Shakespeare's environment

In a well-known letter to a friend about the choice of a wife Sir Thomas says:

Such wives did he prepare his own daughters to be; Margaret Roper, Elizabeth Dancy, and Cecilia Heron. Erasmus described their home at Chelsea as a “little academe combined with a university of Christian religion.” The favourite was the eldest, Margaret (1508-44), who was most like her father. He procured some of the best linguists of the age to teach her the learned languages, as Dr. Clement and Mr. William Gonell, and other great masters to instruct her in the liberal arts and sciences, philosophy, logic, rhetoric, music, mathematics, astronomy, and arithmetic. Her letters and orations delighted the most learned of her contemporaries, as the great Cardinal Pole, John Voysey, Bishop of Exeter, and Erasmus, who called her “the ornament of Britain.” The tutor of the Duke of Richmond wrote to Sir Thomas More to express his regret that he had not been present when his daughter “disputed of philosophy before the King.” The love and tenderness of her father were equal to his wisdom, and the story of their lives is ideally beautiful. When she married Mr. William Roper, of Eltham, Kent, he kept up communion in correspondence. In one letter he says:

She wrote and translated many works, especially Eusebius’s “Ecclesiastical History” out of Greek into Latin, which her daughter, Mary Roper, another learned student, translated afterwards out of Latin into English.

Leland the antiquary writes of Sir Thomas More’s daughters, verses translated thus:

Associated with them in their life and studies was Margaret Giggs (1508-70), a niece of Sir Thomas More. She is included in both of Holbein’s portrait-groups of the More family, and was also distinguished for her aptitude in learning. Algebra was her special study, and Sir Thomas More sent an algorism stone of hers from the Tower. She married their family tutor, Dr. John Clement, and Leland wrote her epithalamium. Her husband made her little inferior to himself in Latin and Greek, and she assisted him in his translations. She and her husband went abroad on Elizabeth’s accession. Her only daughter, Winifred, married William Rastell, nephew of Sir Thomas More.

Sir Anthony Cooke, one of the learned tutors of Edward VI, also gave his daughters an education so liberal that they became the wonder of their age. He considered that women should be educated on the same lines as men, and that they were quite as fit. Mildred (1526-89), was well skilled in the Greek and Latin tongues, particularly Greek. She delighted in reading the works of Basil the Great, Cyril Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, and other similar writers. She translated part of St. Chrysostom into English. When she presented the Cambridge University Library with a great Bible in Hebrew and other languages, she sent with it a Greek letter. In 1546 she married Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, and became the mother of Anne Countess of Oxford, and Robert Cecil, afterwards Earl of Salisbury. Her marriage was happy, and after her death her husband wrote “Meditations” upon her goodness, her private charity and helps to learning.

Anne, born 1528, second daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, was also liberally educated, and distinguished among the literati of the time. She was said to be “a choice lady, eminent for piety, virtue, and learning, and exquisitely skilled in the Greek, Latin, and Italian tongues,” and was associated with her father by being made governess to King Edward VI. She translated out of Italian into English twenty-five sermons written by Bernardino Ochino, 1550. She also rendered out of Latin into English Bishop Jewel’s “Apology for the Church of England,” for which she had great praise from the author and the Archbishop. “Besides the honour done to her sex, and to the degree of ladies, she had done pleasure to the author of the Latin book, by delivering him by her clear translation from the perils of ambiguous and doubtful constructions.” She married Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and had two sons, Anthony and Francis, whose great powers she cultivated from their earliest years.

Elizabeth, born 1529, third daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, was also learned in languages and sciences. She translated out of French a tract on transubstantiation, afterwards printed, and was consulted by all the learned men of her age. She married, first, Sir Thomas Hoby, Ambassador in France; and second, Lord John Russel, son and heir to the Earl of Bedford, and carefully educated her children.

Katherine, born 1530, fourth daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, was also famous for learning in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and for her skill in poetry. A specimen of her talent is preserved in Sir John Harington’s notes to his “Ariosto,” and by Dr. Thomas Fuller in his “Worthies of England” (328). Probably a certain timidity of his own powers in this accomplishment induced one of her admirers to employ George Buchanan to write verses for him. These appear among George Buchanan’s epigrams and three short poems, “To the learned daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, in the name of Henry Killigrew, Englishman.” This gentleman she afterwards married.

The three daughters of the unfortunate Duke of Somerset, Protector of England, under Edward VI, Lady Anne, Lady Margaret, and Lady Jane, were also widely famed for their learning and culture. They wrote 400 Latin verses on the death of Margaret of Valois, the Queen of Navarre, and it was said of them by Ronsard that if Orpheus had heard them sing, he would have become their scholar.

Lady Jane, the eldest daughter of the famous poet the Earl of Surrey, who married the unfortunate Charles Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, was a distinguished scholar. Foxe, the Martyrologist, was her tutor, and he said of her that “she might well stand in competition with the most learned men of the time, for the praise of elegancy both in Greek and Latin.”

Henry, Lord Maltravers, only son of the Earl of Arundel, one of the few representatives left of the ancient nobility, excelled in all manner of good learning and languages, and gave a learned education to his son and his two daughters, Mary, Duchess of Norfolk, and Jane, Lady Lumley. Mary translated selections from Greek into Latin, and Jane, “Isocrates,” the “Iphigenia” of Euripides and others referred to in Ascham’s “Schoolmaster.” Their exercise-books of translations are still preserved in the Royal MSS. The former died at the age of sixteen, after she had given birth to Philip, afterwards Earl of Arundel.

Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Arundel, who was first married to Robert Ratcliff, secondly to Henry Howard, Earl of Arundel, was also a distinguished scholar. She translated from English into Latin “The Wise Sayings and Eminent Deeds of the Emperor Alexander Severus.” She also translated from Greek into Latin select “Sentences of the Seven Wise Grecian Philosophers,” and “Similes collected from the Books of Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and other Philosophers.” These she dedicated to her father.

Lady Elizabeth Fane, wife of Sir Ralph Fane (who was sent to the Tower with the Duke of Somerset and suffered with him in 1551), was thoroughly educated, after the fashion of her time, though not so brilliant as many of her contemporaries. She translated and versified 21 Psalms and 102 Proverbs in English, printed by Robert Crowland, 1550.

Elizabeth Jane Weston, born about 1558, was gifted with fine talent, which was highly cultivated. She left England young, and settled in Prague. She wrote several Latin books in prose and verse, highly esteemed by the learned men of the time. She is ranked on the Continent with Sir Thomas More and the best Latin poets of the century, was highly praised by Scaliger, and complimented by Nicholas May in a Latin epigram. She married Mr. John Leon, a gentleman of the Emperor’s Court.

Catherine Tishem was a great linguist, and could read Galen in the original, which few physicians of her time could do. She married Gualterus Gruter of Antwerp, and was the chief instructor of her son John Gruter the famous philologist.

Elizabeth Legge, born 1580, was noted for her faculty of acquiring languages, having studied thoroughly the Latin, French, Spanish, and Irish tongues, besides cultivating her poetical powers. Unfortunately, she could not make use of her acquirements, as she lost her sight in consequence of severe study. She never married, lived chiefly in Ireland, and died at the age of 105.

Ballard also mentions Esther Inglis as a scholar, though she is chiefly noted for her beautiful handwriting, which is preserved in the British Museum.

Many ladies of the century were known as writers, as Elizabeth Grimeston, and more as patrons of literature. But by far the greatest woman author of the later century was Mary, sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and wife of the Earl of Pembroke. She was carefully educated in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and shared her distinguished brother’s literary tastes. She was married in 1577, and her eldest son, William, was born in 1580. About that time Sir Philip Sidney was in disfavour at Court, and stayed with her at Wilton House, where was a good library. They retired together in the summer to a small house at Ivychurch, where they continued their literary pursuits. Two years afterwards Sir Philip dedicated to her his romance, “the Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia,” first printed by Ponsonby. She did not like it as it stood, so corrected and expanded it much, and republished it. She also translated a “Discourse upon Life and Death” from the French of Plessis du Mornay, her brother’s friend, published 1590; and rendered very freely into English blank verse Robert Garnier’s French tragedy of Marcus Antonius, adding choral lyrics of her own. Some of the passages are finer than anything her brother produced. She edited and published her brother’s poems after his death, and completed the metrical translation of the Psalms which he had begun, and worked up to the forty-third, but she did not publish these. They lie in the British Museum, Add. MSS., 12047-8. She lost her father in May, her mother in August, and her brother in October 1586. She expressed her sorrow for his loss in a poem published by Spenser with his “Astrophel” (1595), and awkwardly named by him “The Dolefull Lay of Clorinda.”

Spenser says of her in “Colin Clout’s Come Home Again”:

In a dedicatory sonnet to “The Faery Queene” he says:

and elsewhere he repeats:

He dedicates to her also his “Ruines of Time,” in which he praises her brother.

Abraham Fraunce extols her, and produces “The Countess of Pembroke’s Ivychurch, 1591,” and “The Countess of Pembroke’s Emmanuel.”

The poet Daniel became tutor to her sons, and to her he dedicated his “Delia,” a collection of sonnets (1592), and his tragedy of “Cleopatra” as companion to her “Mark Antony.”

Thomas Nash says of her, in prefatory lines to the 1591 edition of Sidney’s “Astrophel”: “The artes do adore her as a second Minerva, and our poets extol her as patroness of their inventions.” Osborne says of her:

Meres compares her to Octavia, Augustus’ sister and Virgil’s patroness; and describes her as being not only liberal to poets but a most delicate poet, worthy of the complimentary lines which Antipholus Sidonius addressed to Sappho.

Thomas Churchyard writes:

She died in 1621, and her family raised no monument to her, but Ben Jonson wrote the famous epitaph:

Arabella Stewart, born 1577, the daughter of Charles Stewart Lennox, the youngest brother of Lord Darnley, was a very highly cultured woman, and was appointed by her cousin, James I, to be governess to his daughter the Princess Elizabeth, who loved her dearly. She wrote histories and had a great facility for poetical composition.

Two other names I would like to mention of ladies born in the sixteenth century, who carried into the next its culture with a difference, as the new spirit of science and mathematics, history, and political economy absorbed some of the time hitherto devoted to classics.

Elizabeth Stewart, mentioned above, was born in 1596, at Falkland Palace. When her father came to England she was sent to the charge of Lord Harington at Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire. That nobleman followed the plan of Sir David Lindsay, of the Mount, surrounded her by cultured companions, explained to her the meaning of everything, and taught her the foundations of the Christian religion. Mr. Beauchamp was her writing master, and the famous Dr. Bull, the composer, her teacher in music. Lord Harington himself taught her much in history, literature, and geography. She was very fond of animals and of natural history, and she had a little corner of the park, with a lake in it, to preserve her treasures. She built a little cottage for a widow and her children to attend to her animals, and designed it herself. Near it was her fairy farm, with the smallest kind of cattle that could be bought. She studied the changes of insects through the microscope, then newly invented. When ten years old a portrait was painted of her, inexplicable without knowing all this. She has a monkey and a dog at her feet, a love-bird in her hand, a macaw on one shoulder and a parrot on the other. She was familiar also with the use of the telescope, and studied mathematics and astronomy. Her home at Coombe Abbey suggested to Dr. Johnson “The Happy Valley of Rasselas.” She was devoted to her brother Henry, and inconsolable at his death, in 1612. In the following year she married the Count Palatine, and great festivities took place in London. The poets Donne and Daniel call her “the pearl of Britain,” and Sir Henry Wotton wrote verses in her praise:

Her chief fault was extravagance, which increased her pecuniary troubles with her unfortunate husband. But they were happy together and had many children, one of whom was that Elizabeth who became the pupil and friend of the philosophic Descartes.[110]

Anne Clifford, born 1589, daughter and heir of the Earl of Cumberland, had been forbidden by her father to learn Latin, much to her chagrin. She made up for it by studying all that she could find to read in English, and by that time through translations she found a good deal. Her diary still remains at the British Museum. She gives a beautiful description of her mother’s character, and of her moral virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. She was not a linguist, but a reader, a thinker, and a chemist, and possessed “many excellent knowledges, human and divine.”

Her tutor was Samuel Daniel, “that religious and honest poet who composed the Civil Wars of England in verse,” and he led her to the study of history, old archives, armorial bearings, and the laws regarding inheritance, whereby she was able to sustain the noble fight against her King and her husband concerning the right of heiresses to transmit property undiverted to their heirs. What she had received from her father she wished to leave to her daughters. In this she succeeded, though the laws drifted after her date to the exclusions and disabilities from which modern women have so much suffered.

She was capable in land estate management and architecture, in which Cromwell gave her practical lessons by demolishing her castles for her fidelity to the King. Each time he destroyed them she rebuilt them stronger, until, fired with admiration at her courage, he bade his officers desist from further molestation.

Her funeral sermon, preached by Bishop Rainbow, was an eloquent oration, in which he said that the life of this great, good woman was fitter for a history than a sermon. He alluded to her studies and her conversation with admiration. “She could speak well on anything, from predestination to slea-silk.”

Thus, I think the women of the sixteenth century proved to their successors that they were fit, in the words of the little Marie Stuart, to study anything, if so be they were granted opportunity.

The lives of these illustrative individuals, who became illustrious because they excelled many others, suggest the probability of a much more general culture, and that of a higher standard, than has been hitherto realized. It is to be hoped that more research may yield more information, and account for the tidal backdraw in the position of women between these times and our own. Men grow great, and poets become inspired in proportion to the influence of the other sex, and it is only reasonable to add to the causes of the special glory of the sixteenth century, the greatness of its women.

Lecture delivered before the Royal Society of Literature, 1904. See Proceedings R.S.L., vol. xxv.