Royden, Agnes Maude (1876-1956)

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National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies Poster

National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS)

No-Conscription Fellowship

A. Maude Royden to Jane Addams, July 19, 1913

The Great Adventure: The Way to Peace, January 1915

Agnes Maude Royden to Jane Addams, January 27, 1915

A. Maude Royden to Jane Addams, February 8, 1915

Jane Addams to Rosika Schwimmer, November 27, 1915

Rosika Schwimmer to Jane Addams, November 27, 1915

League of Peace and Freedom: Report and Financial Statement, January 1920

Jane Addams to Mary Ryott Sheepshanks, August 7, 1920

Christina Merriman to Jane Addams, October 13, 1920

Lucy Biddle Lewis to Jane Addams, April 9, 1921

Oxford and Cambridge Week at the London Settlements, December 12-19, 1921

Maude Slade Odell to Jane Addams, January 30, 1922

Rosika Schwimmer to Jane Addams, November 17, 1922

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Birth Date

1876-11-23

Death Date

1956-07-30

Birthplace

Liverpool, England

Biographical Text

Agnes Maude Royden was a British suffragist and its first woman preacher. She was trained in history at Cheltenham Ladies' College and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Deeply deeply interested in the lives of the poor, she became a social worker at the Victoria Women's Settlement in Liverpool. This inspired her to pursue a religious calling. Royden was an active campaigner for women's rights, not only for suffrage but for women in the ministry. She served on the executive committee of the National Union of Woman Suffrage Societies and edited its journal, Copmmon Cause. She also helped organize the Church League for Women's Suffrage in 1909. In 1914 she determined to pursue the ministry. Unable to be ordained a minister because she was a woman, she was named the assistant minister and preacher at the Free Church's City Temple in London in 1917. By 1921 she founded the Guildhouse, a congregation that was deeply interested in social activism. Royden was a pacifist, who served as the secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and supported the work of the No-Conscription League. This put her into conflict with the National Union of Woman's Suffrage Societies, which supported war efforts. Royden left the Union in 1915. Royden joined the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She was a well-known speaker on peace in both the United Kingdom and the United States and was influenced by a meeting with Gandhi in the 1920s. She fought efforts to ban Radcliffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, a novel that dealt with lesbianism. In 1935 Royden joined the Peace Pledge Union, a pacifist organization that sought to oppose war by placing themselves between opposing troops. The plan was never put into place. By 1939, Royden broke with pacifists, speaking in the U.S. and England in support for the war against Nazi Germany, which she saw as a greater threat to peace.

In 1944 she married Rev. George William Hudson Shaw, who died in the same year. Royden died in 1956.