The Puritan of Massachusetts was, at this time, the straitest of his sect, an unflinching egotist, who regarded himself as eminently his "brother's keeper," whose constant business it was to save his fellow-men from sin and error, sitting in judgment upon their belief and actions with the authority of a divinely appointed high priest.

The daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, born about 1560, she married first Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, patron of the company of actors with whom Shakespeare's name is associated; and secondly, after his early death in 1594, the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton, who rose by rapid steps to be Viscount Brackley shortly before his death in 1617.