A mother of fourteen children and a brewer in an English market town, she passed through a long crisis before turning wholly to God. Unable to write, she dictated the account of her life and pilgrimages, likely the first autobiography in English, marked by tears of contrition that unsettled those around her.
In their own words
This creature was so filled with compunction that she could not restrain her tears.
The Book of Margery Kempe
Daughter, you shall have no other purgatory than the slander of the world.
The Book of Margery Kempe (words of Christ, reported)
If it were thy will, Lord, I would, for thy love and for the magnifying of thy name, be hewn as small as flesh for the pot.
The Book of Margery Kempe, Book I, ch. 57, translated from the Middle English by the Manna team ("ben hewyn as smal as flesch to the potte")