ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on female agency within dissenting marriage in the Restoration era. It explores the extremely different, yet creative and influential ways in which individual women responded to the difficulties presented by a hostile government and state church after 1660 through new opportunities in the public sphere. The chapter argues that it is better to think about agency in marriage in terms of interdependency, as a more convincing model of the causes of conflict can be built on the contrast between reality and ideals in marital roles. It analyses the experience of Margaret Charlton primarily as it has been recorded in the posthumous biography written by her husband, Richard Baxter, a noted cleric who can be loosely categorized as Presbyterian, though he strenuously resisted any labels other than that of Christian. Richard Baxter's Breviate of the Life of Margaret Baxter presents one option available to dissenting women: companionate marriage as an interdependent partnership, facilitating gospel ministry in public sphere.
