MILDRED COOKE,

LADY BURGHLEY.

ILDRED COOKE was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, by his wife, Anne, daughter of Sir William Fitz-Williams, of Milton, knight. She was born in the year 1526, probably at Giddy Hall, in the county of Essex, her father's seat. Her father, Sir Anthony, who was great-grandson of Sir Thomas Cooke, Lord Mayor of Londen in 1462, was a man of superior talents, acquirements, and character; a perfect master of the Latin and Greek languages, an excellent critic and philologist, equally skilled in poetry, history, and mathematics, and not less distinguished for his piety, prudence, and cordial attachment to Protestant principles. These qualities recommended him to the guardians of Edward VI., by whom he was appointed preceptor to that prince, whose manners it was also his business to form; and the royal pupil always regarded him with much affection and respect. Besides Mildred he had four other daughters, all of them highly accomplished women. Upon their education he had bestowed great pains, providing them with able masters, and employing much of his own time in their instruction. Possessing a more than ordinary natural capacity, and applying themselves with diligence to the prosecution of literature and science, they became the most learned ladies of their day, particularly in the Latin and Greek languages. "Indeed,” says Fuller, in his usual quaint manner,

'they were all most eminent scholars (the honour of their own and the shame of our sex), both in prose and poetry." Nor was the pious discipline of their minds neglected. To train them up virtuous and religious, as well as intelligent and learned, was to both their parents an object of anxious solicitude. "There are three objects," said their father, "before which I am studious not to do wrong; my prince, my conscience, and my children;" and he was wont to say to his daughters, " My example is your inheritance, and my life is your portion." As to their excellent mother, she was far more concerned to see them imbued with the fear of God, and useful in the world, than that they should attain the highest distinction in mere literary acquirements. Sir Anthony had no Erasmus to celebrate the wise and strict discipline under which these ladies were brought up; but the spectacle of this "man of antique gravity," as Camden describes him, surrounded by his five daughers, and engaged in instilling into their minds by night the same lessons he had taught the prince by day, presented as delightful a family picture as that presented in the household of Sir Thomas More, which Erasmus so pleasingly portrays. In the extraordinary care he bestowed upon the education of his daughters, his object was not to make them mere literary characters, but to cultivate their reason and to form their hearts, that they might rightly perform their duties as wives and mothers. His sentiments on this subject were similar to those so beautifully expressed by Sir Thomas More in an elegant Latin poem, in which, addressing a friend as to the choice of a wife, he recommends him, if he desired a happy life, to overlook wealth and beauty, and to unite himself with a woman of virtue and knowledge. "May you meet with a wife," says he, "who is not always stupidly silent, not always prattling nonsense! May she be learned, if possible, or at least ca

1 Worthies of England, vol i., p. 347.

2 See, in the subsequent Life, the testimony to this effect borne to her by her daughter, Lady Bacon.

a Bishop Jewel, who, in his correspondence, usually styles him 'Agxuáyugas (master of the cooks), represents him as a man of "melancholy temperament."-Zurich Original Letters, second series, vol. i., p. 53.

pable of being made so! A woman thus accomplished will be always drawing sentences and maxims of virtue out of the best authors of antiquity. She will be herself, in all changes of fortune, neither blown up in prosperity nor broken with adversity. You will find in her an even, cheerful, good-humoured friend, and an agreeable companion for life. She will infuse knowledge into your children with their milk, and from their infancy train them up to wisdom. Whatever company you are engaged in you will long to be at home, and retire with delight from the society of men into the bosom of one who is so dear, so knowing, and so amiable. If she touches her lute, or sings to it any of her own compositions, her voice will soothe you in your solitudes, and sound more sweetly in your ear than that of the nightingale. You will spend with pleasure whole days and Lights in her conversation, and be ever finding out new beauties in her discourse. She will keep your mind in perpetual serenity, restrain its mirth from being dissolute, and prevent its melancholy 1 from being painful." On Sir Anthony's daughters reaching womanhood, some of the greatest men of that time sighed to wed them, attracted more by their mental accomplishments, their virtuous character, and their personal charms, than by their portions.

F

Mildred, the eldest, the subject of the present sketch, early evinced, a predilection for learning, and her proficiency in the various branches. then reckoned necessary to the accomplishment of ladies of the first rank, in embroidery, in music, and other liberal arts, in French and Italian, in Latin, and particularly in Greek, fully corresponded with the care bestowed upon her education by her father.3

Ballard's Learned Ladies, pp. 38, 39.

*Of Mildred's marriage we shall afterwards speak. Aune, the second daughter, vas married to Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper to Queen Elizabeth; Elizabeth was married, first to Sir Thomas Hobby, and secondly to Lord John Russel; Katharine to Sir Henry Killigrew; and Margaret to Sir Ralph Rowlet.

In the inscription on her monument, it is said that her “uncommon acquaintance with the Latin and Greek languages was acquired solely from the instructions of her father." contemporary authority, quoted by Strype, affirms, on the other hand, that she had Mr. Laurence, “a man in those times of great fame for his knowledge in the Greek language, for her preceptor in that tongue.”—Life of Archbishop Parker, Fal ., p. 223.

During the later period of the reign of Henry VIII., and during the reign of Edward VI., the situation held by her father, as one of Prince Edward's preceptors, procured Mildred frequent access to the court. This afforded her an opportunity of meeting with a number of excellent ladies of a kindred spirit, with whom she came to be on intimate terms. She early contracted a friendship with Queen Katharine Parr, Katharine Duchess of Suffolk, Lady Jane Grey, the daughters of Protector Somerset,' and other ladies eminent for learning, intelligence, virtue, and attachment to the Reformation. She was also the companion of Princess Elizabeth's youth, as she was the companion of her maturer years, when she became the wife of that minister of state, on whose judgment Elizabeth continued to repose through life, more than on the judgment of all her other statesmen. All these ladies were enthusiastic cultivators of literature. They especially paid uncommon attention to the Greek and Roman languages, and to the study of theology.

Mildred being educated in Protestant principles, made an open profession of the Protestant faith, if not during the closing period of the reign of Henry VIII., yet during the reign of Edward VI., when Popery was abolished and the Protestant religion established.

In 1546, shortly after the accession of Edward VI., being in the twentieth year of her age, she was married to William Cecil, afterwards the celebrated Lord Burghley, privy councillor to Queen Elizabeth, and Lord High Treasurer of England. She was his second wife. This matrimonial alliance, like his first, greatly contributed to promote Cecil's political advancement, yet it was the result of ardent attachment, rather than of calculated worldly advantage.

1 See some account of Somerset's daughters in Appendix, No. VI.

2 He was created Lord Burghley in 1571, and in the subsequent year was appointed lord high treasurer, in which office he continued till his death.

3 Cecil's first wife was Mary Cheke, sister of Sir John Cheke, professor of Greek in the university of Cambridge, and one of the tutors of Edward VI. He was married to this lady on the 8th of August, 1541, in the 21st year of his age. She gave birth to a son on the 5th of May, 1542, and died on the 22d of February, 1543, at Cambridge. Taking her youth into account, she is said to have been a lady of extraordinary ac quirements in literature.-Clutterbuck's History and Antiquities of Hertford, p. 83.

The testimony borne, a few years after her marriage, to Lady Cecil's high literary acquirements, as well as to the distinguished talents and upright character of her husband, by Roger Ascham, the most competent of all men then living to judge upon such points, is entitled to special attention. Writing in 1550 to his friend, John Sturmius, the learned rector of the Protestant academy of Strasburg, after speaking of the proficiency of the Princess Elizabeth in learning, be says, "There are two English ladies whom I cannot omit to mention, nor would I have you, my Sturmius, omit them, if you meditate any celebration of your English friends, than which nothing could be more agreeable to me. One is Jane Grey, the other is Mildred Cecil, who understands and speaks Greek like English,' so that it may be doubted whether she is most happy in the possession of this surpassing degree of knowledge, or in having had for her preceptor and father Sir Anthony Cooke, whose singular erudition caused him to be joined with John Cheke in the office of tutor to the king, or finally, in having become the wife of William Cecil, lately appointed secretary of state; a young man, indeed, but mature in wisdom, and so deeply skilled both in letters and in affairs, and endued with such moderation in the exercise of public offices, that to him would be awarded, by the consenting voice of Englishmen, the fourfold praise attributed to Pericles by his rival Thucydides, 'To know all that is fitting, to be able to apply what he knows, to be a lover of his country, and superior to money."

Lady Cecil early occupied a situation in the court of Queen Mary. On occasion of that queen's passing in splendid procession through the city of London, on the 30th of September, 1553, the day before her coronation, Lady Cecil and her sisters, dressed in crimson satin, and mounted on horses similarly attired, formed part of the brilliant

This testimony of Ascham is corroborated by that of Mr. Laurence, her Greek tutor, who declared that she equalled, if not overmatched, any Greek professor in the universities in the knowledge of that language.-Preface to Hist. of France, translated into English, and printed in 1595, quoted by Strype in Life of Archbishop Parker, vol i, p. 222.

'Quoted in Miss Aiken's Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth, vol. i., p. 96.