CHAPTER II,

DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE.

PREVIOUS to the sixteenth century clever women, as far as history tells us, were scarce. The English authoresses, prior to the year 1500, are so few that they might be enumerated in a very brief space. Juliana, the Anchoret of Norwich, wrote her book of revelations in the reign of Edward the Third. The delightful work of the "Prioress of Sopewell Nunnery," which is known to every sportsman of education under the title of "Julian Barnes, her Gentlemans Academie of Hawking, Hunting, Fishing, and Armorie, &c.," was printed in 1481, having been composed some years before. Then there were Margery Kempe, of Lynn, and Margaret, the countess-mother of Henry the Seventh, who, with two or three more, complete the list of talented English ladies who flourished before the year 1500.

In the next century there was no such dearth of female wit. Margaret Roper, that first of blue stockings, and the other daughters of Sir Thomas More, Lady Elizabeth Fane, the Ladies Anne, Margaret, and Jane Seymour, Queen Mary, Mary Queen of Scotland, the mother of Verulam, the wife of Sir Roger Ascham, Lady Russel, Queen Elizabeth, and Katherine Killigrew are amongst those who earned a new respect for their sex. There was a great run on the part of the ladies on literature. Monachi literas nesciunt, et fæminæ libris indulgent;-the clergy cannot read Latin, the ladies can talk it was the observation of Erasmus. The justly celebrated William Wotton, a native of Suffolk, well versed in the history of this period, affirms,

that the sixteenth century was more fruitful than any other in learned women. Every young lady of rank affected the jargon of the schools. Little misses of sixteen years could not tear themselves away from their dear Eclogues, and sighed piteously over the mental abasement of their brothers, who cared for hawks and horses more than hexameters. "It was so very modish, that the fair sex seemed to believe that Greek and Latin added to their charms; and that Plato and Aristotle, untranslated, were frequent ornaments to their closet." The artful, roguish minxes: can you not picture to yourself the pains they were at to make the most of their little wealth? How they took care, for fear of false quantities, not to quote their authors in the presence of a man of learned repute; but rattled out line after line of Ovid to their untaught lovers, who, poor fellows, listened with admiration and awe to the hard words!

To us such a state of things is not so astonishing as it was to the few observers of that era, and to the speculative historians of the next century. We know scores of young curates not such good scholars as their sisters, and we find no cause for bewonderment in the fact. But intelligent men, in the days of Erasmus, opened their eyes in amazement at such a strange position of human affairs; and thinkers for ages afterwards exercised their ingenuity in accounting for it. One said it was a consequence of the care Henry the Eighth took in the education of his daughters-the example of royalty was always followed. Another attributed it to the fame Sir Thomas More's daughters achieved by their skill in the learned languages-it was desire for approbation that roused indolent beauties to intellectual exertion. A more sagacious philosopher laid the marvel at the door of the discovery of the art of printing, and the consequent plenty of books.

The accomplishments the ladies of the sixteenth century were proficients in, may be learnt from the following verses,

which were placed to the memory of Mrs. Elizabeth Lucar in the parish church of St. Michael, in Crooked Lane, London:

Every Christian heart seeketh to extoll

The glory of the Lord, our onely Redeemer :
Wherefore Dame Fame must needs inroll

Paul Witthypoll his childe, by love and nature,
Elizabeth, the wife of Emanuel Lucar,

In whom was declared the goodness of the Lord,
With many high vertues, which truely I will record.

She wrought all needle-works that women exercise,
With pen, frame, or stoole, all pictures artificial,
Curious knots. or trailes, what fancy could devise,
Beasts, birds, or flowers, even as things natural;
Three manner hands could she write them faire all,
To speak of Algorism, or accounts in every fashion,
Of women, few like (I think) in all this nation.

Dame Cunning her gave a gift right excellent,
The goodly practice of her science musical,
In divers tongues to sing, and play with instrument,
Both vial and lute, and also virginall;

Not only upon one, but excellent in all.

For all other vertues belonging to nature,
God her appointed a very perfect creature.

Latine and Spanish, and also Italian,

She spake, writ, and read with perfect utterance;
And for English, she the garland wan,

In Dame Prudence schoole, by Graces purveyance,
Which cloathed her with virtues from naked ignorance;
Reading the Scriptures, to judge light from darke,
Directing her faith to Christ, the only marke.

The said Elizabeth, deceased the 29th day of October, A.D., 1537, of yeeres not fully 27. This stone and all hereon contained, made at the charge of the said Emanuel, Merchant-Taylor.

Clearly she was too clever to live!

The movement continued. The pen of the Countess of Lincoln produced that true-womanly work, "The Countesse of Lincolne's Nurserie." Lady Eleanor Davies was born in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, and Anne, Countess of Pembroke, about the year 1589. The pious Elizabeth Walker first saw the light in 1623; and towards

the end of King James's reign, just before a time which it is the fashion now to call remarkable for the mean instruction given its women, came Margaret, the notorious Duchess of Newcastle, whom the truthful Dryden declared to "be a lady whom our age may justly equal with the Sappho of the Greeks, or the Sulpitia of the Romans."

Ballard, in his famous and interesting, but inaccurate, "Memoirs of Ladies," states that Margaret, the Duchess of Newcastle, was a daughter of Sir Charles Lucas; but in saying so he is guilty of an error into which he would never have fallen had he read the best of the noble lady's books. The unfortunate Sir Charles Lucas was one of her brothers. She mentions him frequently in her writings; and in her autobiography, entitled "A true Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life," she informs us particularly that her father had no title, although his estate might easily have purchased one, and she speaks of herself as "daughter to one Master Lucas, of St. John's, neer Colchester, in Essex." It is interesting to see the fruits of Ballard's mistake. Sir Walter Scott and numerous biographers of great merit have adopted it.

The family of Lucas was one of high repute and consi.derable wealth in the counties of Essex and Suffolk. Thomas Lucas, the father of the Duchess of Newcastle, was the representative of his house in the reign of Elizabeth, who banished him her kingdoms for having killed in a duel a Mr. Brooks, a relation, probably a brother, of her favoured Lord Cobham. He was in exile as long as that queen lived, but on the accession of James the First, who "gratiously gave him his pardon," he returned to his native country, "wherein he lived happily, and died peaceably, leaving a wife and eight children-three sons, and five daughters." Of these children, Margaret, the future duchess, was the youngest, being only an infant when her father died.

The widow of Thomas Lucas was a woman of rare virtue and charms. She conducted the business of her children's estate with energy and judgment, and was not only an indulgent but a good mother. The Duchess, after speaking of the disasters the Civil Wars brought on her family, and the great difficulties her mother had to contend with, goes on to say, "but in such misfortune my mother was of an heroick spirit, in suffering patiently where there is no remedy, or to be industrious where she thought she could help: she was of a grave behaviour, and had such a majestick grandeur, as it were, continually hung about her, that it would strike a kind of awe to the beholders, and command respect from the rudest; I mean the rudest of civilized people; I mean not such barbarous people as plundered her and used her cruelly, for they would have pulled God out of Heaven, had they had power, as they did royaltie out of his throne; also her beauty was beyond the ruin of time, for she had a well-favoured loveliness in her face, a pleasing sweetness in her countenance, and a well-tempered complexion, as neither too red, nor too pale, even to her dying hour; although in years, and by her dying, one might think death was enamoured with her, for he embraced her in a sleep, and so gently, as if he were afraid to hurt her; also she was an affectionate mother, breeding her children with a most industrious care, and tender love; and having eight children, three sons and five daughters, there was not any one crooked, or any ways deformed, neither were they of at dwarfish, or of a giant-like stature, but every ways propor-tionable, likewise well-featured, cleer complexions, brown hairs, but some lighter than others, plain speeches, tunable voices-I mean not so much to sing as in speaking, as not stuttering, nor wharling in the throat, or speaking through the nose, or hoarsely, unless they had a cold, or squeakingly.' It was a gladsome home under that best of mothers. "As for our garments, my mother did not only delight to