Sarah Cowper

Sarah Cowper (, 14 February 1644 – 3 February 1720) was an English diarist. Early life Sarah Holled was born in Eastcheap in London as the only child of merchant Samuel Holled. Both her parents died before she was 20. As the only heir to her parents' estate, she inherited roughly £1000. On 11 April 1664 Sarah married a lawyer, William Cowper, who at the end of that same year inherited the baronetcy Cowper, as well as properties in London and Kent from his grandfather. The couple would go one to have four sons, notably among them William Cowper and Spencer Cowper. However, the couple were extremely unhappy, with Sarah commenting on their complete emotional incompatibility by saying "Never met two more Averse than we in Humour, Passions, and Affections; our Reason and Sense Religion or Morals agree not". Her husband's income was inadequate for his rank, and so the couple maintained only modest rented homes in London, with a county seat of Hertford Castle, which at that time was small and run-down. This relative lack of wealth for the title of baron only aggravated marital disputes. One response to her family situation and isolation was the compiling of a commonplace book, a collection of excerpts from her readings arranged under alphabetical headings.In it were preserved two manuscripts of Abraham Cowley's fragmentary epic The Civil War.