Lady Hester Pulter

Lady Hester Pulter (née Ley) (1605-1678) was a seventeenth-century writer, whose manuscript was rediscovered in 1996 in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

Life

Lady Hester Pulter was born in Dublin in 1605.[1] She was the daughter of James Ley, who became the first Earl of Marlborough in 1626.[2] At the time of her birth her father was serving as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Pulter's mother was Ley's first wife, Mary (née Pettie or Petty). Prior to 1623 and most probably in either 1618 or 1619, Hester married Arthur Pulter of Broadfield in Hertfordshire.[3] The Pulters' had fifteen children (seven sons and eight daughters), only two of whom outlived their mother. During the English Civil Wars, the Pulters apparently withdrew from public life. Hester Pulter died in 1678 but Arthur went on to live a further eleven years. Only one grandchild, James Forester (1660–1696), survived him and he went on to become the sole heir to the family estate.

Literary works

The Leeds manuscript includes approximately 120 poems, including a series of occasional, didactic, and philosophical poems entitled ‘Poems Wrighten By the Right Honerable H.P’ and a series of 'Emblemes', together with a two-part prose romance, entitled 'The Unfortunate Florinda'. The dates in the manuscript suggest that Pulter wrote the main body of her surviving works between 1645 and 1665. The poetry is written in a variety of genres, covering personal, familial themes as well as public events, the latter being marked by her strong royalism during the English Civil Wars.

References

  1. ↑ Alice Eardley, 'Lady Hester Pulter's Book of "Emblemes"' (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2008), p. 32
  2. ↑ ODNB
  3. ↑ Eardley (2008), 40

Further reading