Geraldine was so beautiful as to authorise the raptures of her poetical lover. Even in her later years, when as Countess of Lincoln, she attended on Queen Elizabeth, she retained so much of her excelling loveliness, that the adoration paid to her in youth, was not wondered at; and her celebrity as Surrey's early love, is alluded to by cotemporary writers.[70] There can be no doubt that she was an accomplished woman: the learned education the Princesses received at Hunsdon, (in the advantages of which she participated,) is well known. Her father, Lord Kildare, was a man of vigorous intellect and uncommon attainments for the age in which he lived. He was the eighth Earl of his noble family, and being engaged in the disturbances of Ireland, then a scene of eternal dissension and bloodshed between the native princes and the lords of the English pale, he fell under the displeasure of Henry the Eighth: his eldest son, and his five brothers, who had been seized as hostages, were executed on the same day at Tyburn, and the "stout old Earl," as he is called in history, died broken-hearted in the Tower. The mother of Geraldine is rendered interesting to us by a little family trait, related by one of our old Chroniclers.[71] Lord Kildare, he tells us, "was so well affected to his wife, as he would not at anie time buy a suite of apparel for himself, but he would suite her with the same stuffe; the which gentlenesse she recompensed with equal kindnesse; for after that he, the said Earle, deceased in the Tower, she did not onely live a chaste and honourable widow, but also nightly, before she went to bed, she would resorte to his picture, and there, with a solemn _congé_, she would bid her Lorde good nighte." This Countess of Kildare was Lady Elizabeth Grey, granddaughter of that famous Lady Elizabeth Grey, whose virtue made her the queen of Edward the Fourth. Thus the fair Geraldine was cousin to the young princes who were smothered in the Tower, and may truly be said to have been of "Prince's blood." It must be admitted that the general tone of Surrey's poems does not give us a favourable idea of the fair Geraldine's manners and character. She was variable, coquetish, and fond of admiration;--on this point I have offered some apology for her. She is accused also of marrying twice, from _mercenary_ motives, and thus forfeiting the attachment of her noble and poetical lover.[72] This is unfair, I think; there is no _proof_ that Geraldine married solely from _mercenary_ motives. Surrey was himself married, and both the men to whom she was successively united,[73] were eminent in their day for high personal qualities, though in comparison with Surrey, they have been reduced to hide their diminished heads in peerages and genealogies.