Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/186

 252). On 21 July 1621 the king made her a gift of deer.

Sir Robert named three trustees to administer his property, each named John Wroth (one being his uncle, a second being his brother, and a third, of London, being his cousin); but Lady Mary appears to have managed her own affairs after Sir Robert's death, with disastrous result. She was involved in an endless series of pecuniary embarrassments. In 1623 she obtained from the king an order protecting her from creditors for one year. This was constantly renewed. She wrote to secretary Conway on 3 Jan. 1623–4 that she had paid half her debts and hoped to pay all in a year; but she was too sanguine, and she was still in need of ‘protection’ in 1628 (Cal. State Papers, Dom. passim).

Meanwhile Lady Mary had sought a more interesting road to reputation. On 13 July 1621 there was licensed for publication a folio volume from her pen (, Stationers' Company Register, iv. 57). Her work bore the title: ‘The Countesse of Mountgomerie's Urania. Written by the right Honourable the Lady Mary Wroath, daughter to the right Noble Robert Earl of Leicester, And Neece to the ever famous and renowned Sir Phillips Sidney, Knight, And to ye most exelēt Lady Mary Countesse of Pembroke late deceased (London, printed for John Marriott and John Grismand).’ An elaborate frontispiece was engraved by Simon Pass, and bore the date 1621. The book was called ‘The Countess of Montgomery's Urania’ in compliment to the author's friend and neighbour at Enfield, Susanna, wife of Philip Herbert, earl of Montgomery. Lady Mary's ‘Urania’ is a close imitation, in four books, of the ‘Arcadia’ of her uncle, Sir Philip Sidney. It is a fantastic story of princes and princesses disguised as shepherds and shepherdesses. The scene is laid in Greece. The tedious narrative is in prose, which is extraordinarily long-winded and awkward, but there are occasional verse eclogues and songs. At the close of the volume is a separate collection of poems, including some hundred sonnets and twenty songs. The appended collection bears the general title ‘Pamphilia to Amphilanthus.’ One section is headed ‘A Crowne of Sonnets dedicated to Love.’ In these poems Lady Mary figures to greater advantage, and discovers some lyric faculty and fluency. Two of her poems are reprinted in Mr. Bullen's ‘Lyrics and Romances’ (1890).

The book seems to have had a satiric intention, and to have reflected on the amorous adventures of some of James I's courtiers. On 15 Dec. 1621 Lady Mary wrote to Buckingham, assuring him that she never intended her book to offend any one, and that she had stopped the sale of it (Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. p. 60). On 9 March 1623 Chamberlain wrote to his friend Carleton, enclosing ‘certain bitter verses of the Lord Denny upon the Lady Mary Wroth, for that in her book of “Urania” she doth palpably and grossly play upon him and his late daughter, the Lady Mary Hay, besides many others she makes bold with; and, they say, takes great liberty, or rather licence, to traduce whom she pleases, and thinks she dances in a net.’ Chamberlain adds that he had seen an answer by Lady Mary to these rhymes, but ‘thought it not worth the writing out’ (Court and Times of James I, ii. 298; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1619–23, p. 356; cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. p. 179, Hatfield MSS.).

Lady Mary survived these incidents for more than twenty years. On 4 Dec. 1640 Sir John Leeke wrote to Sir Edmund Verney: ‘I received a most courteous and kind letter from my old mistress, the Lady Mary Wroth. … She wrote me word that by my Lord of Pembroke's great mediation the king hath given her son a brave living in Ireland’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 435). She had no surviving son by Sir Robert Wroth, and reference was made either to a son by a second husband, or more probably—for there is no proof that she married again—to a godson, who has not been identified.



WROTH, ROBERT (1540?–1606), member of parliament, born in Middlesex about 1540, was eldest son of Sir  (1516–1573) [q. v.] by his wife Mary, daughter of Richard, lord Rich. He was admitted a pensioner of St. John's College, Cambridge, on 21 April 1553, but, owing to the religious changes consequent on the accession of Queen Mary, he left the university without a degree soon after his admission. Accompanying his father in his exile, he returned to England soon after the accession of Elizabeth. He afterwards entered public life, and the rest of his career was usefully devoted to politics and the administration of a large estate. He was elected for the first time to parliament for St. Albans on 11 Jan. 1562–1563; he was returned for Trevena on 2 April 1571; he took his seat as member for the