Lady Hester Pulter

01 June 1605 - 09 April 1678

LHP was a seventeenth-century poet of great skill and subtlety, whose work (transcribed into a handsome manuscript volume) remained unknown until recently because she published none of it. Her writing includes verse emblems and a prose romance.

BirthName: Hester Ley
Married: Pulter
Pseudonyms: The Noble Hadassah
Hadassah was a name or title of the biblical Queen Esther, of whose name Hester was the anglicized form. ODNB reads this name as Hadassas.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
; The Honorable H. P.
Styled: Lady
She had been Mrs Hester Pulter for about three years before her father was made an earl, and she therefore acquired the courtesy title of Lady.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Milestones

Perhaps June 1605

Hester Ley (later LHP ) was born in sweet Hibernie where I first had life:

Pulter, Lady Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Editor Eardley, Alice, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies , 2014.

at the manor of St Thomas Court, now part of the city of Dublin.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives the probable place of her birth as Westbury in Wiltshire, but her editor Alice Eardley places it in Ireland. The date is given in a pedigree made for her father as June 1605, but other sources hint at a year or two later.

Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014, pp. 1-40.

13n36

Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014, pp. 1-40.

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About 1646

LHP apparently began composing the sixty-seven poems which she eventually had transcribed into an album, together with a separate collection of emblem poems and a prose romance. She gave the poems various titles: the first is Poems Breathed Forth by the Noble Hadassah.

Pulter's scribe closed this part of her volume with a poem, unusual in style for her, which may date from much earlier: in scurrilous terms it mocks Sir William Davenant for losing his nose to the syphilis which he contracted, says the ODNB, in 1630, and which drew much ribald comment for some years after this.

Pulter, Lady Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Editor Eardley, Alice, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies , 2014.

172-4

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

under Davenant

Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014, pp. 1-40.

1, 32ff

Between 7 February and 4 June 1647

LHP composed the earliest poems in her volume tied to a date more specific than a year: the imprisonment of Charles I at Holmby House in Northamptonshire.

Pulter, Lady Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Editor Eardley, Alice, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies , 2014.

48ff, 58ff

June 1667 or later

LHP composed her latest datable poem, an unfinished response to the incursion of a Dutch fleet into the River Medway in Kent, and the military destruction it caused. She relates a dream in which the river gods and goddesses gather to mourn.

Pulter, Lady Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Editor Eardley, Alice, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies , 2014.

182-4

Just before 9 April 1678

LHP died at the age of eighty-two. Her funeral was held on this date.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

Perhaps June 1605

Hester Ley (later LHP ) was born in sweet Hibernie where I first had life:

Pulter, Lady Hester. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda. Editor Eardley, Alice, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies , 2014.

at the manor of St Thomas Court, now part of the city of Dublin.

Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014, pp. 1-40.

13n36

Pulter, Lady Hester. “Introduction”. Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2014, pp. 1-40.

13n36