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.”