BOOK REVIEW- Lady Fanshawe’s Receipt Book: The Life and Times of a Civil War Heroine by Lucy Moore

It is a nice change to reada book about the record of a life of a woman connected to the church. Ann Fanshawe left a memoir and a ‘receipt book’ - not a record of things she has bought but a sort of recipe book, containing details of medicines as well as food and other tips on household management.

Ann was born in the parish of St Olave Hart Street in 1625 and spent her earliest years here. Her father, John Harrison, came from a modest background to occupy an important official position which involved engaging with the merchants, display rooms and warehouses that surrounded the church for most of its modern history and would have been well known in the parish.

In this book, Lucy Moore cross references both Ann’s memoir and her receipt book to tell the story of a woman raising a royalist family through the Civil War from exile to the Restoration.

As a keen sampler of food, I was hoping to find out more about Ann’s recipe for hot chocolate and ice cream - both the earliest surviving such texts - these are available to view via a digitised copy of the Ann’s receipt book available on the Wellcome Collection website. Instead - and more interestingly - Lucy draws solely on Ann’s medicinal receipts using one per chapter to illustrate a year during the war.

She notes how the growing publication of receipt books in the latter stages of Cromwell’s rule not only provided a useful source of information on medicinal treatments but also implied a connection between the ability of the Royalists to heal the nation as a whole as well as the conditions affecting individual families. On the other hand, a propaganda style receipt book purporting to have been written by Cromwell’s wife Joan portrayed her as ill equipped to manage a household and “a hundred times fitter for a barn than a palace.”

Each receipt in Ann’s book notes the source; the exchange of receipts, as gifts, was an important part of social life amongst Ann’s contemporaries. An X in the margin of the book records whether the treatment was used in earnest and successful.

Some of the remedies sound rather grim to modern ears; others, like a strengthening and cooling chicken broth, rather delicious - and very similar to the type of thing my partner Henry makes for me when I am ill with a fever or a bug.

Lucy Moore notes this immediate connection between contemporary readers and Ann’s life - the fact that (until the world goes entirely digital) many of us will own recipe books or folders handed down from parents or grandparents, the typed or handwritten or annotated sheets each imbued with their own memories. 

Like Pepys diary, perhaps it is these sorts of connections to our ordinary lives that we find most immediately intriguing - allowing us to read more closely in this case the life of a woman who lived four centuries ago?

While not from an aristocratic family Ann was from a wealthy one and never really went without. Only the affluent could afford the spices and herbs needed for many of the medicines - and the “Still” (Distillation) Rooms to make them.

But that is not to say she was removed from the harsh travails of “real life”. Ann gave birth to one child almost ever year of her married life, most of whom died in infancy and had a number of miscarriages, all while undertaking arduous journeys in pursuit of her husband as he followed the Royal Court around the British Isles through Spain, Portugal and France along with her surviving children, servants and all their worldly possessions. 

Lucy Moore describes Ann as naturally adventurous and spirited but someone who apparently willingly fitted in to the role society expected of her at the time - although there are glimpses of tension between the two. On one voyage at sea they were attacked by Parliamentarian forces. Rather than being shut in the lower decks with the other women and children on board, Ann borrowed a cabin boys hat to go up on deck and observe what was happening. Then, after Richard’s death, Ann petitioned the Royal Court for the salary and expenses owed to him following his service as Ambassador to Spain. A rare thing for a woman to do - and which may possibly be the root of stories about her wild character that appeared in later novels. Pepys himself records Ann – not always flatteringly – in his Diary.

Inevitably perhaps, I noticed especially how Ann's world intersects with that of other people connected with St Olave's. She and Richard encountered Pepys friend John Evelyn while in exile, dining with him in Paris. There are connections too with the Earls of Essex (the third Earl was a prominent Parliamentarian) and, more distantly, even Anthony Bacon through Montaigne's Essays, which Moore suggests Ann may have read.

Connections which remind us just how small the world of those holding social and political power was - at a time of global exploration and discovery.

Ann is recorded as being devout, including writing prayers. While Richard was imprisoned after the Battle of Worcester, Ann lived for six months in Blackfriars, leaving her house only seven times. She prayed privately using the outlawed Book of Common Prayer and led the household in the daily offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. Moore describes Royalist women as guardians of Anglican worship during the Commonwealth and notes how women took on new and unexpected roles during this time - their letters considered unimportant to Cromwell’s chief spy which meant they could be sent - with coded information - without risk of discovery, placing them in an important position in maintaining Royalist networks while King Charles was in exile. However, Moore also notes that the perceived ‘influence’ of Ann on her husband Richard was used against him at court, as a reason he was frequently overlooked for promotion. At face value this influence seems to have been little more than devotion to her husband and a determination that they should not be separated. Yet perhaps that is another glimpse of the tension running through Ann’s life: a woman who apparently accepted the role society gave her, while repeatedly proving rather more adventurous, resourceful and determined than that role might suggest.

Lucy Moore will be coming to St Olave’s on Tuesday 26 January 2027 to speak about The Extraordinary Life of Lady Ann Fanshawe. Her lecture follows Choral Evensong at 5.30pm – which Ann, a devotee of the Prayer Book - would have doubtless enjoyed. It will be wonderful to hear Ann’s story in the parish where her life began.

Lady Fanshawe’s Receipt Book: The Life and Times of a Civil War Heroine by Lucy Moore was published by Atlantic Books in 2017.