Isabella Markham

Isabella Markham was muse to the court official and poet John Harington (c.1529 - 1582), who wrote sonnets and poems addressed to her, before and after they married.

[10] While there she encountered her long-standing admirer, the poet John Harington,[11] who was imprisoned as the result of a letter which linked him to Thomas Wyatt's conspiracy against Queen Mary.

[12] He was married to another of Elizabeth's attendants, Ethelreda Malte, a rumoured illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII,[13] who had also joined the princess in the Tower.

Yet, for respects I feare to tell What moves my trobled spryghte: What workes my woe, what breeds my smarte, What wounds myn harte and mynde; Reason restrayns me to emparte Such perylls as I fynde.

"[22] Sometime in 1559, after the death of his first wife, which occurred before 1 April,[23] Markham married Harington, who had inherited considerable property from the childless Ethelreda.

[24] This was made manifest when Elizabeth stood as godmother to Markham's first child, John[25] on 4 August 1561, with Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, and William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, acting as the infant's godfathers.