a conspicuous part (Brut, pp. 84, 86; Caradoc of Llancarvan, pp. 128, 129). After a time she rejoined her husband, who appears to have died before 1136. She was also the wife, or more probably the mistress, of Stephen, constable of Cardigan, and was a mistress of Henry I. It has been asserted that her connection with Henry preceded her marriage to Gerald, and that he owed his advancement to his marriage with her (Palgrave, England and Normandy, iv. 715; Freeman, William Rufus, ii. 97, 451). Of this there is no proof, and in the list of her children given by her descendant, Giraldus Cambrensis, the names of the three fathers to whom the greater number of them are assigned stand in order as Gerald, Stephen, and King Henry; indeed, it seems certain that her eldest son was by Gerald (Giraldus Cambr. De rebus a se gestis, i. c. 10, Opp. i. 59, and see App. to Pref. to Topographia Hibernica, Opp. v. c. ci.). It is probable that her connection with Stephen did not begin before 1110, and that she bore a son by Henry after his expedition into Dyved in 1114 [see under Fitzstephen, Robert]. Seven of her sons became lords of cantreds in South Wales, and from her descended some of the most famous of the conquerors of Ireland. Her children by Gerald were William Fitzgerald, her eldest son, father of Raymond Fitzgerald [q. v.], Maurice Fitzgerald (d. 1176) [q. v.], David [q. v.], bishop of St. David's, and a daughter, Angharad, who married William de Barri, lord of Manorbeer, and was the mother of Giraldus Cambrensis [q. v.], the historian, and two other sons. By Stephen, Nest was the mother of Robert Fitzstephen [q. v.], and by King Henry of Henry (filius regis), who was slain in Anglesey in 1157 (Itin. Kambriæ, p. 130), and was the father of Meiler Fitzhenry [q. v.] and Robert Fitzhenry (d. about 1180) (Expugnatio Hibern. p. 354). Nest also bore, probably by one or more other lovers, William Hay, Hoel, Walter, and a daughter Gledwis or Gwladys (Giraldus Cambr. De rebus, &c., u.s.). She was not, as has been asserted, the mother of Robert, earl of Gloucester (Norman Conquest, v. 852, 853). Nor must she be confused with Nest, the wife of Bernard of Neufmarché or Newmarch [q. v.], nor with Nest, the daughter of Gruffydd ab Llewelyn (d. 1063) [q. v.], the mother of Bernard's wife.
[Giraldus Cambr. i. 21, 58, 60, v. App. to Pref. c. ci. 229, vi. 91, 130 (Rolls Ser.); Brut y Tywysogion, pp. 84, 86 (Rolls Ser.); Caradoc of Llancarvan's Hist. of Wales, pp. 128, 129, ed. Powel; Clark's Land of Morgan, p. 45, 2nd edit.; Palgrave's Engl. and Normandy, iv. 715; Freeman's Norm. Conq. v. 210, 211, 852, 853; Freeman's William Rufus, ii. 97, 110 n, 379, 451.]
NETHERSOLE, Sir FRANCIS (1587–1659), secretary to the Electress Elizabeth, born in 1587, was second son of John Nethersole of Winghamswood or Wimlingswold, Kent, by his wife Perigrinia, daughter of Francis Wilsford. Elected to a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, on 12 April 1605, he obtained a minor fellowship there in 1608 and a major fellowship on 23 March 1609–10. He proceeded B.A. in 1606, and M.A. in 1610, and became a popular tutor. On 11 Dec. 1611 he was elected public orator of the university. In the following year he published an address in Latin prose which he had delivered before the vice-chancellor on the death of Prince Henry, and added a short epitaph in verse by himself, and elegies in Latin and Greek by Andrew Downes. The title of the volume ran: ‘Memoriæ Sacra Illustrissimi Potentissimi Principis Henrici … Laudatio Funebris’ (Cambridge, by Cantrell Legge, 1612).
In 1613 Nethersole engaged in a curious correspondence with the wife of Sir Michael Hicks [q. v.] respecting their son William, who was in Nethersole's charge at Cambridge (Lansdowne MS. 93). Next year Nethersole—although, according to Chamberlain, a proper man, ‘thinking well of himself’—offended the king, when on a visit with his son to the university, by addressing the Prince of Wales as ‘Jacobissime Carole,’ and ‘Jacobule’ (Hardwicke, State Papers, i. 395). In his ‘Grave Poem,’ 1614, Corbet parodied the curious oration, in which Nethersole welcomed the royal visitors, in verses beginning:
I wonder what your Grace doth here,
Who have expected been twelve year;
And this your son, fair Carolus,
That is so Jacobissimus.
(Cf. Nichols, Progresses, iii. 58, 69.). But Nethersole's literary taste was sufficiently respected to lead Edmund Bolton to nominate him in 1617 as one of the class of ‘essentials’ in his projected academy of literature.
In 1619 Nethersole resigned his offices at Cambridge, and accepted the post of secretary to James Hay, viscount Doncaster, afterwards Earl of Carlisle [q. v.], who had been selected to visit the Elector Palatine with a view to settling on a peaceful basis his relations with his catholic neighbours. Nethersole was a staunch protestant, and readily became an enthusiastic advocate of the cause of the elector and of his wife, the
