Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 26.djvu/212

Herbert  [q. v.], another literary protégé of Sir Philip Sidney, owed very much to her and her husband. In her honour Fraunce prepared and published ‘The Countess of Pembroke's Ivychurch’ (1591 ; 3rd part 1592) and ' The Countess of Pembroke's Emanuel' (1591). About 1590 the countess invited the poet, Samuel Daniel [q. v.], to take up his residence at Wilton, as tutor to her elder son William. She encouraged Daniel in his literary work, and he describes Wilton as ‘his first school.’ To her he dedicated ‘Delia,’ his earliest volume of poems (1592), and his tragedy of ‘Cleopatra’ (1593). The latter he wrote as a companion to the countess's ‘Antonie.’ Daniel never lost his respect for his patroness, and after they had long separated he rehearsed his obligations to her when dedicating to her the edition of his ‘Civill Warres,’ issued in 1609. To Nicholas Breton [q. v.] the countess was also a very faithful friend. For her he wrote in 1590 ‘The Pilgrimage to Paradise,’ ‘coyned with the Countess of Pembroke's Loue.’ ‘The Countess of Pembroke's Passion,’ a poem on Christ's Passion, which was recently first printed from the British Museum MS. Sloane 1300, has been often attributed to the countess herself. But it is obvious that it was written by Breton. Breton's ‘Auspicante Jehovah,’ in prose (1597), and his ‘Diuine Poem’ (1601) are also dedicated to her in affectionate terms. Thomas Moffatt or Muffet, medical attendant on the earl and author of a poem on the silkworm and other works, was another of her dependents until his death at Wilton in 1605. Many other literary men paid her homage. Shakespeare, who is believed to have addressed his sonnets to her elder son, William [q. v.], doubtless refers to her in the lines (sonnet iii.): Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime. Thomas Nashe, in his preface to the 1591 edition of Sidney's ‘Astrophel,’ wrote that ‘artes do adore [her] as a second Minerva, and our poets extol [her] as the patroness of their invention.’ Gabriel Harvey described her translation of Plessis du Mornay as ‘a restorative electuary of gems’ (1593). John Davies of Hereford writes of his indebtedness to her in his ‘Wittes Pilgrimage’ (1611), his ‘Scourge of Folly,’ and his ‘Muses' Sacrifice.’ Donne, in his ‘Poems’ (1635), commended her own and her brother's translations of the Psalms, which Sir John Harington had declared should ‘outlast Wilton walls’ (Nugæ Antiquæ, ii. 6). Ben Jonson's epigram in his ‘Underwoods,’ addressed to ‘the Honoured Countess of * *,’ is almost certainly a panegyric upon her. John Taylor included after her death a sonnet in his ‘Praise of the Needle,’ commending her needlework, elaborate examples of which, he writes, adorned the tapestries at Wilton House (, Censura Literaria, ii. 370).

The countess's literary interests did not obscure her strong family affections. In 1597 her eldest surviving brother, Robert, was seeking in vain his recall from the Low Countries, and she herself wrote in his behalf to Lord Burghley. In 1599, when her elder son was suffering from headache, she entreated her brother Robert, then in Germany, to send home some of his ‘excellent tobacco,’ which alone gave the boy relief. In 1595 the countess was at court, to present a New-year's gift to the queen, and late in 1599 Elizabeth honoured her with a visit at Wilton. No account of the royal visit is extant; but there appears in Davison's poetical ‘Rhapsody’(1601) a pastoral dialogue in praise of Astrea made by the countess ‘at the Queen's Majesty being at her house.’ In 1601 the earl died. He left her the use of plate, jewels, and household stuff to the value of three thousand marks, the lease of the manor of Ivy Church, and the manor and park of Devizes for life. Rumours of disagreement were current in the later years of their married life, and Chamberlain reports that the earl left her ‘as bare as he could, and bestowing all on the young lord, even to her jewels’ (, Letters, temp. Eliz. p. 100).

Soon after James I's accession she went to Windsor to kiss the hand of James I and Queen Anne of Denmark, and in August 1603 she seems to have been at Wilton, when her son entertained the king and queen there. Between 1609 and 1615 she lived chiefly at Crosby Hall in Bishopsgate Street, which she rented of the Earl of Northampton. In 1615 James granted her for life a royal manor in Bedfordshire, Houghton Conquest, or Dame Ellensbury Park, called also Ampthill Park. There she erected a magnificent mansion, known as Houghton House, and there James I visited her in July 1621. In 1616 she went to Spa to drink the waters, but complained that the treatment rather injured her health than benefited it. Late in life she was much distressed by the disreputable adventures of her second son, Philip, and, according to Osborne, ‘tore her hair’ when she heard that he had been whipped at Croydon races by a Scotchman. She died at Crosby Hall on 25 Sept. 1621, and was buried beside her husband in Salisbury