Dorothy Dury

Dorothy Durie or Dorothy Dury (1613–1664), born Dorothy King, first married name Dorothy Moore (c.1618–1645), was an Anglo-Irish writer on education. She had a talent for languages and she was interested in the education of women, in alchemy and in the study of medicine. Life Durie was born in Dublin in about 1613. Her father was Sir John King (died 1637) of Boyle, County Roscommon, Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper and a member of the Irish House of Commons, and her mother was Catherine Drury (died 1617), daughter of Robert Drury of Laughlin and Elizabeth Carew, and grand-niece of Sir William Drury, Lord President of Munster. She had eight siblings, including Sir Robert King of Boyle Abbey and the poet Edward King, whose early death inspired John Milton to write the poem "Lycidas". Her English father was based mainly in Dublin but he had been granted lands by the Crown in Ireland under dubious circumstances: by the time of his death he held land in twenty-one counties in all. He sat in the Irish House of Commons as MP for Roscommon, and held numerous public offices. Durie was interested in education, although she considered her own education to have been frivolous. Despite this she could read both Latin and Greek and she was fluent in French: she and her two sisters, Lady Lowther and Lady Charlemont, were considered to be among the best-educated women in Ireland of their generation. When she visited France it was said that she was the first educated woman there since Lady Jane Grey.