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Lady Anne Bacon
Lady Anne Bacon Francis Bacon’s mother, Anne (c. 1528 – 27 August 1610), was one of the five daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke. The Cooke sisters were renowned for their learning and intelligence, an...
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Bacon’s step-sisters
Francis had three older sisters from his father’s first marriage: Elizabeth, Ann, and Elizabeth. That’s not a mistake. Nicholas and wife Jane gave their third daughter the same name as the first. We...
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Book review: Timothy Stretton’s Women Waging Law
My critique group expressed skepticism about my character’s ability to hide her property from a future husband. If all you have for legal advice is a pettifogger from an Inn of Chancery or, God save...
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Education of women in the Elizabethan period
Literacy A.L. Rowse wrote, “There was a higher level of literacy among women [in the Elizabethan period] than at any other time until the later nineteenth century” (Rowse, 1951.) Literacy rates of the...
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Woman’s estate in Elizabethan England
A loophole This post takes a look at the legal and economic status of women in early modern England, based mostly on Amy Erickson’s research. She’s interested in ordinary women — the ~70% between the...
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Elizabethan: Commedia dell’arte
Stadtansicht mit Wanderbühne. Von Gerrit Adriaensz. Berckheyde (Bildarchitektur) und Job Adriaensz. 1689. Wikimedia commons. One of the secondary characters in my Francis Bacon series, Catalina Luna,...
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Pix & notes: How to sit on a throne
Like many middle-aged people, my knees are going pear-shaped. So I went to see Dr. Barbara Bergin, a highly recommended orthopedic surgeon in my area. Among other talents, she’s written a novel called...
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Lady Anne Bacon
Lady Anne Bacon Francis Bacon’s mother, Anne (c. 1528 – 27 August 1610), was one of the five daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke. The Cooke sisters were renowned for their learning and intelligence, an...
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Not quite a countess: Lady Elizabeth Russell
This is a short biography of one my favorite Elizabethans, Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell. She was the youngest sister of Francis Bacon’s mother. This post is derived chiefly from Chris Laoutaris’s...
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Honour, more than life: Lady Elizabeth Russell, part 2
My goal in this post is to craft a coherent narrative of Elizabeth’s importance to the world she lived in. I’m relying on Chris Laoutaris’s book, Shakespeare and the Countess, which is a great read, if...
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New widows howl: wardship in the Elizabethan era
Last time we got a look at the origin and structure of the Court of Wards. This time we’ll enjoy some of the many anecdotes in Joel Hurstfield’s The Queen Wards, looking at things from the point of the...
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