Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent

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Elizabeth Grey
Countess of Kent
File:Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent - Van Somer c.1619.jpg
Portrait of Elizabeth Grey by Paul Van Somer, ca. 1619
Henry Grey, 8th Earl of Kent
Father Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury
Mother Mary Cavendish
Born 1582 (1582)
Died 7 December 1651(1651-12-07)
Friary House, Whitefriars, London

Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent (née Lady Elizabeth Talbot) (1582 – 7 December 1651) was a medical recipe collector, and the wife of Henry Grey, 8th Earl of Kent.

Biography

She was a daughter of Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury and Mary Cavendish.[1] Elizabeth Talbot was described in a letter of November 1590, after she had been taken to see Queen Elizabeth:[2]

If I should write how much her Majesty this day did make of the little lady your daughter, with often kissing (which her Majesty seldom uses to any) and then amending her dressing with pins, and still carrying her with her Majesty in her own barge, and so into the privy lodgings, and so homeward from the running, you would scarce believe me: Her Majesty said (as true it is) that she is very like my Lady her grandmother: she behaved herself with such modesty as I pray she may possess at 20 years old.[3]

She was appointed a maid of honour to Elizabeth I in June 1600.[4]

She married Grey on 16 November 1601, at St Martin-in-the-Fields. They lived at Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, where she managed the large household.[5] They had no children, and the Earl died in 1639.[6] Afterwards she may have married the writer, John Selden, who had worked for the Earl and to whom she left most of her property.[1]

She was a favourite attendant of Queen Anne of Denmark,[7] As her husband was Baron Grey of Ruthin, she was named as "Lady Ruthin" in lists of Anne of Denmark's household. She is sometimes confused with Barbara Ruthven, the queen's favourite in Scotland in the 1590s. Lady Ruthin was a contact at court for Lady Anne Clifford, and took her gifts to Anne of Denmark, including a white satin gown embroidered with pearls and coloured silks.[8]

In 1609, an Italian poet, Antimo Galli, published Rime di Antimo Galli which includes stanzas describing the guests and participants in The Masque of Beauty. He dedicated his book to Lady Grey.[9] In 1610 she danced in the court masque Tethys' Festival as the "Nymph of Medway".[10] In 1616 the Venetian ambassador Antonio Foscarini gave the Queen a necklace but Lady Grey returned it to him.[11] It was said she replaced Jean Drummond as the queen's personal servant in October 1617.[12][13] Her portrait by Paul van Somer includes a jewelled tablet or locket with the Queen's monogram.[14]

The queen's brother, Christian IV of Denmark wrote to her in 1619, asking her to take care to avert the Queen's melancholy. After Anne of Denmark's death, Christian IV wrote to her, thanking her for her service, and she replied from Somerset House in French.[15]

File:A Choice Manual, title page, 1726.png
Title page for 22nd edition, (1726)

Recipe books

After her death, her collection of medical recipes was published, originally as A Choice Manual, or Rare Secrets in Physick and Chirurgery Collected and Practised by the Right Honourable the Countess of Kent, late deceased. Later editions of the book added the subtitle Whereto are added several experiments of the vertue of Gascon powder, and lapis contra yarvam by a professor of physick. As also most exquisite ways of preserving, conserving, candying &c..[16] The book was popular, going through twenty-two editions.[17] Some of the recipes reflect the influence of English Paracelsianism.[18] Medical recipes were an interest she shared with her younger sister, Alethea Howard, Countess of Arundel.

A book published in 1653 by W. J. Gent, titled A True Gentlewoman's Delight, is considered to be her personal recipe collection, although there is speculation that the cookbook was written by the countess's chef Robert May, or by the publisher himself.[19]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1  Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Charlotte Merton, "Women, Friendship, and Memory", Alice Hunt & Anna Whitelock, Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 245, 250 fn. 14.
  3. ↑ Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, 3 (London, 1791), pp. 12–13 modernised here.
  4. ↑ Michael Brennan, Noel Kinnamon, Margaret Hannay, Letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney (Philadelphia, 2013), p. 504.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 76th ed. p. 823, (London and New York, 1914).
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ D. J. H. Clifford, The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford (Stroud, 1990), p. 64.
  9. ↑ David M. Bergeron, The Duke of Lennox, 1574-1624: A Jacobean Courtier's Life (Edinburgh, 2022), p. 1.
  10. ↑ John Nichols, The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities, of King James the First, vol. 2 (London, 1828), p. 348.
  11. ↑ Allen Hinds, Calendar State Papers, Venice: 1615-1617, vol. 14 (London, 1908), p. 603.
  12. ↑ HMC 75 Downshire, vol. 6 (London, 1995), p. 300.
  13. ↑ Thomas Birch & Folkestone Williams, Court and Times of James the First, 2 (London: Colburn, 1849), p. 38.
  14. ↑ Jemma Field, Anna of Denmark: The Material and Visual Culture of the Stuart Courts (Manchester, 2020), p. 165.
  15. ↑ William Dunn Macray, 'Report on Archives in Denmark', 46th Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (London, 1886), pp. 38, 45.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

Attribution

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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