Maude Royden

 ( 1876 Births ) 

She lectured on English literature for the university extension movement and in 1909 was elected to the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). From 1912 to 1914 she edited The Common Cause, the newspaper of the NUWSS. She was also active in the Church League for Women's Suffrage. In 1913 she was invited, with the backing of Lavinia Talbot to talk to the all-male Church Congress about white slavery.

Royden broke with the NUWSS over its support for the war effort and was among the 101 signatories of the Open Christmas Letter in 1914. She became the secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation with other Christian pacifists. Although unable to travel to the women's peace congress in the Hague in 1915, where the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was established, she became the vice-president of the league.

Royden became well known as a speaker on social and religious subjects. In a 16 July 1917 speech at Queen's Hall, London, she used the oft-quoted phrase 'the Conservative Party at prayer' of the Church of England; "The Church should go forward along the path of progress and be no longer satisfied only to represent the Conservative Party at prayer." In 1917 she became assistant preacher at the Congregationalist City Temple, London, the first woman to occupy this office.

After the First World War, Royden's interest shifted to the role of women in the Church. While attending the Eighth Conference of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance at Geneva in 1920, she preached in French and English at St Pierre Cathedral on 6 June. Royden made several worldwide preaching tours from the 1920s to the 1940s. In 1929 she began the official campaign for the ordination of women when she founded the Society for the Ministry of Women. Royden "eminent in the religious life of the nation" was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour in the 1930 New Year Honours. Her older brother Thomas Royden had been made a Member in 1919 (for his work relating to shipping in the First World War) and they are the only siblings to be Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour.

In 1931 Glasgow University conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity on Royden, the first woman to become a Doctor of Divinity in Britain. In 1935 she was awarded an honorary degree of Legum Doctor by the University of Liverpool. She received an honorary degree from Mills College, California in 1937.

Royden joined the Peace Pledge Union but later renounced pacifism, believing Nazism to be a greater evil than war.

At the end of the Second World War, it was discovered that Royden, along with her brother Sir Thomas Royden, were listed in "The Black Book" or Sonderfahndungsliste G.B., a list of Britons who were to be arrested in the event of a Nazi invasion of Britain.