Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell (1540–1609)

Elizabeth Cooke Hoby Russell was born into the large family of Sir Anthony Cooke and his wife Anne Fitzwilliam. Her father became tutor to the young King Edward VI, and also dedicated himself to the education of his own children, both girls and boys. The Cooke sisters received a fine humanist education, unusual for that era. By 12, Elizabeth was fluent in Latin, Greek, and French. Mildred Cecil, her eldest sister, became a noted Greek scholar. Her sister Anne Bacon became a noted translator of works from Italian and Latin, and sister Katherine Killigrew wrote Latin poems. In 1558, Elizabeth married her first husband, Thomas Hoby of Bisham Abbey, Berkshire, with whom she had four children. He was a scholar and the translator into English of Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier. In 1566 he was knighted, making her Lady Hoby, and became the English ambassador to France. The couple moved to Paris, where he died shortly afterwards, and she returned to England. She wrote poems in Greek and Latin and translated into English John Ponet’s treatise A Way of Reconciliation of a Good and Learned (1605). Her fame spread through the circulation of her works in manuscript. She also became renowned as the author of funerary epitaphs in Latin, Greek, and English, engraved on tombs that she designed and commissioned for members of her family. In 1574, she remarried to John, Lord Russell, heir to the 2nd Earl of Bedford, with whom she had two daughters. His death in 1584, before that of his father, meant that she never got to be Countess of Bedford, a source of disgruntlement. Through her family connections at court, she met Queen Elizabeth I and entertained the monarch and Privy Council at Bisham Abbey for six days in 1592. She was known for her patronage of musicians, most notably of the composer John Dowland. Legend has it that her spirit haunts Bisham Abbey, one of the most haunted houses in Great Britain, and has appeared before guests on occasion.