Frances Howard, Duchess of Richmond

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Frances Stuart
Duchess of Richmond
Duchess of Lennox
Countess of Hertford
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger Frances Howard Countess of Hertford.png
Frances Howard as Countess of Hertford, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger.
Full name
Frances Howard
Born27 July 1578
Died8 October 1639(1639-10-08) (aged 61)
Noble family Howard
Spouse(s)Henry Pranell
Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford
Ludovic Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox
Father Thomas Howard, 1st Viscount Howard of Bindon
MotherMabel Burton
Frances Howard as Countess of Hertford, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, 1611. Frances Howard Countess of Hertford.jpg
Frances Howard as Countess of Hertford, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, 1611.
Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, as a widow, after a lost portrait by Anthony van Dyck of 1633. Frances Stewart Duchess of Richmond as a Widow.png
Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, as a widow, after a lost portrait by Anthony van Dyck of 1633.

Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, Countess of Hertford, née Howard (27 July 1578 – 8 October 1639) [1] was the daughter of a younger son of the Duke of Norfolk. An orphan of small fortune, she rose to be the only duchess at the court of James I of England. She married the son of a London alderman who died in 1599, leaving her a wealthy widow at a young age. She became, for 20 years, the third wife of the ageing Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, nephew of Jane Seymour, third queen consort of Henry VIII. Within months of Edward's death she married a cousin of James I, Ludovic Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox and 1st Duke of Richmond. One of the great beauties of the Jacobean court, she was also the patron of Captain John Smith of the Virginia Colony.

Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk English politician

Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, was a prominent Tudor politician. He was an uncle of two of the wives of King Henry VIII of England, namely Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, both of whom were beheaded, and played a major role in the machinations affecting these royal marriages. After falling from favour in 1546, he was stripped of the dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London, avoiding execution when King Henry VIII died on 28 January 1547.

Royal court court of a monarch, or at some periods an important nobleman

A court is an extended royal household in a monarchy, including all those who regularly attend on a monarch, or another central figure. Hence the word court may also be applied to the coterie of a senior member of the nobility.

An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members themselves rather than by popular vote, or a council member elected by voters.

Contents

Life

Frances Howard was the daughter of Thomas Howard, 1st Viscount Howard of Bindon (c. 1520–1582) and his wife Mabel Burton, daughter of Nicholas Burton. [2] Lord Howard was the third and youngest son of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, by his second wife Elizabeth Stafford, daughter of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham. [3]

Thomas Howard, 1st Viscount Howard of Bindon, was an English peer and politician. He was the youngest son of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and Lady Elizabeth Stafford. He served as Custos Rotulorum of Dorset and Vice-Admiral of Dorset. In 1559, he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Howard of Bindon by Queen Elizabeth I of England, taking the title from Bindon Abbey in Dorset, many of whose former lands he held. Thomas had eight children by three wives.

Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham 15th–16th-century English noble

Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham was an English nobleman. He was the son of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and Katherine Woodville, whose sister, Queen Elizabeth Woodville, was the wife of King Edward IV. He was convicted of treason and executed on 17 May 1521.

Orphaned at a young age, Frances Howard "was married off" [1] to Henry Pranell, the son of a rich wine merchant and alderman and a patron of the Virginia Company, in early 1592. The marriage apparently displeased Lord Burghley, who had other plans for the descendant of two Dukes than marriage with a vintner; Pranell was moved to write a letter of apology to Burghley:

Virginia Company joint-stock companies chartered to establish settlements on the North American coast

The Virginia Company refers collectively to two joint-stock companies chartered under James I on 10 April 1606 with the goal of establishing settlements on the coast of America. The two companies are referred to as the "Virginia Company of London" and the "Virginia Company of Plymouth", and they operated with identical charters but with differing territories. The charters established an area of overlapping territory in America as a buffer zone, and the two companies were not permitted to establish colonies within 100 miles of each other. The Plymouth Company never fulfilled its charter, but its territory was claimed by England and became New England.

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley English statesman

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, was an English statesman, the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer from 1572. Albert Pollard says, "From 1558 for forty years the biography of Cecil is almost indistinguishable from that of Elizabeth and from the history of England."

Right honorable and my verie good Lorde, being to my greate griffe [grief] certified, how your Honor by misinformacon shoulde be incensed ageinste me, and daring not presume into your Lordshipps presence, either to excuse my self, or to craue pardon for my amisse, I thought it my dutie in these fewe lines with submission to acknowledge my faulte, and vnder your Honors fauoure with all humilitie to alledge somewhat for my selfe. True it is, my Lorde, that I haue maried Mw. Fraunces Howarde, daughter to the Lorde Thomas Howarde, Viscount Howarde of Bindon deceased, but I protest (as I desire your Honors patronage) I did not begine my sute without the liking of her freindes, I proceeded not without their furtherance, neither can they justifie I maried her ageinst their wills. The gentlewoman I haue a longe time loued dearlie, being bounde therevnto by her mutuall liking of me: litle or nothing I expected with her, considering she had litle or nothing to mainetaine and preferr her self; she being destitute of freindes and abilitie I thought it a most frindlie parte (with her good acceptance) to present her my selfe, and therbie to make her partaker of all wherwith God hath blessed me: wherbie (as latelie I vnderstoode) I haue (though not willfullie offended), jet [yet] ignorantly incurred your Lordships just displeasure, as not knowing that your Honor minded otherwise to haue preferred her… [4]

Pranell died in 1599, leaving his wife a wealthy widow at the age of 20 or 21. "A woman of enormous social ambition", [1] she abandoned a suitor, Sir George Rodney, and secretly married the widowed Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford (1537–1621) [5] on 27 May 1601. [1] Hertford was some forty years older than his third wife, and was the son of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector in the reign of Edward VI, and the nephew of King Edward's mother, queen Jane Seymour. The marriage was performed clandestinely by Thomas Montfort without banns or license, for which Monfort was suspended for three years by Archbishop John Whitgift. [5]

Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford 1st Earl of Hertford

Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, 1st Baron Beauchamp, KG, of Wulfhall and Tottenham House in Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire, of Hatch Beauchamp in Somerset, of Netley Abbey, Hampshire, and of Hertford House, Cannon Row in Westminster, is most noted for incurring the displeasure of Queen Elizabeth I by more than one clandestine marriage.

Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset Nobleman

Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, was Lord Protector of England during part of the Tudor period from 1547 until 1549 during the minority of his nephew, King Edward VI (1547–1553). Despite his popularity with the common people, his policies often angered the gentry and he was overthrown. He was the eldest brother of Queen Jane Seymour (d. 1537), the third wife of King Henry VIII.

Lord Protector is a title that has been used in British constitutional law for the head of state. It is also a particular title for the British heads of state in respect to the established church. It is sometimes used to refer to holders of other temporary posts, for example, a regent acting for the absent monarch.

When the secret marriage became public, the distraught Rodney shut himself up in a chamber at an inn, wrote a "large paper of well-composed verses" to the Countess in his own blood, and "ran himself upon his sword." [6]

Hertford died in 1621, [5] and some two months later his widow married Ludovic Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox in the peerage of Scotland. [7] Stewart was the cousin of King James, a Privy Councillor, and Steward of the Royal Household.[ citation needed ] He was created Earl of Newcastle upon Tyne and Duke of Richmond in the peerage of England on 17 August 1623, and Frances Stewart became known as the "Double Duchess". [1]

The duke died suddenly in bed in his lodging at Whitehall, on the morning of 16 February 1623/24. [7] Stewart left no children, and the dukedom of Richmond and earldom of Newcastle upon Tyne became extinct upon his death. The dukedom of Lennox was inherited by his younger brother Esmé Stuart, 3rd Duke of Lennox (1579–1624). [7] His wife retained the title Duchess of Richmond until her own death on 8 October 1639. She was buried in Westminster Abbey next to her third husband, in the "magnificent" tomb she had had erected in his memory. [7]

Patronage

The widowed Duchess of Richmond provided financial support for the publication of Captain John Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles , which was issued in 1624 with a dedication "to the Illustrious and Most Noble Princesse, the Lady Francis, Duchesse of Richmond and Lenox." [8] [9]

Portraits

"[A] typical Howard woman, fair-haired and beautiful", [10] Frances Stewart was painted by leading artists of the age, including Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, William Larkin (a protégé of her second husband, the Earl of Hertford), and Anthony van Dyck. Several portraits of her survive, as originals or copies. [11] [12]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Strong (1998), pp. 61–62
  2. ↑ Lundy, Darryl (11 February 2009). "Thomas Howard, 1st Viscount Howard of Bindon". The Peerage. Retrieved 1 April 2011.[ unreliable source ]
  3. ↑ Lundy, Darryl (8 August 2009). "Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk". The Peerage. Retrieved 1 April 2011.[ unreliable source ]
  4. ↑ Henry Pranell to Lord Treasurer Burghley, endorsed 8 February 1591 (Old Style, that is, 1592). Reproduced in Sir Henry Ellis, Original Letters Illustrative of English History: To 1799 , Volume 4, 3rd edition, R. Bentley, 1846. Accessed 29 March 2011.
  5. 1 2 3 Pollard, Albert Frederick (1897). "wstitle=Seymour, Edward (1539?–1621)"  . In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography . 51. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 310.
  6. ↑ Wilson, Arthur, The History of Great Britain, being the Life and Reign of King James I, 1653, quoted in Sir Bernard Burke (1849), Anecdotes of the Aristocracy: And Episodes in Ancestral Story , Henry Colburn. Accessed 27 March 2011.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Henderson, Thomas Finlayson (1898). "Stuart, Ludovick"  . In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography . 55. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 108.
  8. ↑ Vaughan, Alden. "Beyond Pocahontas". New York Times, 29 June 1986. Accessed 26 March 2011
  9. ↑ Smith, John (1624). The Generall Historie of Virginia... Accessed 26 March 2011
  10. ↑ Strong (1998), pg. 16
  11. ↑ Strong (1998), pgs. 9, 16, 62
  12. ↑ Sotheby's, Early British Painting [ permanent dead link ], Sale no. L09682, 9 July 2009

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