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Mary Wroth's assertion of a premarital relationship with her cousin, William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, lies at the heart of her fiction, and by implication of her poetry as well.1 While a later affair with Herbert led to the birth of twins in 1624, the earlier affair imagined in Wroth's Countess of Montgomery's Urania is much less easily documented.2 In particular, Wroth's depiction of a private marriage between the cousins prior to their respective public marriages in 1604, while central to her fictional narrative, perhaps unsurprisingly lacks independent support. As a critical part of that relationship, Wroth represents Pamphilia and Amphilanthus, her fictional namesakes for herself and Herbert, as exchanging love poetry, and the inclusion of Herbert's "Had I loved but at that rate," attributed to Amphilanthus in the manuscript continuation of the Urania provides strong evidence of some exchange (though not necessarily within the time frame implied in the narrative).3 Previous studies of Herbert's poetry, however, have found little to corroborate Wroth's account of a private marriage. As Gary Waller notes in his book-length study of the poets and lovers, "there are undoubtedly poems that could be read in connection with his relationship with his cousin, but the posible [sic] references are so general that they could be applicable to any mistress, or none."4 Even so, Waller identifies three poems whose details could point to Wroth, notwithstanding their generality of sentiment and reference, including "Why with unkindest swiftness dost thou turn," a poem that Waller characterizes as "the erotic complaint of a secret lover."5 Marion Wynne-Davies, in her account of the role of Robert Sidney's Penshurst Estate as a shared reference in the pastoral poetry of the Sidney family circle, links this poem much more explicitly to Wroth, identifying the poem's "Leauy mount" with Penshurst Mount, a specific and identifiable location on the family estate where Wroth grew up.6 She goes on to note references to the same mount in Wroth's prose romance, arguing for a biographical connection to Penshurst Mount in Herbert's "Why with unkindest swiftness dost thou tum" and in Wroth's fiction more generally.
Neither Waller nor Wynne-Davies, however, were familiar with the manuscript version of Herbert's poem, nor were they aware of a manuscript transcription of a Wroth poem, included...