"The most virtuous and excellent Lady M{ris} Bridget Dunch," was the wife
of Edmund Dunch of Wittenham, Berkshire, and the daughter of Sir Anthony
Hungerford. Her mother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Sir Thomas Lucy,
son of the Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote whose deer play so large a part
in the biographies of Shakespeare, and father of the Sir Thomas who became
Donne's friend and correspondent. Her distinguished services as
protectress of "that part of [Donne's] Soul, that he left behinde him, his
Fame and Reputation" seem not to be elsewhere recorded.
I
Mistress Bridget White, to whom the first four letters are addressed, is
not otherwise known. Mr. Edmund Gosse is inclined to identify her with the
Lady Kingsmill of the fifth letter. This lady, the daughter of Thomas
White, Esq., of Southwick, Hants, married Sir Henry Kingsmill in 1612, and
lived until 1672. If Mr. Gosse's conjecture is correct, Mistress White was
in her teens when the first four letters were written, and Donne about
twenty years her senior. He writes from his lodgings in the Strand,
between which and his house at Mitcham, near Croydon, Surrey, he divided
his time from 1605 to 1610.