ABSTRACT
The estates of the Third Earl centred on his home county of Wiltshire, though he owned most of his land outside the county. Whether the young Earl travelled or not during his exile is unknown, but it is highly unlikely. In 1600 the Second Earl, trying to marry his son off to a rich ward of the Queen, offered Elizabeth £5,000 in money and jewels. In the Third Earl’s attempt to copy Sir Philip Sidney and his mother as a poet, he used the same convention as had Sidney – love poems to an imaginary mistress – and utilised the same poetic forms. Some of the best poems in John Donne’s collection can almost certainly be ascribed to the Third Earl, and his sonnets, songs and pastorals are, without a doubt, the work of a gifted poet. However, with Elizabeth’s death in 1603, Pembroke’s exile came to an end.
