Lives of Devotion: The Correspondence of Isaac Basire and Frances Corbett, 1635-1660
Stanwood, Paul G.
Early Modern Literary Studies 5.1 (May, 1999)
Abstract
Isaac Basire (1607-76) was an English divine whose ecclesiastical fortunes were tied principally to the see of Durham, where he served as archdeacon of Northumberland in the episcopate of Thomas Morton at the outbreak of the Civil War, and later, in the Restoration, during the reign of John Cosin. Basire passed the years of the War and the Interregnum by travelling throughout much of Europe and the Near East, where he tried to win converts for the English church. During this time, he and his wife Frances (nee Corbett) (1612-76) carried on a correspondence that touches issues both personal and political. Their letters, preserved in the chapter library of Durham Cathedral, reveal the difficulties Basire encountered on his travels, and give Frances’s news from their home in County Durham. Her letters describe the hardships she endured in looking after their five children; she writes of her loneliness, financial worries, poor health, but also of her affection and patience. The correspondence is a reminder of the steadfast endurance of a couple during the upheaval and disruption of mid-century England.
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