Hon. Elizabeth Carey (24 May 1576 – 23 April 1635) was an English noblewoman and a patron of the arts. Thomas Nashe dedicated his Terrors of the Night to her in 1594.[1] On 5 January 1606, at the wedding festivities of the Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex and Lady Frances Howard, she performed in Ben Jonson's masque, Hymenaei as one of the Powers of Juno.
She was married twice: firstly to Sir Thomas Berkeley, by whom she had a son and a daughter; her second husband was Sir Thomas Chamberlain.
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Elizabeth was born on 24 May 1576, the only child of George Carey, 2nd Baron Hunsdon and Elizabeth Spencer. She was baptised two weeks later on 7 June. One of Elizabeth's paternal great-grandmothers was Mary Boleyn, the elder sister of Queen consort Anne Boleyn, which made her a distant cousin of Elizabeth I of England.
Elizabeth married her first husband, Sir Thomas Berkeley on 19 February 1595 at Blackfriars, London when she was 18 years of age. Their wedding was one of the occasions that has been suggested that William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed for the first time in public.[2]
Her husband's family seat was Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, site of the regicide of King Edward II in 1327.
She bore her husband a son and a daughter:
When her husband died in 1611, she paid off all his debts.[3] She is recorded as having bought the estate of Cranford, Middlesex for the sum of £7,000 from the co-heirs of Sir Richard Aston in 1618.[4] In February 1622, she married her second husband Sir Thomas Chamberland, a Justice of the King's Bench. He was a generous spouse and when he died on 17 September 1625, bequeathed £10,000 to her son.[5]
Elizabeth followed in the family tradition as a patron of the arts, just as her mother had been. The poet Edmund Spenser was a distant relative. In 1594, Thomas Nashe had dedicated his Terrors of the Night to Elizabeth, and it has been suggested that she served as the model for Lady Rimellaine in Peter Erondell's book of manners, The French Garden which he had written in 1605.[6]
In her late teens, in 1594, Elizabeth translated two of Petrarch's sonnets into English.[7]
For the occasion of the Earl of Essex's marriage to Lady France Howard, Jonson's masque Hymenaei was performed, and Elizabeth was one of the female dancers representing the Powers of Juno. There is an extant portrait of Elizabeth dressed in her masque costume.
She died on 23 April 1635 and was buried on 25 April in Cranford parish church.[8] Her white marble effigy is attributed to Nicholas Stone.[9]