Prudence is from the Latin prudentia ("foresight, wisdom") — **one of the four classical cardinal virtues alongside Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance**. **A Puritan virtue name popular in 17th-century England and colonial New England**. **Saint Prudence of Como (5th c.)** was an early Italian martyr. **Prudence Crandall (1803-1890)** — American schoolteacher who in 1832 opened the first private school for Black women in the United States (in Canterbury, Connecticut), defying mob violence; declared Connecticut's state heroine in 1995. **Featured in the Beatles song *Dear Prudence* (1968), written by John Lennon for Mia Farrow's sister Prudence Farrow** during the band's stay at an Indian ashram.
Subject of Susan Strane's *A Whole-Souled Woman: Prudence Crandall and the Education of Black Women* (1990).
Prudence reduces to one — the number of cardinal virtue.