Abbey History: 1565 - 1609 Lady Hobyes Legacy (Aka Dowager Lady Russell)

In the Shadow of the Abbey

Haunting the Abbey, nearly a countess, Pomp and ceremony for Queen Elizabeth in the Royal Progress, no chance for Shakespeare’s Globe and the Dowager's Magnificent monuments.

Elizabeth Cooke had married Sir Thomas Hobbye on 27 June 1558. In 1565, following his death in Paris where he was the ambassador, Lady Hoby returned to Bisham to bury her husband and to give birth to a fourth child, Thomas Posthumous.

The ghost of Lady Hoby is said to walk through the Great Hall at Bisham Abbey. She is rumoured to have mistreated her young son William… he was found dead in the tower room. Lady Hobye was distraught and is said to haunt the Abbey to this day, walking through the great hall wringing her hands. She particularly appears around a royal coronation, suggesting her guilt of choosing her sovereign over her son.

The two girls died young, Elizabeth Hobbey (spelling as per register) died on 17th Feb 1572 aged 9 and her sister Agnis on 24th Feb aged 7. Grief stricken, Lady Hobye decided to build a burial chapel, a large extension on the south side of Bisham Church. William Cure was commissioned to create a fine life-sized monument of her husband Thomas and his half-brother Philip in Italian alabaster. Two worthye knights, and Hobies bothe by name,

Lady Elizabeth married again at Bisham Church. The Right Honourable Lorde John Russell and the Renoumbed Lady Elizabeth Hobbey married 23rd December 1574. He was heir to 2nd Earl of Bedford. Lady Russell fought a long legal battle to have her daughters recognised as his heiresses, after his death and designed a memorial in Westminster Abbey, showing him reclining in his red ermine-lined Parliamentary robes with their daughters holding the Bedford crest above him.

Lady Russell became a powerful widow and courtier, a devout Protestant, she controlled the inheritance of her 2 younger sons. Edward Hobye (b1560),married Margaret Carey, the daughter of Queen Elizabeth I’s cousin, Lord Hunsdon on 21 May 1582.

September 1592 Queen Elizabeth visited Lady Russell at Bisham Abbey, Lady Elizabeth loved pomp and ceremony and she mounted a very elaborate pageant starting at the top of ‘Bissam Hill’, featuring herself and her daughter Anne as Sybilla and Isabella, two virgins keeping sheep. This was the first occasion on which English noblewomen took speaking parts in a quasi-dramatic production. (Jayne Elisabeth Archer, 2014, p. Ch 11)

Elizabeth petitioned the queen to refuse the building of the Globe Theatre in 1596 and engaged in various litigation including with Richard Lovelace at Hurley. Her younger son, Thomas Posthumous was said to be the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Malvolio in Twelfth Night. His wife, Margaret Hoby’s diary covers the workings of a puritan household 1599 – 1605 and is the earliest diary written in English by a woman. She was an heiress in Hackness.

The Dowager Lady Elizabeth Hobye Russell demonstrated her reputation as a talented scholar of classics in the translation of a religious book Way of Reconciliation of a Good and learned man, in her own name.

Lady Elizabeth Hobye planned her funeral herself to ensure it was suitable. She designed another spectacular monument in Alabaster marble, in which she is the matriarch wearing a countess’s coronet, positioned under a canopy in the burial chapel, with her children around her. This monument is more ornate than those she designed for her husbands; all the inscriptions are written by herself. Elizabeth Hobye Russell was buried at Bisham on 2nd June 1609 aged 81.
Episode researched, written and narrated by Sheila Featherstone-Clark
Image is Lady Hobyes's memorial. Sound effects from Freesound.org.