, was noted for her medical practices within the Tower, and in her daughter’s biography, her mission is clearly documented. She provided care to prisoners, including notable figures such as Sir Walter Raleigh and the “Wizard Earl” of Northumberland. Her collaboration with Patrick Ruthven, a Scottish nobleman, physician, and alchemist, further enriched her medical knowledge. Ruthven, author of The Ladies Cabinet Opened, shared recipes and techniques for remedies, distillation, and household management. This holistic approach to medicine aligned closely with Lucy’s practices.

An excerpt from Lucy Hutchinson’s memoirs, describing her mother’s life in the Tower, gives more insights:

Sir Walter Raleigh and Mr. Ruthven being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, she suffered them to make their rare experiments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments, and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able to seek physicians. By these means she acquired a great deal of skill, which was very profitable to many all her life.

 She was not only to these, but to all the other prisoners that came into the Tower, as a mother. All the time she dwelt in the Tower, if any were sick she made them broths and restoratives with her own hands, visited and took care of them, and provided them all necessaries; if any were afflicted she comforted them, so that they felt not the inconvenience of a prison who were in that place.

Lucy Hutchinson continued to document her mother’s life-long medical expertise in her memoirs, highlighting her use of “excellent balsams and plasters” to treat prisoners, soldiers, and even enemy combatants during the English Civil War. A notable instance of her ministrations during the siege of Nottingham Castle underscored Lucy’s compassion and ethical commitment to healing.

Coinciding with Lucy Apsley’s life, another woman physician is remembered through her fascinating correspondence and recipe book. The wife of Lucy’s nephew, Walter, Johanna St. John became the lady of Lydiard Park around 1648, and continued the family legacy of curatives and remedies. The medicinal practices of Lucy and Johanna reflect a shared tradition where knowledge was preserved and passed through familial networks.

Johanna provides an invaluable perspective on women’s healthcare roles in the 17th century. Her recipe book, preserved in the Wellcome Library, documents a wide range of remedies for ailments affecting her household, servants, and livestock. Blending practical herbal knowledge with elements of mysticism, her recipes reflect the period’s evolving medical practices. Johanna’s network of knowledge extended beyond her household, involving distillers and apothecaries in London. Her supervision of these efforts, as evidenced by her letters, highlights her active role in health management.

One notable entry in her recipe book, Adrian Gilbert’s Cordial Water, combines ingredients such as “Dragon’s Burnett” and “Crab’s eyes taken in the full of the moon.” Such recipes demonstrate the interplay between scientific inquiry and mystical beliefs of the era. Interestingly, Adrian Gilbert, a noted herbalist and alchemist, was Raleigh’s half-brother, and it takes little imagination to think that Lucy may have been the one responsible for passing his curative on to Johanna.

Both Lucy and Johanna cultivated medicinal gardens to support their healing practices. Although much of Lucy’s garden within the Tower of London has been lost, a small courtyard near the Bloody Tower remains. Unfortunately, this space has been renamed “Sir Walter Raleigh’s Garden,” exemplifying the erasure of women’s contributions from historical narratives.

At Lydiard Park, Johanna’s garden was thought to have vanished until drought conditions in 2022 revealed its layout through parch marks. These discoveries allowed for an artist’s recreation of the garden’s appearance, providing a tangible link to her legacy.

The contributions of women to medicine and healthcare in the seventeenth century reveal their indispensable role in shaping the history of healing. As caregivers, herbalists, and practitioners, women operated within the constraints of a male-dominated society while providing the essential care that sustained families and communities. Their work was often unrecognized, yet their ingenuity, resilience, and compassion laid the foundation for advancements in medical science.

Through recipe books, medicinal gardens, and the application of both empirical knowledge and traditional wisdom, women healers navigated a complex intersection of science, mysticism, and practicality. They preserved and shared knowledge, adapted to evolving medical practices, and forged collaborative networks that extended across generations and communities.

EXCERPT, THE LADY OF THE TOWER

As I approached, I came upon a neat, well-tilled area where small mounds of earth were pushed into hilled rows, and plants carefully placed on the rise were flourishing. Right under the shadow of the Bloody Tower, someone tended a garden. As I dropped to my knees in front of the dirt, disregarding the dampness seeping through my skirts, I pushed my fingers into the base of the plants, feeling between the roots to see if what I suspected lay beneath the surface. I laughed aloud as my fingers touched the smooth curved objects under the soil, and scrabbling deeper with my dirty hands, I pulled to the surface the concealed tubers.

I had found Virginia potatoes, which I recall reading about in Matthew L’Obel’s notes. Rummaging for more, I soon built a small heap, a variety of jeweled colors and sizes, but most not bigger than my thumb. As I questioned who could have done this, I looked toward the Bloody Tower. The words of Wat Raleigh as he spoke to me of his beloved Sherborne gardens rang in my mind again. While captive in the Tower for these past ten years, he freed his spirit from its bounds by planting a garden with treasures brought back from the new world.

I rejoiced in this allotment Walter created, for what a delightful story I would have to tell him when he returned from El Dorado. His Virginia potatoes saved my dinner party, for none would doubt that we were not the most sophisticated of hosts, serving such a new and intriguing dish.

An adjacent stone basin overran with mint, and I picked a fresh bunch and added a handful of cresses that were thoughtfully planted in a boggy corner of the garden. I credited all to Walter, for he knew the value of greens on long sea voyages, where the scurvy was as much an enemy of the men as the Spanish.

The path to the henhouse was tidily graveled and led straight from a small arched door at the base of the Bloody Tower. I wondered if Walter had taken up husbandry too and kept chickens for company, for God knew that ten years of imprisonment would take its toll on anyone’s desire for distraction. I trod the well-worn path, where no weeds appeared between the stones, and approached the shed. Its door was solid and surprisingly locked, with a shiny new padlock.

Brushing against the old, splintered wood, I found a boarded window. Pulling the rotted wood apart, I could just make out the dim interior and sucked in my breath at the workbenches, shelves, and an array of instruments, pestles, mortars, and scales. An assortment of heating limbecks arranged on a shelf confirmed my thoughts. All were shadowy in the gloom of the small hut, but it was obvious that this was no henhouse, and I was surveying the instruments of alchemy and magic, not garden tools.

“Do you find m-much to interest you, m-mistress?”
I jumped. The voice from behind me was imperious, although high-pitched and halted by an impediment. I fancied there may be some deafness, which tempered his speech. Whirling around, I dropped a curtsy to the tall, thin man with a long and straggled beard who stood before me, wrapped against the chill day in a long black velvet cloak lined with sables. He was stooped and presented an air of elegant weariness about him that was belied by his sharp eyes.
“The Wizard Earl—” I caught myself before I said more.
He raised his eyebrows.
I stood still in front of him, with my apron full of potatoes and mint and the damaged window board behind me.
“I am Lady Apsley,” I stated, awkward with deferring to his title and yet establishing I was the wife of his gaoler. “I wish you good morrow. I see that Walter set himself a fine workshop. It appears fairly well stocked. I particularly liked the arrangement of limbecks, and the Hessian crucible seems to be one of the better designed.” I thought of Vicar Ridley’s library and visits to my alchemist friends in Blackfriars. “However, I feel he may have been taking a little bit of a risk with such a large athanor in such a small wooden shed. He may have burned the place down.”
There was a pause as his scrutiny of me continued.
“Come,” he commanded. “Your familiarity with alchemy is intriguing. Let me show you our w-w-workshop. It may appear to be a henhouse, but there are m-m-more foul deeds than eggs hatched here.” He laughed at his own joke and smoothly turned the key in the well-oiled lock. He paused and gestured for me to cross the threshold first, and I entered the secret world of alchemy and magic that existed in the shadow of the Bloody Tower, just a stone’s throw from my back door.

The Lady of The Tower
London, 1609. Lucy St.John, a highborn orphan at the glittering court of King James, is drawn into a dangerous affair with the Earl of Suffolk—a fateful choice that creates powerful enemies. Betrayed by her sister, Barbara and cast out in disgrace by the formidable Countess of Rochester, the Earl’s vengeful sister, Lucy’s life at court is shattered.

Armed with her intelligence, education, and skill in healing, she refuses to accept defeat. In a world where women’s fates are often sealed by the ambitions of men, Lucy fights her way back into society. An unexpected marriage elevates her to the position of mistress of the Tower of London, where she faces the harsh realities of plague, political upheaval, and tragic executions of both enemies—and friends. Inside the walls of the Tower, she tends to aristocratic prisoners and criminals alike, confronting the stark brutality of the world around her.

As Barbara’s fortunes rise through a marriage into the powerful Villiers family, Lucy is drawn into a dangerous game of power and survival. Her sister’s alliance with the king’s favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, promises wealth and influence but brings treachery and peril that could destroy Lucy and everything she holds dear.

In a court rife with deceit, ambition, and shifting loyalties, Lucy must navigate a perilous path, fighting to protect her honour, her family, and her very survival.

Based on the true story of Elizabeth St.John’s ancestor, Lucy St.John, this critically acclaimed novel offers a vivid portrayal of one woman’s resilience in the face of betrayal, and her courageous journey through the turbulent politics of seventeenth-century England.

Universal Buy Link: https://geni.us/MyBookLOTT

Elizabeth St. John’s critically acclaimed historical fiction novels tell the stories of her ancestors: extraordinary women whose intriguing kinship with England’s kings and queens brings an intimately unique perspective to Medieval, Tudor, and Stuart times.

Living between California, England, and the past, Elizabeth is the International Ambassador for The Friends of Lydiard Park, an English charity dedicated to conserving and enhancing this beautiful centuries-old country house and park. As a curator for The Lydiard Archives, she is constantly looking for an undiscovered treasure to inspire her next novel.

Elizabeth’s works include The Lydiard Chronicles, a trilogy set in 17th-century England during the Civil War, and The Godmother’s Secret, which unravels the medieval mystery of the missing princes in the Tower of London. Her latest release, The King’s Intelligencer, follows Franny Apsley’s perilous quest to uncover the truth behind the sudden discovery of the princes’ bones.

Website: www.elizabethjstjohn.com

Amazon Author Page: https://geni.us/AmazonElizabethStJohn

Facebook Author Page:  https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethJStJohn/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/elizabethstjohn.bsky.social

Check out the previous Marching through History post HERE!