Perdita woman: Anne Cornwallis

Biography

The identity of Anne Cornwallis, the owner of Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.a.89, is not certain. Charles Barrell suggests four women of that name who could have been writing in the 1580s or early 1590s, the likely date of the manuscript's compilation, all related to Sir William Cornwallis of Brome, Suffolk (d. 1611) (p. 26). William H. Bond operates on the premise that Anne Cornwallis is Sir William's daughter and eventual coheir by his first wife Lucy Neville, who married Archibald Campbell, seventh Earl of Argyll in 1609, and she seems the most probable candidate (p. 683). That Anne Cornwallis died in 1635. Bond mistakenly claims that the couple was married in 1610, but the parish registers for St Botolph, Bishopsgate indicate that the date of their marriage was 30 November 1609 (A.W. Cornelius Hallen, transcr., The Registers of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, London, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Constable, 1889-95), I, p. 44). The Complete Peerage also incorrectly gives the date as 1610 (vol. I, pp. 201-3). Anne Cornwallis was a Roman Catholic, but none of the poetry transcribed into the manuscript betrays any obvious Catholic sympathies.


Folger Library: MS V.a.89
Leaves from a verse miscellany of court poetry (c. 1580-c. 1595)
Anne Cornwallis (owner)


Folger Library: MS V.a.89
Leaves from a verse miscellany of court poetry (c. 1580-c. 1595)
Anne Cornwallis (owner)