‘This rare Poetesse’: the Remains of Lady Jane Burdett

Abstract

One strong witness to the existence of a literary circle that included the Newdigates of Arbury Hall is the funeral sermon with eight poetic tributes, one by John Newdigate III, for Lady Jane Burdett (d. 1637), published in 1650. The Wearie Souls Wish, or, The Doves Wings is held among the Gresley family papers at the Bodleian Library. 1 Links between the Gresleys and the Burdetts are well established. According to Madan Falconer, Gresley family historian, Jane Burdett's widowed mother Elizabeth Francis married Hastings Gresley, brother of George, who contributed a poem to the above volume. 2 Further, in 1622, Bridget Burdett, daughter of Jane and Thomas Burdett, married Thomas Gresley of Drakelowe (son of George). The Burdetts were 'near neighbours' to the Newdigates; they owned Bramcote Hall, just east of Arbury Hall and Thomas Gresley was a close friend of Richard and John Newdigate from their time together at Trinity College, Oxford (1618-20). 3 Poems by close admirers and the dedication to the Burdett family chaplain Thomas Calvert's sermon proper represent Jane Burdett as the central figure of what Vivienne Larminie argues 'can only have been a literary circle'. 4 That Burdett's sphere of influence and her reputation as a learned woman had spread beyond the circle implied by the poems is demonstrated, as Larminie shows, in the esteemed Warwickshire antiquarian William Dugdale's report to Sir Simon Archer on the death of '"our good friend"' and in Dugdale's comment that Burdett was '"a Ladie of singular accomplishment"'. 5 An examination of Calvert's text and the eight verses, however, allows Jane Burdett to stand forth for the reader not only as an admirable, well-educated woman and patron of the literary and dramatic arts and as such, as Newdigate puts it in his tribute, 'the muse herself', but also as a learned intellectual and a poet in her own right. The Wearie Souls Wish was published by Thomas Broad at York thirteen years after Burdett's death. Like many printed sermons, this is a composite volume, providing supplementary material to the sermon proper. Calvert's 'This rare Poetesse' 221 7. Upon the death of the virtuous, and truly noble Lady, the Lady Jane Burdett. Who writes a Verse, that knew her worth, as I, Needs not invention but his memory. Her numerous praises, he who should rehearse, Must farr exceed an Iliad in his verse. And yet without one fiction, her true worth 5 Needs not a poets foyle to sett it forth. Birth, Beauty, Learning noble Courtesie, Whil'st she on earth did live, these could not die.