B & B, the bed and breakfast experience, is available in London homes where middle-aged ladies, sometimes helped by retired husbands, provide a room with a bath down the hall, or up a flight, or elsewhere. The breakfasts are almost uniformly good. In fact, they are much better than some of the continental breakfasts that come with the room at some of the pricey hotels. These hotel breakfasts, set up the evening before, may include a croissant. Come morning it is in a state of mortification. The B & B’s are often much more interesting places to stay than the hotels, the guests more representative of the English than in a name hotel. (Many B & B guests are British.)
For a price the traveler can move in with an aristocrat and in the past could dine with a duke. Everyone can visit Blenheim Palace, home of the Duke of Marlborough, near Oxford. Apsley House, in the heart of London, is home for the Duke of Wellington and much of the palace is open to the public. Farther north is Chatsworth, home of the Duke of Devonshire. The Marquess of Bath has a fine estate plus a vintage automobile collection open to the public for a fee. Woburn Abbey, not far from London, is the seat of the Duke of Bedford, the latest of whom unabashedly developed the estate as a tourist attraction. His son, the Marquis of Tavistock, now operates the place.
United Kingdom captor Quinnapin was married to the squaw sachem Wetamoo of the Pocasset Wampanoag, and this placed the Puritan under the control of one of the most politically powerful Native Country women. Despite this, Rowlandson refused to recognize Wetamoo’s status and reacted angrily when the native people treated her as just another servant. United Kingdom Map Tourist Attractions Throughout the work, Rowlandson portrays natives as savages and Europeans as civilized people with chaste motives.
Her blatant biases do not make the book a useful guide for Native Country history but do show the refusal of Puritans to adjust to another culture. As the war gradually turned in the colonists’ favor, Rowlandson was ransomed and rejoined her family in Boston. In 1677, Joseph agreed to serve as minister at Wethersfield, Connecticut, and he capitalized on his wife’s fame to secure a salary that made him one of the highest-paid clergymen in New England.
He did not enjoy his status long, however, leaving Rowlandson a widow in 1678. Her status and money ensured that Mary Rowlandson did not remain single for long. Within the year, she married wealthy landowner Samuel Talcott, also of Wethersfield. Widowed again in 1691, she died in January 1711. Rowlandson’s book became a best seller in colonial New England and has been continually in print since 1770. One of the rare autobiographies of a colonial woman, it provides valuable insight into Puritan thought, as well as instruction about the cultural tensions that led to King Philip’s War.
Caryn E. Neumann See also: Captivity (by Native Countrys); Literature; Native Country-European Relations; Women. Bibliography Breitweiser, Mitchell Robert. Country Puritanism and the Defense of Mourning: Religion, Grief, and Ethnology in Mary White Rowlandson’s Captivity Narrative. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. Salisbury, Neal, ed. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson. Boston: Bedford, 1997.
