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 20 THE CECILS

1542, when O'Neill made submission to the King and was created Earl of Tyrone.

In May of the same year, a son, Thomas, was born to Cecil at Cambridge and less than a year later his wife died (February 22nd, 1543). He did not long remain a widower, and his father can have found no fault with his second choice. In December, 1545, he married the eldest daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, of Gidea Hall, Essex, one of the leading exponents of the new learning. Mildred Cooke, then aged twenty, was one of four sisters, all of whom were " brought up in learning of Greek and Latin above their sex " l and were married to men of note. One of them, Anne, became the wife of Sir Nicholas Bacon and was the mother of Francis Bacon ; while another, Elizabeth, married Sir Thomas Hoby, Ambassador in France, and afterwards John, Lord Russell. Of the fourth, who married Sir Henry Killigrew, little is known. The connection must have been socially of considerable value to Cecil. Mildred herself, " a wise and vertuous gentlewoman," is thus commemorated by a contemporary poet :

" Cooke is comely, and thereto In books sets all her care ; In learning with the Roman dames Of right she may compare." 2

Ascham, in a letter to Sturmius (August, 1550), couples her with Lady Jane Grey, as the two most

1 Camden's Annals.

2 Richard Edwardes's Praze of eight ladyes of Queen Elizabeth's Court. Quoted by Naunton, Fragtnenta Regalia, ed. 1824, p. 51.

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