The identity and life of Thomas Bentley, compiler of The 'Monument of Matrones' (1582)

A Thomas Bentley complied and wrote The Monuments of Matrones which the wel l-known printer Henry Denham published in 1582. This massive work - over 1, 500 pages - was the first comprehensive prayer book for women, a major devo tional publication of Elizabethan England, containing prayers, biblical ext racts, biographies of Old and New Testament women, and writings by Reformat ion queens, including Elizabeth. Title pages and some prayers have been stu died by modern scholars, but nothing was known of the author beyond his sel f-identification as a student of Gray's Inn. We believe that the churchward en of St. Andrew Holborn, compiler of the church records, is the same Thoma s Bentley as the author of The Monument. This Thomas Bentley had been at Gr ay's Inn, St. Andrew was the Gray's Inn church, but especially notable is t hat the initials inserted into family prayers in The Monument were those of his family.