Dame Elizabeth Hoby
One
of my more interesting roles from my past, and one which I used when working with St. Elizabeth's guild as well as for many years after that, was the Noble Englishwoman, Dame Elizabeth
Hoby. The story of Dame Elizabeth Hoby is fascinating.
Known as Elizabeth Cooke as a maiden, she married well, was known as a woman of "sharp intellect and tongue," and well educated. Sir Anthony Cooke educated his daughters in much the same way he educated the young King Edward. The Cooke sisters are described as having a "masculinity of intellect and a will of iron" added to the learning of the feminine arts of the period. She kept up her classical studies all her life and composed epitaphs for many of those near and dear to her.
Elizabeth was born in 1528, and lived for eight years with Mildred Cooke, thus learning something of court before her marriage to Sir Thomas Hoby on June 27, 1558. She gave birth to her 1st son, Edward in 1560; she then had two daughters both of whom died in 1571.
Dame Hoby resided at Bisham Abbey, a handsome English
country house in Berkshire, England. The house served as the county seat of
Sir 
Thomas
Hoby, he was famous for his translation of that monument to High Renaissance
manners and values, Baldassare Castiglione's "Il Cortegiano - The Courtier".
Dame Elizabeth, who was a scholar in her own right was the mother of his four
children, Edward and Thomas - both of whom were eventually to earn knighthood
- and their daughters, Elizabeth and Ann. In 1566, when Thomas Hoby was knighted
he was sent to France as Queen Elizabeth's ambassador. In April of that year,
Lady Hoby joined him, even though she was pregnant at the time. By the time
Sir Thomas Hoby died of the plague on July 13, 1566, she had already made a
number of influential friends at court.
Back in the countryside, Dame Elizabeth was known not only for her learning but for her unbridled contempt she showed toward stupidity and slovenliness. She also had an explosive temper. It is said that after she died her ghost frequently was seen walking the halls of Bisham Abbey, carrying a basin and evidently attempting, endlessly and futilely, to wash its hands. Nobody knows why Dame Elizabeth roamed Bisham Abbey as a ghost, but the local gossip's tell this story:
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Late in her childbearing years, Dame Elizabeth gave birth to a son whom she and Sir Thomas named William. Little is known of William except that he was apparently slow of mind and untidy of habit, especially when compared to her other children. When her dull witted son tried and failed to do his lessons, and then failed again, Dame Elizabeth would beat him. Little William eventually died from her beatings. The Hoby family conspired, under Dame Elizabeth's iron guidance, to hide the tragedy. No William appears in the family records of that time. His name is missing from the family's funeral monument in Bisham Church. Yet rumors persisted that she had had a fifth child, that it had survived infancy and then, some years later had vanished. Doubtless the rumors would have gone away after her death, if the specter had not continued to walk the abbey in torment. Some years after she died, the house was refurbished, and in the course of construction, workmen supposedly found a cache of school supplies hidden behind a baseboard. There were slates, hornbooks and small sheets of paper. On one of the sheets of paper, written in an untidy hand were lessons and a childishly scrawled name - William Hoby |
Sound sad and strange? Here's what someone who currently lives in that village in England has to say. A few years ago, I was contacted by a man named David Carter via e-mail after seeing this story on my webpage. And now for the rest of the story...
