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.

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 Margaret Lowther and Lady Mary Caulfeild, Baroness 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. He died on 9 April 1635 and Durie moved to London where she stayed with Katherine Boate and her husband Gerard Boate, physician and author of A Natural History of Ireland. She had some lands in Ireland but most of them seem to have been lost, and she would eventually sell some of her remaining land in Ireland to Katherine Boate.

In August 1642 she moved to the Netherlands in order that she could renew her friendship with Calvinist divine John Dury (who was a friend of John Milton). She had consulted him about the education of her sons, and she and Dury began a correspondence. In March 1642 he had taken up a job in The Hague as the child Princess Mary Stuart's chaplain. Dorothy followed him as he toured the Netherlands. She had to scotch rumours of a secret marriage between them,

She married John Dury in 1645 and they returned to England. Their daughter, Dora Katherina Dury (1654–77),

She exchanged letters with the theologian André Rivet concerning the role of women in religion and she corresponded with Lady Ranelagh, with whom she discussed both the education of girls and love in marriage. and later she dabbled in pharmacy, either because she was short of money or out of interest in selling medicines.