Note 6 — I LADY DANVERS 1561-1627

This august personage was one of the Spencers of Althorp. At this time she had been for six years the wife of her second husband, the Lord Keeper Egerton, although retaining the magnificent title of her widowhood. At their estate of Harefield in Middlesex, Milton’s Arcades was afterwards given, and it will be remembered what fine compliments to the then aged countess-dowager figure in its opening verses. Spenser’s Teares of the Muses had been dedicated to her, in her prime, and she was the Amaryllis “highest in degree” of his Colin Clout’s Come Home Again.