lde of
Wordes_ he calls Florio "My dear friend and brother, Mr. John Florio,
one of the gentlemen of Her Majesties Royal Privy Chamber." From this it
has been supposed that Florio's first wife was Daniel's sister, and Mr.
Halpin inferred that she was named Rose from his assumption that Spenser
refers to her as Rosalinde, and to Florio as Menalcas in _The Shepheards
Calendar_ in 1579. Mr. Grosart, who carefully investigated the matter,
states that Daniel--who in 1611 was also a Gentleman of the Privy
Chamber--had only two sisters, neither of them being named Rose. It is
likely, then, that Daniel referred to his official connection with
Florio by the term "brother," as in 1603, in a similar address to
dedicatory verses prefixed to _Montaigne's Essaies_ he refers to him
only as "My Friend." There is no record of Florio's first marriage.

It is very unlikely, however, that two women named Rose should have come
so intimately into Florio's life, and probable, when all the evidence is
considered, that Rose Spicer, the "dear wife Rose" mentioned in his
will, was the "Rosalinde" of his youth, whom, it appears, he had
seduced, and with whom he had evidently lived in concubinage in the
intervening years; making tardy amends by marriage in 1617, only eight
years before his death. His marriage to Rose Spicer was evidently
brought about by the admonitions of his friend Theophilus Field, Bishop
of Llandaff, under whose influence Florio became religious in his
declining years.

In Florio's will, in which he bequeaths nearly all of his small property
to his "beloved wife Rose," he regrets that he "cannot give or leave her
more in requital of her tender love, loving care, painful diligence, and
_continual labour to me in all my fortunes and many sicknesses_, than
whom never had husband a more loving wife, painful nurse, and
comfortable consort." The words I have italicised indicate conjugal
relations covering a much longer period than the eight years between his
formal marriage in 1617 and his death in 1625. The term "_all my
fortunes_" certainly implies a connection between them antedating
Florio's sixty-fourth year.

We may infer that the Bishop of Llandaff and Florio's pastor, Dr. Cluet,
whom he appointed overseers and executors of his will, held Florio in
light esteem, as "for certain reasons" they renounced its execution. The
Earl of Pembroke, to whom he bequeathed his books, apparently neglected
to avail himself of the legacy, a