The New Murrey and Blue blog

Here we have the poet and hymnwright William Cowper (left), who we referred to in our previous article but couldn’t find the evidence for the Essex anniversary in February. The usual sources have been a little troublesome but we know from Lord David Cecil’s The Stricken Deer that he was the great-nephew of an Earl and that his mother was a Donne from Norfolk. From this clue, further research revealed a direct female line to Mary Boleyn, giving Cowper the same mtDNA as Elizabeth I.

Among Anne Donne’s more distant relatives was another poet and Dean of St. Paul’s, the great John Dunne (right) from a Welsh Catholic background. Donne, although married with many children, seems to have had no grandchildren or uncles on either side so this descent couldn’t be direct or immediately collateral.