husband, the third had Lord
Russell.

Nothing delighted the brilliant women of the Elizabethan era so much
as to have themselves surrounded by great writers, statesmen, and
other celebrities. Stately magnificence was maintained at many of the
great houses, and the presence of noted artists and celebrated authors
gave to such homes an intellectual atmosphere. One of the centres of
intellectual thought and literary life of her time was the home of
Mary Sidney, after she had become the wife of Henry, Earl of Pembroke,
and mistress of his establishment at Wilton. Around her hospitable
board gathered poets, statesmen, and artists, drawn there not by the
rank of the hostess or to satisfy her pride by their presence and
fame, but because her cultivated intellect made her a fit companion
for the greatest intellectual personages of the day. To have had the
honor of entertaining, as guests, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, besides
the lesser poets of the time, and to have been recognized by such
literati as worthy of their serious consideration because of her
undoubted gifts, not only reflected high compliment upon the lady,
but lasting credit upon her sex, and was one of the many significant
things of the Elizabethan era which indicated how wide open stood
the door of intellectual progress and equality of opportunity for the
women of modern times. Spenser celebrated the Countess of Pembroke as:

"The gentlest shepherdess that liv'd that day,
And most resembling in shape and spirit
Her brother dear."

Udall, the Master of Eton, speaks enthusiastically of the great number
of women in the noble ranks of society, "not only given to the study
of human sciences and strange tongues, but also so thoroughly expert
in the Holy Scriptures that they were able to compare with the
best writers as well in enditeing and penning of Godly and fruitful
treatises to the instruction and edifying of realmes in the knowledge
of God, as also in translating good books out of Latin or Greek into
English for the use and commodity of such as are rude and ignorant of
the said tongues. It was now no news in England to see young damsels
in noble houses and in the courts of princes, instead of cards and
other instruments of idle trifling, to have continually in their hands
either Psalms, homilies, and other devout meditations, or else Paul's
Epistles, or some book of Holy Scripture matters, and as familiarly
both to read and reason thereof in Greek, Latin