Animating the machinery: prophecy and Lady Eleanor Davies

Abstract

Using Eric Santner’s text The Royal Remains, which explores the way the body politic possesses and yields the excess sovereignty from the king’s deposed and dead body, this essay argues that Lady Eleanor Davies’ anointing as a prophet and handmaid of the Holy Spirit parallels Santner’s masculine examples of political and artistic agency emerging at the time of King James I’s death. Applying this argument to Lady Eleanor Davies’ initial prophecies, A Warning to the Dragon (1625, 1633) and Given to the Elector, Charles of the Rhyne (1633), this paper demonstrates how Lady Eleanor Davies established her own sovereignty through her prophecies preceding the English Civil War. This essay focuses on A Warning and Given to the Elector as the moment at which she is “reborn” into the office of prophet and claims the title “Handmaid of the Holy Spirit.” Moving beyond political agency, Lady Eleanor claims sovereignty not only to predict the downfall of King Charles I’s claim to the throne, but also to anoint a new inheritor to the throne of England. By taking up the mantle of prophecy, Lady Eleanor challenges conventional understandings of how the political figures influenced and attempted to claim sovereignty during the English Civil War.