To Sir Henry Goodyer. The references to “the good Countess” of Bedford and to Mitcham fix the date of this letter as later than August, 1608, and earlier than the spring of 1610, when Donne moved his family to Drury House. Sir Henry Goodyer was now in the service of the Earl of Bedford.
LXV
To Sir Henry Goodyer, and written two days later than LXIII. Apparently Tobie Matthew had deposited a part of his fortune in Goodyer’s keeping to avoid the possibility of confiscation. (See note to XLV, above.) By 1614 Sir Henry’s affairs were in hopeless confusion. (See note to XI, above.)
No copy of Donne’s Poems in an earlier edition than that of 1633 has been discovered, and it is unlikely that he carried out the intention, here expressed, of printing them during his lifetime.
LXVI
For “my L. of Canterburies businesse” see note to LI, above. “My little book of Cases” is presumably the Paradoxes and Problems.
LXVIII
Donne was presented to the living of Keyston, in Huntingdonshire, by the Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn in 1616. Wrest was the home of the Earl of Kent. (See note to LVII, above.) “My Lady Spencer,” the daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, and third wife of Sir Thomas Egerton, is “that noble lady at Ashworth” of LIX.
LXIX
To Sir Henry Goodyer. This letter appears to belong to the period of Sir Henry’s prosperity, and was written, I think, either from Mitcham, or from Donne’s lodgings in the Strand; in either case, not earlier than 1605 nor later than 1610. Parson’s Green was in the parish of Fulham, Middlesex. Ben Jonson has an Epigram (LXXXV) anent Sir Henry Goodyer’s hawks: