Elizabeth Bury

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EB was a seventeenth-century woman whose religious background (radical Anglican , which after the Restoration became Dissenting ) encouraged her to acquire a scholarly education. Her spiritual life embraced the practice of diary- and letter-writing as well as extemporary prayer, and after her death her widower published a volume of memoirs which mediated and preserved all that survives of her work in these genres.

Milestones

About 2 March 1644

Elizabeth Lawrence (later EB ) was born at Clare in Suffolk, the second of four children, of whom the only boy died young.
Bury, Elizabeth. An Account of the Life and Death of Mrs Elizabeth Bury. Editor Bury, Samuel, Printed by and for J. Penn and sold by J. Sprint.
1, 2-3

Round about 1662

Elizabeth Lawrence (later EB ) seems to have been somewhere between eighteen and nineteen when she began keeping a spiritual diary, which at first, for privacy, she wrote in shorthand.
Bury, Elizabeth. An Account of the Life and Death of Mrs Elizabeth Bury. Editor Bury, Samuel, Printed by and for J. Penn and sold by J. Sprint.
11

6 October 1704

Elizabeth Bury recorded in her diary that a poor Woman died in a Barn alone, too much neglected by the Parish.
Bury, Elizabeth. An Account of the Life and Death of Mrs Elizabeth Bury. Editor Bury, Samuel, Printed by and for J. Penn and sold by J. Sprint.
150

11 May 1720

EB died at Bristol: she had been struck with acutely painful deafness, followed by fever and lethargy.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography mistakenly gives the date as 8 May.
Bury, Elizabeth. An Account of the Life and Death of Mrs Elizabeth Bury. Editor Bury, Samuel, Printed by and for J. Penn and sold by J. Sprint.
49, 51
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

After 22 May 1720

EB 's widower published at BristolAn Account of the Life and Death of Mrs Elizabeth Bury (who had died on 11 May), with lavish excerpts from her diary and some from her letters.
This publication is dated from the day her funeral sermon was preached in Bristol.
Bury, Elizabeth. An Account of the Life and Death of Mrs Elizabeth Bury. Editor Bury, Samuel, Printed by and for J. Penn and sold by J. Sprint.
prelims

3 March 1722

The London Mercury printed a piece about EB 's life and death, drawn from Samuel Bury 's Account.
A Register of Books 1728-1732, extracted from the Monthly Chronicle. Gregg Press.
106

26 May 1730

A fourth edition appeared of Samuel Bury 's An Account of the Life and Death of Mrs Elizabeth Bury (containing her surviving writing, primarily her diary).
A Register of Books 1728-1732, extracted from the Monthly Chronicle. Gregg Press.
106

Biography

Birth and Family

About 2 March 1644

Elizabeth Lawrence (later EB ) was born at Clare in Suffolk, the second of four children, of whom the only boy died young.
Bury, Elizabeth. An Account of the Life and Death of Mrs Elizabeth Bury. Editor Bury, Samuel, Printed by and for J. Penn and sold by J. Sprint.
1, 2-3