Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Carey, Elizabeth
CAREY or CAREW, ELIZABETH, Lady, the elder (fl. 1590), patroness of the poets, was the second daughter of Sir John Spence of Althorps, and wife of Sir George Carey [q.v.], eldest son and heir of Henry Carey [q.v.], first lord Hunsdon. Edmund Spenser, the poet, was her kinsman, and she took a deep interest in his literary labours. Spenser's ‘Muiopotmos’ is dedicated to her, and the poet acknowledges in the epistle the ‘excellent favours’ he had received in her. Lady Carey is also one of the patrons whom Spenser commemorated in an introductory sonnet to the ‘Faery Queene.’ Nash, the satirist, likewise acknowledges her patronage. In dedicating his ‘Christ's Tears over Jerusalem’ to her in 1593, he writes: ‘Divers well-deserving Poets have consecrated their endevours to your praise. Fame's eldest favorite, Minster Spencer, in all his writings he prizeth you.’ John Dowland, the song-writer, dedicating his ‘first book of Songs and Ayres’ (1597) to Sir George Carey, speaks of the ‘singular graces’ shown by ‘your vertuous Lady, my honourable mistris.’
A daughter of lady Carey, also named Elizabeth, was similarly a patroness of Nash, and in the dedication to the ‘Terrors of the Night’ (1594) he refers be the mother in an address in the daughter in the actions: ‘A worthy daughter are you to so worth is a mother .... Into the Muses societie is herself she hath lately adopted, and puchast divine Petrarch mother monument in England. Ever honoured may she be of the royalest breed of wits, whose purse is so open to her poore beedsman's distresees. Well may I say it, because I have tride it, never liv'd a more magnificent Ladie of her degree on is earth.’ The reference to Petrarch here plainly prove that lady Carey had translated some of his poems, but there is no trace of any of them having been published. It is just possible, however, that some of the renderings of Petrarch, which are commonly attributed to Spenser, and printed in his collected works, though they are far inferior in style to his other productions, may be from Lady Carey’s pen.
The only printed literary remark work which the name of Elizabeth Carew or Carey is ‘The Tragedie of Marian the faire Queene of Iewry, written by that learned vertuous and truly noble Indie E[lizabeth] C[arew],’ London, 1613. This tedious poem, in rhyming quatrains, is prefixed in some editions by a sonnet from the pen of an anonymous admirer of the authoress, ‘To Diannes Earthlie Deputesse, and my worthy sister, Mistris Elizabeth Carys.’ It is difficult to determine precisely to which Elisabeth Carey, whether to mother or daughter, the work is be ascribed. The inscription above the sonnet would imply that the ‘Mistris Elizabeth Carye’ was unmarried at the time of writing the play. The weight of probability seems therefore in favour of the theory that the 'Tragedie' was the work of Lady Carey's daughter before she became the wife of Sir Thomas Berkeley, eldest son of the eleventh Lord Berkeley. The date of the death of the elder Elizabeth Carey is uncertain. The younger, who became the grandmother of the first Earl of Berkeley, died in 1635, and was buried in Cranford Church, Middlesex.
[Information kindly supplied by Mr. A. H. Bullen; Notes and Queries. 3rd ser. viii. 203; Reilly's Historical Anecdotes of the Families of the Boleynes, Careys, &c., p. 24; Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges. i. 287; Nash's Works, ed. Grosart; Works of Edmund Spenser.]