Catharine Trotter Cockburn - Life

Life

Born to Scottish parents living in London,Trotter was raised Protestant but converted to Roman Catholicism at an early age. She finally returned to the Church of England in 1707, after what she terms much “free and impartial Enquiries.” After an illustrious career, her father, navy captain David Trotter, died of the plague in 1684, leaving his family in financial jeopardy.

Catharine was a precocious, physically attractive, and largely self-educated young woman, who had her first novel (The Adventures of a Young Lady, later retitled Olinda’s Adventures) published anonymously in 1693, when she was but 14 years old. Her first published play, Agnes de Castro (a verse dramatization of Aphra Behn's story of the same title), was staged two years later. In 1696, she was famously satirized alongside Delarivier Manley and Mary Pix in the anonymous play, The Female Wits. In it, Trotter was lampooned in the figure of “Calista, a lady who pretends to the learned languages and assumes to herself the name of critic.” Her second and arguably best-liked play The Fatal Friendship was staged in 1698. Trotter’s dramatic works generally met with modest public success and qualified praise from critics. Playwright William Congreve encouraged and guided her dramatic writing.

In 1702, at the age of 23, Trotter published her first major philosophical work, A Defence of Mr. Lock's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. John Locke was so pleased with this defence that he made gifts of money and books to his young apologist. Trotter went on to write two more works on moral philosophy, two theological tracts, and a voluminous correspondence.

In 1708, she married Reverend Patrick Cockburn, and all but ceased to write until 1726, when she began another philosophical treatise. Her new family suffered financially and socially because Rev. Cockburn would not take the Oath of Abjuration upon the ascension of George I. The Reverend finally overcame his scruples in 1726, and he was appointed to St. Paul's Chapel in Aberdeen.

Catharine's work attracted the attention of William Warburton, who prefaced her last philosophical work. She also had a request from the biographer Thomas Birch to aid him in compiling a collection of her works. She agreed to the project but died before the work could be printed. Birch posthumously published a two-volume collection entitled The Works of Mrs. Catharine Cockburn, Theological, Moral, Dramatic, and Poetical in 1751. It is largely through this text that readers and history have come to know her.