Queer Places:
Orielton Estate, Pembroke SA71 5EZ, UK
Anne Lewis Owen Trevor (1633–1692) was an English poet. She had a romantic friendship with Katherine Philips, whom wrote the poem to Owen:
TO THE EXCELLENT MRS. ANNE OWEN
We are compleat; and fate hath now
No greater blessing to bestow:
Nay, the dull World must now confess
We have all worth, all happiness.
Annalls of State are triffles to our fame,
Now 'tis made sacred by Lucasia's name.
But as though through a burning glasse
The sun more vigorous doth passe,
It still with generall freedom shines;
For that contracts, but not confines:
So though by this her beams are fixed here,
Yet she diffuses glorys every where.
Her mind is so entirely bright,
The splendour would but wound our sight,
And must to some disguise submit,
Or we could never worship it.
And we by this relation are allow'd
Lustre enough to be Lucasia's cloud.
Nations will own us now to be
A Temple of divinity;
And Pilgrims shall Ten ages hence
Approach our Tombs with reverence.
May then that time, which did such blisse convey,
Be kept with us perpetuall Holy day!
Anne Owen married John Owen, whose family estate was Orielton. John Owen was the son of Sir Hugh Owen, also step-father of Anne Owen. Henry was the son of Dorothy, daughter of Rowland Laughame, and John Owen. Anne Owen met Katherine Philips in 1651.
Philips was one of few 17th century women known as a poet in her own lifetime. She died of smallpox at the age of thirty-two but leaves us a legacy of friendship poetry. She and her closest female friends, Anne Owen Lewis and Mary Aubrey created their own personal literary circle, exchanging letters and poems, treasuring and celebrating their close bond.
After the birth of her second child, Philips founded the Society of Friendship, a circle of literary friends who exchanged plays, stories, and poems written under classical pseudonyms; Her two closest friends, Anne Owen and Mary Aubrey, were Lucasia and Rosania, she herself was Orinda, and, among the men in her circle, Francis Finch was Palaemon, Sir Edward Dering Silvander, John Berkenhead Cratander, and Sir Charles Cotterell Poliarchus. Anne Owen was the subject and dedicatee of several poems by Philips that reveal a strongly emotional but platonic attachment. Twenty-one poems are addressed to her 'dearest friend' Lucasia, Anne Owen, and nine to Rosania, Mary Aubrey, a friend since childhood. Six further poems celebrate the friendship between Rosania and Lucasia.
By far the majority of academic interest in Philips has centred on her poems of female friendship, in particular those addressed to Mary Aubrey ('Rosania') and Anne Owen ('Lucasia'). During the 1650s, Philips 'great immortal man' tended to move in artistic circles, among the literati, and many of the men to whom she addressed verses at this time - Edward Dering, Francis Finch, John Berkenhead, Henry Lawes - appear to have played some kind of role in her own much celebrated, yet ill defined literary circle, the 'Society of Friendship'. Some of these men bear the Society's pastoral sobriquets. Dering is 'the worthy Silvander', Berkenhead, 'the noble Cratander', and Finch is styled 'the excellent Palemon'. Dering's 'Letter-book' shows that he had been a great admirer of Philips' philosophy of friendship. A letter that he wrote to Anne Owen (Lucasia) several months after Philips' death is largely responsible for our current notion of the 'Society of Friendship'. Referring to Philips as 'Orinda', he writes: [She] had conceived the most generous désigné, that in my opinion ever entred into any breast, which was to unite all those of her acquaintance, which she found worthy, or desired to make so, (among the later number she was pleased to give me a place) into one societie, and by the bands of friendship to make an alliance more firme then what nature, our countrey or equall education can produce: and this would in time have spread very farr, & have been improved with great and yet unimagind advantage to the world."
In October 1653 Francis Finch completed a treatise, Friendship, which he addressed to 'D. noble Lucasia-Orinda' [...] her platonic friendship with Anne Owen was so much admired that they could be addressed as a single individual.
In 1662 Philips was involved in writing complimentary verses to members of the royal family, and she used Sir Charles Cotterell, master of ceremonies for Charles II, to get those verses to their addressees, but she was also employing more direct means to help improve her husband's lot. Early letters suggest that she and Cotterell were engaged in a relationship of mutual self-interest in which Philips was using her influence to forward Cotterell's (ultimately unsuccessful) courtship of the widowed Anne Owen, and Cotterell was taking advantage of his position at court to gain clemency from king and parliament for Philips' husband. In July 1662, Philips accompanied Anne Owen on her wedding journey from Wales to Ireland. The widowed Owen had married Marcus Trevor, a prominent Anglo-Irish gentleman, in May of that year, much to Philips' chagrin.
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