Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford
Lucy Russell | |
---|---|
Countess of Bedford | |
Born | Lucy Harington 1581 |
Died | 1627 |
Noble family | Harington |
Spouse(s) | Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford |
Father | John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton |
Mother | Anne Keilway |
Occupation | Lady of the Bedchamber to Anne of Denmark |
Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford (née Harington; 1581–1627) was a major aristocratic patron of the arts and literature in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, the primary non-royal performer in contemporary court masques, a letter-writer, and a poet. She was an adventurer (shareholder) in the Somers Isles Company, investing in Bermuda,[1][2] where Harrington Sound is named after her.[3][4]
Parentage and marriage
Lucy Harington was the daughter of Sir John Harington of Exton, and Anne Keilway. Although the exact date of her birth is unknown, she was christened on January 25, 1581.[5] She was well-educated for a woman in her era, and knew French, Spanish, and Italian. She was a member of the Sidney/Essex circle from birth, through her father, first cousin to Sir Robert Sidney and Mary, Countess of Pembroke; she was a close friend of Essex's sisters Penelope Rich and Dorothy Percy, Countess of Northumberland, and the latter named one of her daughters Lucy after her.
Lucy Harington married
Courting Anne of Denmark
Lucy and the Earl seem to have been expected to visit
Several English nobles secretly sent representatives into Scotland to try to gain favour and court appointments.
The Countess of Bedford travelled south with Anne of Denmark and Prince Henry and Princess Elizabeth. There were now a great number of English ladies following the queen.[14] At Dingley, Northamptonshire she rode south to meet Lady Anne Clifford, perhaps at Wymondley Priory, and brought her to Dingley on 24 June.[15][16]
Masquing
Bedford performed in several of the masques staged at court, including The Masque of Blackness (1605), Hymenaei (1606), The Masque of Beauty (1608), The Masque of Queens, and The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604). On two occasions she functioned as a theatrical producer, described as rector chori of the New Year masque in 1604,[18] the The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, and in 1617 instigating and organising the performance of Robert White's masque Cupid's Banishment, acted by students from the first English girls' school, the Ladies Hall in Deptford. In February 1617 the masque by Ben Jonson presented by Lord Hay to the French ambassador Baron de Tour, the Lovers Made Men, was staged by the Countess of Bedford.[19]
A drawing for her costume as Penthesilea in the Masque of Queens by Inigo Jones survives in the collection at Chatsworth House.[20]
Patronage
Jonson
She was a noted patron of
Others
In addition to Jonson, Bedford supported other significant poets of her era, including Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, George Chapman, and John Donne. She might be the "Idea" of Drayton's pastoral Idea: The Shepherd's Garland (1593) and of his sonnet sequence Idea's Mirror (1594). Drayton dedicated his Mortimeriados (1594) to her, as Daniel did his Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604). Bedford patronised a range of lesser writers of her era, including the translator John Florio, who credited her help in his translation of the essays of Montaigne. She "received more dedications than any other woman associated with the drama" in her era.[22]
Bedford was the godmother of Donne's second daughter, also named Lucy, and the namesake of Sir Henry Goodere's daughter (later wife of Sir Francis Nethersole). Donne seems to have been deeply involved with her on a psychological level — "Most of the poems of Donne's middle years relate, in one way or another, to this glamorous and intriguing woman."
She was also receptive to women poets, such as her cousin
From out the Christall Pallace of her brest
The clearer soule was call'd to endlesse rest.[24][25]
Bedford certainly wrote an elegy on the death of her cousin Bridget Markham at Twickenham Park in 1609.[26]
While best remembered for her patronage of writers, Bedford also supported musicians,
A few scholars have identified the Earl and Countess of Bedford as the allegorised couple in Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle, who left "no posterity" (line 59) — yet since the poem was published in 1601, when the Countess was only twenty years old, the identification has struck others as unlikely.
Gardens
She was a significant figure in the development of English country-house and garden design, centering on her estates at Twickenham Park and Moor Park. An Italian writer Giacomo Castelvetro dedicated a book on fruit and vegetables to her.[27] She described her building and improvements at Moor Park in a letter to a friend; "my works att the More, whear I have been a patcher this sommer and I am still adding some trifles of pleasure to that place I am so much love with, as I were so fond of any man I were in hard case."[28]
Career
As one of the most influential women at James's court, she was also involved in a range of political issues; in the later part of the reign she was among the most prominent supporters of
Bedford took part in the Masque of Blackness on 6 January 1605 as "Aglaia" one of the three graces. The masque marked the creation of
She was apparently absent from the queen's company for a part of 1605 and 1606, around the time Anne of Denmark had her last daughter Sophia, and had perhaps been sent away in disfavour. When Anne of Denmark asked her to come back, and Bedford danced for her, according to Dudley Carleton the queen laughed and said, "her brother of Denmark was as handsome a man as the duke of Holstein".[31] The remark may mean that Bedford had been involved with the Duke of Holstein, the queen's younger brother who had recently been in England.[32]
Her husband, the Earl of Bedford fell from his horse in July 1613 and was seriously injured.[33] The Countess gave up a plan to travel to Spa, Belgium for her health. John Chamberlain wrote that she came back to the royal court, but affected by grief she used less cosmetics than the other women at court, "Marry, she is somewhat reformed in her attire, and forebears painting, which they say makes her somewhat strange among so many vizards, which together with their frizzled powdered hair makes them look all alike, so you can scant know one from another at first view."[34]
In August 1616 she was with the court at Woodstock Palace, the only countess present, when George Villiers was created Viscount Buckingham.[35] She visited Anne of Denmark at Nonsuch Palace in July 1617.[36] In 1617 she was godmother of Elizabeth Gordon, daughter of Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstoun and Louisa Gordon whose mother Geneviève Petau de Maulette is said to have taught French to Elizabeth of Bohemia. The other godparents were the Earl of Hertford and Jean Drummond, Countess of Roxburghe.[37]
Roxburghe was dismissed from the queen's court soon after this christening, and Bedford seems to have absented herself at this time in sympathy with her friend.[38] She wrote to her friend Lady Cornwallis that Roxburghe's absence in Scotland "makes me perfectly hate the court".[39]
Anne of Denmark had a nosebleed at Oatlands in September 1618 that confined her to bed and disrupted her travel plans.[40] Bedford thought it had weakened her, and she appeared "dangerously ill". Bedford wrote to Lady Cornwallis that she would now be more often at court because of the queen's illness than she had intended.[41]
Prominent as she was, both Bedford and her husband had serious financial problems throughout their lives. In 1618 she transferred her shares in the Bermuda Company to the Marquess of Hamilton.[42] Lady Bedford reportedly had debts of £50,000 in 1619, apart from the Earl's massive indebtedness, and despite a royal grant of duties from sea coal, made plans to sell lands inherited from her father and brother, including Coombe Abbey.[43]
The court physician Théodore de Mayerne noted she had "podagra" or gout.[44] In 1619 he treated her for the smallpox that blinded her in one eye,[45] and in 1620 treated her for depression which he recorded as "hypochondriacus".[46]
Lucy, Countess of Bedford died in the same month as her husband, May 1627. None of their children survived infancy.
Portrait medal
Around the year 1625, Lady Bedford commissioned a portrait medal from
In fiction
- Lucy Russell is the subject of The Noble Assassin (2011), a historical novel by Christie Dickason.
- Vivian Bearing refers to herself as Lucy, Countess of Bedford on one occasion in Margaret Edson's play Wit.
Notes
- ^ Misha Ewen, 'Women Investors and the Virginia Company in the Early Seventeenth Century', Historical Journal, 62:4 (December 2019), p. 859: John Henry Lefroy, Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of The Bermudas or Somers Islands, vol. 1 (London, 1877), p. 99.
- ^ Bermuda Online" Bermuda's Hamilton Parish, bermuda-online.org. Accessed 14 January 2023.
- ^ Profile, HamiltonParish.bm. Accessed 14 January 2023.
- ISBN 9781847252128.
- ^ Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows (London, 2007), pp. 19, 28.
- ^ Joseph Bain, Calendar of Border Papers, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1896), p. 678 no. 1221.
- ^ Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham (London, 1902), p. 55.
- ^ Clara Steeholm & Hardy Steeholm, James I of England: The Wisest Fool in Christendom (New York, 1938), p. 245.
- ^ Eva Griffith, A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse: The Queen's Servants at the Red Bull Theatre (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 119-120: Susan Dunn-Hensley, Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria, Virgins, Witches, and Catholic Queens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 79: Nadine Akkerman, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts (Oxford, 2021), p. 28: Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows: The Life of Lucy, Countess, Countess of Bedford (London: Hambledon, 2007), p. 49.
- ^ John Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 43-45.
- ^ 'The Diarey (sic) of Robert Birrell', in John Graham Dalyell, Fragments of Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1798), pp. 59-60
- ^ Dawson Turner, Descriptive Index, p. 134 no. 90, now British Library Add. MS 19401 f.185.
- ^ A Chronicle of the Kings of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1830), p. 168.
- ^ John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 1 (London, 1828), p. 174.
- ^ Jessica L. Malay, Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing, 1590-1676 (Manchester, 2018), pp. 18-20: Katherine Acheson, The Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616-1619 (Broadview, Toronto, 2006), pp. 50-1.
- ^ Karen Hearn, 'Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, as Art Patron and Collector', Edward Chaney, The Evolution of English Collecting (Yale, 2003), p. 224.
- ^ Karen Hearn, 'Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, as Art Patron and Collector', Edward Chaney, The Evolution of English Collecting (Yale, 2003), p. 222.
- ^ Norman Egbert McClure, The Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1939), pp. 51, 55, 57.
- ^ Karen Hearn, 'Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, as Art Patron and Collector', Edward Chaney, The Evolution of English Collecting (Yale, 2003), p. 224.
- ^ Joseph, p. 98.
- ^ Bergeron, p. 82.
- ^ Carey, p. xxvii.
- ^ Michelle O'Callaghan, 'Lucy Russell: British Library Harley 4064', Early Modern Women Research Network.
- ^ Bedford's Elegy
- ^ See external links.
- ^ Joan Thirsk,Food in Early Modern England (London, 2007), p. 67.
- ^ Lord Braybrooke, The Private Correspondence of Jane Lady Cornwallis (London, 1842), p. 48.
- ^ Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows (London, 2007), pp. 61-63.
- ^ Keith Brown, 'The Scottish Aristocracy, Anglicisation and the Court, 1603-1638', The Historical Journal, 36:3 (September 1993), pp. 543-576, at 546, 551-2.
- ^ Maurice Lee, Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain: Jacobean Letters (New Brunswick, 1972), p. 90.
- ^ Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows (London, 2007), pp. 66-68.
- ^ Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows (London, 2007), pp. 121-2.
- ^ Thomas Birch & Robert Folkestone Williams, The Court and times of James the First, vol. 1 (London, 1848), p. 262.
- ^ William Shaw & G. Dyfnallt Owen, HMC 77 Viscount De L'Isle Penshurst, vol. 5 (London, 1961), p. 408.
- ^ William Shaw & G. Dyfnallt Owen, HMC 77 Viscount De L'Isle Penshurst, vol. 5 (London, 1961), p. 411-2.
- ^ Robert Gordon, Genealogical history of the Earldom of Sutherland (Edinburgh, 1813), p. 343.
- ^ Marion O'Connor, 'Godly Patronage', Johanna Harris & Elizabeth Scott-Baumann, The Intellectual Culture of Puritan Women (Palgrave, 2011), p. 74.
- ^ Joanna Moody, Correspondence of Lady Cornwallis Bacon (Cranbury NJ, 2003) p. 88.
- ^ John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 3 (London, 1828), p. 493.
- ^ Joanna Moody, Correspondence of Lady Cornwallis Bacon (Cranbury NJ, 2003) p. 93.
- ^ Marion O'Connor, 'Godly Patronage', Johanna Harris & Elizabeth Scott-Baumann, The Intellectual Culture of Puritan Women (Palgrave, 2011), p. 73.
- ^ Thomas Birch & Folkestone Williams, Court and Times of James the First, 2 (London: Colburn, 1849), pp. 194–95, 322.
- ^ Henry Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd series vol. 3 (London, 1827), p. 247.
- ^ Thomas Birch & Folkestone Williams, Court and Times of James the First, 2 (London: Colburn, 1849), pp. 179–80.
- ^ Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows (London, 2007), pp. 149-51, 155.
- ^ Karen Hearn, 'Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, as Art Patron and Collector', Edward Chaney, The Evolution of English Collecting (Yale, 2003), pp. 230-2.
- ^ Fitzwilliam Museum CM.2111-2003
References
- Barroll, John Leeds. Anne of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
- Bergeron, David Moore. Textual Patronage in English Drama, 1570–1640. London, Ashgate, 2006.
- Carey, John, ed. John Donne: The Major Works.
- Davidson, Peter, and Jane Stevenson, eds. Early Modern Women Poets: An Anthology. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001.
- Lawson, Lesley Out of the Shadows: The Life of Lucy, Countess of Bedford. London, Continuum, 2007.
- Joseph, T., ed. Ben Jonson: A Critical Study. New Delhi, Anmol, 2002.
- Steven N. Zwicker. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987.
External links
- Images of manuscripts of poems including the Countess of Bedford's Elegy for Bridget Markham, Michelle O'Callaghan, Early Modern Women Research Network.
- Drawing by Isaac Oliver for a miniature portrait of the Countess of Bedford, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
- Miniature by Isaac Oliver of the Countess of Bedford, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
- Information from Twickenham Museum.