To Sir Henry Goodyer, and, as the record of the closing incidents of the Elector Palatine’s long struggle shows, written in 1622.
LXXVI
To Sir Henry Goodyer on the death of his wife in 1604.
LXXVII
To Sir Henry Goodyer. The quarrel between Hertford and Monteagle and the last illness of Cecil Boulstrod, here recorded, give the date of this letter as 1609. Cecil Boulstrod was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Anne. Ben Jonson read to Drummond his “Verses on the Pucelle of the Court, Mistress Boulstred, whose Epitaph Donne made.” They are little to the credit of either the lady or the poet. Drummond records in his Conversations that “that piece of the Pucelle of the Court was stolen out of his (Jonson’s) pocket by a gentleman who drank him drousie, and given Mistress Boulstraid; which brought him great displeasure,” as well it might. Donne wrote two elegies in her honour, one of which, at least, seems to be inspired by genuine emotion.
LXXVIII
To Sir Henry Goodyer and written in 1615. (See note to XXXIV, above.) “This Lady” is apparently the Countess of Huntingdon, and “the Lady where you are” the Countess of Bedford.
LXXIX
This letter, written on the eve of the German tour, on which Donne attended the Earl of Doncaster (See note to VII, above), was, I feel very sure, addressed, not to Sir Thomas Lucy, but to Sir Henry Goodyer. The allusions to Tuesday as a day of writing, the reference to “an establishment in your estate,” the acknowledgment of his correspondent’s favours in “keeping me alive in the memory of the noblest Countess” (of Bedford), all point to Goodyer.
LXXX