Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/239

 212

SIR FRANCIS BACONS MOTHER-IN-LAW; HER FAMILY; HER HUSBANDS, AND HER SONS-IN-LAW. By Alexander Brown. BACON'S mother-in-law, I believe, has never been fully identified by his bi ographers. They seem to have some doubt as to her family and social position, and state, in a general way, that she was " Alice, the daughter of Humphrey Smith, Queen Elizabeth's silkman, said to be of an ancient Lei cestershire family;" and for the truth thereof, we are sometimes 'referred to her first hus band's epitaph in Strype's Stow's London, edition 1720, book ii. p. 183, which states clearly, in good old Latin, that her name was Dorothy, and her father's Ambrose. The family name was originally Heriz, or Hares; but in the reign of Henry VII., Wil liam Heriz of Withcock, in Leicestershire, assumed the name of Smith, or Smyth. One of this William's descendants, styled in .the Visitation of London (1568) "John Hares alias Smyth, of Withcock in Com. Leicester, gentleman," married Dorothy, daughter of Richard Cave, of Stanford, Esq., and had by her (1) Erasmus, (2) Ambrose, and six other sons. (1) Erasmus Smyth married, secondly, Margaret (relict of his first cousin Roger Cave), daughter of Richard Cecil, and sister of William Cecil, the great Lord Burleigh, which Margaret by her first husband, Roger Cave, was the mother of Margaret Cave, who married Sir William Skipwith, and be came the mother of Sir Henry Skipwith, whose son, Sir Grey, came to Virginia in the cavalier emigration of 1649-1659. (2) Ambrose Smyth (named, I suppose, for his uncle Sir Ambrose Cave, knight hos pitaller of St. John, of Jerusalem) became a citizen and mercer of London; married Joane, daughter of John Coo, of Coxall, and had issue two sons and four daughters. The third daughter, of whom I write, was named Dorothy; she was born about 1568. (Rev.

Henry Smith, 1 560-1 591, the celebrated di vine patronized by Lord Burleigh, and " com monly called the silver-tongued Smith, as being second only to Chrysostom the golden tongued," was nearly related to Dorothy, who, we will see, had a sharp tongue.) She married, first, about 1588, Benedict Barnham, merchant and Alderman of London, and benefactor of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford. He died April 3, 1598, leaving four daughters, — Elizabeth, Alice, Dorothy, and Bridget, of whom hereafter. Mrs. Dorothy Smyth-Barnham married, secondly, Sir John Pakington, in November, 1598. We are told that " Barnham left his widow very rich; and that consideration, to gether with her youth and beauty, made it impossible for her to escape the addresses even of the greatest persons about the court; but Sir John was the only happy man who knew how to gain her, being recommended by his worthy friend Mr. William Seabright, town clerk of London. This lady's daugh ters by her first husband were very young when they lost their father, and therefore needed a faithful friend to manage and im prove their fortunes, in which capacity Sir John acquitted himself so honorably that they had ten thousand pounds each for por tion." Sir John Pakington .was a celebrated man, a Knight of the Bath, one of the Privy Council, and an especial favorite of Queen Elizabeth. Lady Pakington's daughters by her first husband formed the following alliances: Elizabeth was the first wife of Mervyn Touchet, the notorious Lord Audley and Earl of Castlehaven, who was executed on Tower Hill, May 14, 163 1; Alice married Sir Francis Bacon; Dorothy married Sir John Constable of Gray's Inn and of Dromby, Yorkshire; and Bridget married Sir William