Elizabeth Danvers
A great politician; great witt and spirit, but revengefull717.
Knew how to manage her estate as well as any man; understood jewells as well as any jeweller.
Very beautifull, but only short-sighted. To obtain pardons for her sonnes718 she maryed Sir Edmund Carey, cosen-german to queen Elizabeth, but kept him to hard meate.
Smyth of Smythcotes—Naboth’s vineyard—digitus DeiCZ.
The arcanum—‘traditio lampadis’ in the family of LatimerDA of poysoning king Henry 8—from my lady Purbec.
Notes
CY i.e. Henry, earl of Danby’s. She was Elizabeth, daughter of John Nevill, the last lord Latimer. ‘An Italian’ may mean that she knew that language, among her other accomplishments. I can make nothing of a note added by Aubrey here, which seems to read ‘... Cowley, crop-ear’d.’
CZ I do not know to what circumstance, in the history of the Danvers family, Aubrey here applies 1 Kings xxi. 19.
DA Catherine Parr, last consort of Henry VIII, was widow of John, 3rd lord Latimer; and step-mother of John, 4th lord Latimer, the father of this Elizabeth Danvers, whose grand-daughter (‘viscountess Purbeck’) was Aubrey’s informant.
Notes
716HisCY mother, an Italian, prodigious parts for a woman. I have heard my father’s mother say that she had Chaucer at her fingers’ ends.