HIS lady was daughter of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, and born in 1589. She was first married to the Earl of Dorset, and secondly to the Earl of Pembroke. She had a clear soul shining through a vivid body; her body was durable and healthful, her soul sprightful, of great understanding and judgment, faithful memory, and ready wit. She had early gained knowledge as of the best things; so an ability to discourse in all commendable arts and sciences, as well as in those things which belong to persons of her birth and sex to know. For she could discourse with virtuosos, travellers, scholars, merchants, divines, statesmen, and with good housewives, in any kind; in so much that a prime and elegant wit, Dr Donne, well seen in all human learning, and afterwards devoted to the study of divinity, is reported to have said of this lady in her younger years, "that she knew well how to discourse of all things, from predestination to slea-silk." Although she knew wool and flax, fine linen and silk, things appertaining to the spindle and distaff, yet "she could open her mouth with wisdom," knowledge of the best and highest things. If she had sought fame rather than wisdom, possibly she might have been ranked among those wits and learned of that sex of whom Pythagoras, or Plutarch, or any of the ancients, have made such honourable mention.
Authors of several kinds of learning, some of controversies very abstruse, were not unknown to her. She much commended one book, William Barclay's dispute with Bellarmine, both, as she knew, of the Popish persuasion; but the former less papal, and, she said, had well stated a main point, and opposed that learned cardinal for giving too much power even in temporals to the pope over kings and secular princes, which she seemed to think the main thing aimed at by the followers of that court; to pretend to claim only to govern directly in spirituals, but to intend chiefly, though indirectly, to hook in temporals, and in them to gain power, dominion, and tribute; money and rule being gods to which the Roman courtiers and their partisans chiefly sacrifice.
As she had been a most critical searcher into her own life, so she had been a diligent inquirer into the lives, fortunes, and characters of many of her ancestors for many years. Some of them she has left particularly described, and the exact annals of diverse passages, which were most remarkable in her own life ever since it was wholly at her own disposal, that is, since the death of her last lord and husband, Philip, Earl of Pembroke, which was for the space of twenty-six or twenty-seven years.
From this her great diligence, as her posterity may find in reading those abstracts of occurrences in her own life, being added to her heroic fathers' and pious mothers' lives, dictated by herself, so they may reap greater fruits of her diligence in finding the honours, descents, pedigrees, estates, and the titles and claims of their progenitors to them, comprised historically and methodically in three volumes of the larger size, and each of them three or four times fairly written over; which, although they were said to have been collected and digested in some parts by one or more learned heads, yet were they wholly directed by herself, and attested in the most parts by her own hand.
ESTHER INGLIS.
[1600.]
BALLARD.
EMARKABLE for her caligraphy, the chief thing I have to mention concerning her. All that see her writing are astonished at it, upon the account of its exactness, its fineness, and variety; and many are of opinion that nothing can be more exquisite. Gazius, Ascham, Davies, Gething, Lyte, and many others, have been celebrated for their extraordinary talents this way; but this lady has excelled them all, what she has done being almost incredible. One of the many delicate pieces she wrote was in the custody of Mr Samuel Kello, her great-grandson, in 1711. Others are remaining at the Castle of Edinburgh. Mr Hearne saw one in the hands of Philip Harcourt, Esq., entitled, "Historiæ Memorabiles Genesis, per Estheram Inglis, Edinburgi. Anno 1600."