Amey Hayward: Printed Writings 1641û1700: Series II, Part Two, Volume 4

The Females Legacy is the only surviving work of Amey Howard about whom very little is known. While rarely political or even topical, The Females Legacy generally conforms to much of the same militantly Protestant ideology of the sort Harris spent his life advocating. The volume contains twenty-six devotional poems nearly all of which feature a male speaker. Some are 'meditations' in which the speaker considers the import of an Old or New Testament narrative. Others are 'dialogues' between speakers who grapple with a sudden realisation of their own sinful natures and a biblical figure who introduces them to Christ's redemptive majesty. Interspersed amongst these two kinds of verse are a few other poems which directly address women or deploy them as protagonists. This edition reproduces the sole surviving copy of The Females Legacy held in the British Library.