Anne Docwra

Anne Docwra born Anne Waldegrave (1624 – 1710) was a Quaker minister, religious writer and philanthropist.

Docwra was born in Bures in 1624. Her father was William Waldegrave and her grandfather was Sir William Waldegrave. Her family were Royalist and well connected. Her father was a Justice of the Peace and when he found her reading a book that he thought lightweight he encouraged her to learn by reading books about the law.

She married James Docwra and he died in 1672. She was a Quaker minister and the local Quakers met at her house from 1672. In 1680 she gave the Quakers a 1,000 year lease on a yard in Jesus Lane in Cambridge. There is still (2017) a meeting house there which traces its foundation back to 1650. However the current building dates, in part, to 1777 as the meeting house has been rebuilt several times.

The Quakers in the 1680s were having discussions about the right way to conduct their church. For instance there were separate meetings for men and women. This was an idea that she objected to and she had some (financial) influence. In 1682 she published A looking-glass for the recorder and justices of the peace and grand juries for the town and county of Cambridge which appealed for tolerance.

Francis Bugg was her nephew and he had spent over three years in jail for being a Quaker but he went into dispute with leading figures of the Quaker over money and ideas. Docwra entered into controversy with him. For some years Bugg continued to write against Quakers whilst receiving money from the Church of England. Docwra attacked Bugg's character, and Bugg's friends attest a certificate to it. Bugg was further attacked from the Quaker side by Thomas Ellwood, Thomas Lower, and Richard Richardson. In 1713 Bugg was imprisoned, for unknown cause, at Ely, and he then resided at Mildenhall.

Docwra died on 14 September 1710.