She was then shunted off into an unhappy arranged marriage with Alfonso Lanier, a court musician and scheming adventurer who wasted her money. As Carey’s paramour, she enjoyed a few years of glory in the royal court-an idyll that came to an abrupt and inglorious end when she found herself pregnant with Carey’s child. Later, after Bertie remarried and moved to the Netherlands, Aemilia became the mistress of Henry Carey, Lord Chamberlain to Queen Elizabeth. Born in 1569, Aemilia Bassano Lanier (also spelled Lanyer) was the highly cultured daughter of an Italian court musician-a man thought to have been a Marrano, a secret Jew living under the guise of a Christian convert.Īfter her father’s death, the young Aemilia Bassano was fostered and educated by the high-minded Dowager Countess of Kent, Susan Bertie, who gave her the kind of humanist education generally reserved for boys in that era.
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