Elizabeth, queen, Lucy Russell, patroness, Thomas Whythorne, correspondents, patron, Sir Thomas Howard, Sir George Rodney

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status than their male correspondents. This is not only the case for Elizabeth as queen, but also the case for female poets such as Lucy Russell and a patroness of Thomas Whythorne in which there exists a client-patron relationship between these women and their correspondents. ⁴⁰² In exclusively amatory exchanges it is sometimes also the case that social superiority is a contributing factor to women’s confidence to participate in verse conversation, irrespective of social barriers or the disparity of affection that might prevent an actual match. This is so when in 1601 Sir George Rodney, a mere gentleman, is presumptuous enough to court Seymour in verse. She had recently married into the aristocracy and her response makes much of her social superiority; his courtship is all the more “unfit considering who and whose I am” she informs him. Disparity of rank was also worthy of mention in 1536 when Sir Thomas Howard, who was at least successful in his pursuit of Lady Margaret Douglas, the niece of Henry VIII, acknowledges to her that in reciprocating his affection, “ye desende from your degre”. Lastly, Ann Boleyn was putatively answering Wyatt’s love poems with encouraging one-liners while married to Henry VIII. ⁴⁰³

Whereas the female-voiced Petrarchan answers of the 1530s convey no sense that the speakers are transgressing their assigned gender roles, when real women write answer-poetry they often occupy a discursive space that is licensed by some sort of world turned upside down scenario, or by a perceived disruption in the fabric of social order or of gender

⁴⁰² See Cat. R 240 and W 306-7.
⁴⁰³ ‘The Answer of the Countess of Hertford to Sir George Rodney’s Elegy’ (l.93). The poem is printed for the first time, along with Rodney’s initial poem and his counter-response, by Donald W.Foster, ‘“Against the perjured falsehood of your tongues”: Frances Howard on the Course of Love’, ELR, 24 (1994), 72-103 (pp.88-100). Rodney himself admits that he is “mean in rank” compared to Seymour (l.53). ‘Unpublished Poems in the ‘Devonshire Manuscript’’, ed. Kenneth Muir, PLPLS, VI.iv. (May, 1947), pp.253-82 (p.265). Collected Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt, ed. Kenneth Muir (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 1950), no. 114 and Muir and Thomson eds (1969), no. 50 and commentary, p.307.

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