ABSTRACT
Elizabeth Cary (1585-1639) - her name is sometimes spelt Carew or Carey - was the only daughter of Sir Laurence and Lady Elizabeth Tanfield of Burford Priory, Oxford. She had a strict upbringing and was a somewhat isolated child who immersed herself in her studies. Her abilities as a linguist were prodigious and she was able to read fluently in, and later to translate for publication, French, Spanish, Latin and Hebrew. Her marriage to Sir Henry Cary, which was contracted in 1602, was arranged by her parents and appears to have been a very impersonal business, providing the Cary family with an heiress and the Tanfields with an aristocratic connection. Elizabeth was allowed to remain at home for the first year of married life, while her husband was fighting in the Netherlands, but in 1603, her mother-in-law, Lady Katherine, insisted that she join the Cary household. Lady Katherine proved even more strict than Elizabeth's mother, for while the latter had denied her daughter candles to provide light for reading, the former forbade her to read at all. Ironically, it was because of this prohibition that Elizabeth sought intellectual stimulation from writing her own works, so that when her husband came back, 'from this time she writ many things for her private recreation, on several subjects and occasions, all in verse'.1 In 1606, Henry Cary returned to England from Spain, where he had been held prisoner since being captured in Ostend in 1605, and began a successful career at court which culminated in his appointment as Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1622. During this first period of their marriage the couple seem to have accepted one another, and had eleven children, born between 1609 and 1624. Signs of strain, however, were already beginning to show, as Elizabeth experienced long bouts of depression, and became increasingly aware of the conflict in religious belief between herself and her husband.
