Mystery Woman Formerly Known as Mary, Queen of Scots II

Tudor & Jacobean Portraits, by Roy C. Strong, National Portrait Gallery

I cannot find any direct link between Dorothy Arundell, Lady Weston and Henry Boyle (1669–1725) 1st Baron Carleton, the first known owner of the portrait, however. The closest I can find is that his great-grandmother was Lady Frances Cecil (1593 – 1644), while another Lady Frances Cecil (1581 – 1653), the other one's cousin, married Nicholas Tufton, 1st Earl of Thanet. Their daughter Mary married Sir Edward Bishopp, 2nd Baronet (1602 – April 1649), one the descendants of Dorothy Arundell's daughter Jane.

That is not very close.

Searching among the female ancestors of the Baron another possibility is:

ELIZABETH BROOKE (January 12, 1561/2-January 1596/7)

Elizabeth Brooke was the daughter of William Brooke, 10th baron Cobham (November 1, 1527-March 6, 1597) and Frances Newton (1539-October 17, 1592). Although she had a twin sister, Frances, only Elizabeth was christened at court, in the Chapel Royal at Windsor. Her godmothers were the queen and her aunt, Elizabeth Brooke Parr, Lady Northampton. According to David McKeen’s A Memory of Honour: the life of William Brooke, Lord Cobham, she was already at court in January 1581/2 when she received a New Year’s gift from the queen of 6s. 8d.(she gave the queen a ruff) and was one of the gentlewomen of the privy chamber by 1586. Other sources say she first went to court in 1588 and that she immediately captured the affection of Robert Cecil, later earl of Salisbury (1563-1612). In fact, Elizabeth and Cecil probably knew each other as children, since their fathers were close friends. Cecil was concerned that she would reject him because of his spinal deformity. In a letter, he wrote: “The object of mine eye yesternight at supper hath taken so deep impression on my heart that every trifling thought increased my affection. I know your inwardness with all parties to be such, as only it lieth in your person to draw from them whether the mislike of my person be such as it may not be qualified by any other circumstance, with, if it be so, as of likehood it is, I will then lay hand on my mouth.” Apparently Elizabeth was not repelled by his hump. In April 1589 they were betrothed (McKeen says the contract was signed May 31, 1589). She was to have a dowry of £2000 and her jointure would include an estate at Pymmes, Hertfordshire. The death of Cecil’s mother, Mildred, delayed the ceremony, but they were married on August 31, 1589. After that, Elizabeth was often at court. According to All the Queen’s Women: The Changing Place and Perception of Aristocratic Women in Elizabethan England 1558-1620 (1987) by Joan Barbara Greenbaum Goldsmith, she died there. McKeen supplies the information that she died in childbirth. Her children were Frances (1590-1644), Catherine (d.yng), and William (March 1591-1668), although McKeen gives a birthdate of July 1593 for Frances. Elizabeth’s epitaph remembers her as “silent, true and chaste.” Portrait: Elizabeth is included, as a child, in the group portrait of the Cobham Family painted in 1567, although there is some confusion as to which twin is which. In 1590, she commissioned a copy of that painting that included another brother not yet born in 1567. According to David McKeen’s A Memory of Honour: the life of William Brooke, Lord Cobham, there is a portrait at Hatfield of a lady dressed in gold and flowery embroidery of the right style for the 1580s that is usually said to be one of William Cecil’s daughters. He believes, based on the subject’s large nose, a characteristic of the Brooke family, and her small, wry mouth and receding chin, characteristic of the Newtons, that this is a portrait of Elizabeth Brooke Cecil. Susan E. James, in Women’s Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485-1603, makes a case for the portrait at Hatfield House called Anne Morgan, Lady Hunsdon (the same one McKeen refers to?) to be Elizabeth Brooke c.1588-9.

Elizabeth Brooke – A Who's Who of Tudor Women

The twins do look a bit like the lady in the Carleton Portrait.

The description of the other painting does not sound like her, but then again, there is no way of knowing if it is her.

This must be the portrait described above.

Whoever she is, I don't think she is our mystery lady, though.

Elizabeth Brooke would have to have been very young when the Carleton Portrait was painted, if she is indeed the sitter, however.

The full Cobham family portrait allows us at least to rule out her mother, Frances Newton Brooke (1539 – 1592) with a reasonable degree of certainty, though, regardless of which of the women she is.

«The Cobham family portrait, painted in 1567 by the artist A. W., also known as the Master of the countess of Warwick. The sitters were identified as Frances Newton (standing), her husband, her sister, Joanna (seated) and six of Cobham's children. More recently, the seated woman has been reidentified as Frances while the woman standing is said to be Elizabeth Brooke, Marchioness of Northampton, Lord Cobham's sister, who had died two years earlier. Such memorial portraits were not unheard of. A copy of the Cobham Family Portrait was commissioned c. 1590 by William's daughter Elizabeth and in this version another child, George, not yet born in 1567, is included in the group.»

http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Bios/WilliamBrooke.htm

Elizabeth Brooke's daughter Frances Cecil was the great-grandmother of Henry Boyle (1669–1725) 1st Baron Carleton.

FRANCES CECIL (1590-1644)

Frances Cecil was the daughter of Robert Cecil, 1st earl of Salisbury (1563-1612) and Elizabeth Brooke (1562-Janaury 1596/7). David McKeen’s A Memory of Honour: the life of William Brooke, Lord Cobham gives her date of birth as July 1593. Her mother returned to court after her birth and she was left in the care of a wet nurse at Theobalds. The nurse was more interested in her lover, the steward’s boy, than in taking care of Frances and the child became ill. She either inherited her father’s spinal deformity or was injured during this period, resulting in a twisted spine. From her mother’s death until late 1604, Frances was raised by her maternal aunt, Frances, Lady Stourton. In 1599 an attempt was made to have her back straightened by putting her in irons. It was unsuccessful but her father and Lady Stourton worked together to fit her with a bodice that would cover her deformity but could be worn without pain. In August 1604, Frances returned to London and although her maternal great aunt, Elizabeth, Lady Russell, wished to take her into her household, she was placed instead at the Charterhouse with the countess of Suffolk and her children. She remained there until mid-1607, when she was sent to Lancashire to live with her two de Vere cousins, Lady Derby and Lady Norris. This arrangement was made by her father against Frances’s wishes, probably to thwart an unsuitable attachment to one of the young men in the Suffolk household. Earlier that year, John, 1st Lord Harington, had proposed that Frances marry his son John but Salisbury refused the match. He also refused Harington’s suggestion that Frances join the household of Princess Elizabeth, a household that was under the supervision of Harington and his wife. Apparently Frances did meet the Princess, who liked her, but Salisbury was protective of his daughter and feared she would be made fun of at court. A letter is extant from about this time in which he wrote: “I know it is the fashion of the Court and London to laugh at all deformities. I would be exceeding glad that somewhat was done to cover the poor girl’s infirmities before such ladies and others as will find her out, should see her in such ill case as she is.” He arranged a marriage for Frances to Henry, Lord Clifford (1592-1643), son and heir of the 4th earl of Cumberland. They were wed on July 25, 1610 at the house of Sir Walter Cope in Kensington. The reception cost £250, the bridal apparel £935, and Frances’s dowry was £6000. In spite of that, shortly after her father died in 1612, she was in the unhappy position of being stranded, penniless, on Clifford lands in the north, while her husband lived well on his own in London. In time, however, they found they had a love of music in common and produced six children. Most of the information in this entry comes from Helen Payne, “The Cecil Women at Court,” an essay in Patronage Culture and Power: The Early Cecils 1558-1612, edited by Pauline Croft. Portraits: 1599 at age 9 with her brother William (1591-1668); attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts or Federico Zuccaro

Frances Cecil – A Who's Who of Tudor Women

Elizabeth, Lady Russell – Sounds like Frances dodged a bullet.

The countess of Suffolk was Katherine Knyvett, Countess of Suffolk. She was actually Dorothy Arundell's niece-by-marriage. Sir Henry Weston, Dorothy's husband, and Sir Henry Knyvett, Katherine's father, were brothers, both the sons of Anne Pickering through two of her marriages. Anne Pickering was also the mother of Katherine Knyvett, Lady Paget-Cary.

The Countess of Suffolk's sister Frances Knyvett (d. 1605) married secondly Francis Manners, 6th Earl of Rutland, and had a daughter, Katherine Villiers, Duchess of Buckingham. His second wife was Cecily Tufton, the sister of the Nicholas Tufton, 1st Earl of Thanet who married the other Lady Frances Cecil. They were both the children of Sir John Tufton, 1st Baronet, Hothfield, Kent, and his second wife Christian Browne, daughter of Sir Humphrey Browne.

The 6th Earl's brother, George Manners, 7th Earl of Rutland, married Frances Cary, daughter of Sir Edward Cary and Katherine Knyvett, Lady Paget-Cary, his brother's wife's first cousin.

Even though we only have a bad photograph of a portrait painted when she was very small I still think that the features of Lady Frances Cecil are inconsistent with the features of the lady in the Carleton Portrait.

Lady Frances Cecil may have been left in the care of the Countess of Suffolk due to the marriage of her second cousin Lady Elizabeth Cecil to the Countess's son.

ELIZABETH CECIL (c.1595-August 1672)

Elizabeth Cecil was the eldest daughter of William Cecil, 2nd earl of Exeter (1566-1640) and Elizabeth Drury (1578-1654). A match for her was first considered with Robert Sidney (1595-1677), future earl of Leicester, but in May 1614 she wed Thomas Howard, second son of Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Suffolk. He was created earl of Berkshire in 1626. They had thirteen children: Charles (1615-1679), Mary (1616-1679), Thomas (November 14, 1619-April 17, 1706), Frances (September 29, 1623-April 9, 1670), Robert (January 19, 1626-September 3, 1698), Philip (March 5, 1629-September 18, 1717), Diana (1636-1713), Elizabeth (c.1638-1714), Henry, William, James, Algernon, and Edward. Portraits: several exist, all after a lost original by Paul van Somer, c.1618.

Elizabeth Cecil – A Who's Who of Tudor Women

HONORA ROGERS (1562-1615)

Honora Rogers was the daughter of Sir Richard Rogers of Bryanston, Dorset (c.1527-1605) and Cecilia Luttrell (d.1566). She and her brother, Andrew (who had married Lady Mary Seymour, sister to the earl of Hertford c.1575), spent the summer of 1581 at Hanworth with Edward and Thomas Seymour, Hertford’s sons. Edward (September 21, 1561-July 21, 1612), who was Lord Beauchamp and heir to the earl, courted Honora. By the end of the summer he had given her a ring. According to the account in Charlotte Merton’s The Women who served Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, Beauchamp called Honora his wife and “knew her in the orchard.” When the elderly Anne Stanhope, duchess of Somerset, in whose care they were, fell ill, Honora “stole the keys from under the chambermaid’s bedhead and stole sweetmeats.” The young people were nominally supervised by “two old hags,” Elizabeth Moninges and her sister, Thomasine Audley. Hertford took a dislike to Honora (he called her “Onus Blous” in his letters). According to the entry for her father in the History of Parliament, Hertford sent George Ludlow to discuss the situation with the Rogers family. Ludlow called Honora “a baggage” and Sir Richard Rogers “a fool” and insisted that Beauchamp had intended to have “but a night’s lodging with her.” Since Hertford refused to acknowledge the marriage, the young people were kept apart for the next four years, although Lady Mary Seymour argued in favor of the marriage. Eventually, they were allowed to be together. Their children were Edward (1587-1618), William (d.1660), Francis (d.1664), Honora (d.1620), Anne, and Mary.

Honora Rogers – A Who's Who of Tudor Women

Elizabeth I, who liked Honora, would later use the second clandestine marriage of Hertford to force him to accept the union, making her approval of his marriage dependent on his approval of theirs. Or she liked that Honora had family connections unlikely to be of any help when it came to the claim of her throne, thank you very much. Honora and her husband appear to have been very happy together, however, which some people too value in marriage.

Honora's son William was the one who had the Syon Portrait of Lady Jane Grey painted.

This one will just have to stay a mystery a litte bit longer 😀

But of course I was unable to stop digging.

Portrait of an Unknown Lady, Aged 30 (possibly Anne Paget, d.1608), British (English) School National Trust, Lacock Abbey, Fox Talbot Museum and Village

An Unknown Lady, aged 30, possibly Anne Paget (d.1608), wife of Sir Henry Sharington (d.1581) – Lacock, Wiltshire, National Trust | NT 996354

After the death of his first wife, Ursula Bourchier, Sir William Sharington married secondly Eleanor, daughter of William Walsingham and sister of Sir Francis Walsingham, and thirdly Grace Farrington, the widow of Robert Paget, an alderman of London, but he left no children behind him. He died on an unknown date before 6 July 1553 and was succeeded in his estates by his brother Henry Sharington.

Eleanor Walsingham was thus the aunt of Frances Walsingham, Dowager Countess of Essex and Countess of Clanricarde (1567 – 1633).

It is entirely possible that the families remained close. In fact, this appears to have been the case, as there are further familial links between them.

A genealogical and heraldic history of the extinct and dormant baronetcies of England by John Burke

Embellished Copies 

In fact, if the girls wanted to have any kind of family life outside of their parents or any extended family at all, they were pretty much almost actually each other's only choice.

Mary Mildmay quarrelled with her paternal relatives. Her mother Grace Sharington quarrelled with her relatives. Frances Walsingham's mother Ursula St. Barbe quarrelled with hers.

Mary Mildmay was an only child. Frances Walsingham had had three siblings, but lost them all.

Their only live relatives with whom there was not an ongoing dispute over inheritance were actually their Walsingham relations.

Sir Francis Walsingham had had five sisters. Mary Mildmay was related to two of them.

She was born about 1582 and died on the 9th of April 1640. Her first cousin once removed Frances Walsingham was born in 1567 and died on the 17th of February 1633, while Frances Walsingham's daughter and Mary Mildmay's second cousin Frances Devereux was born on the 30th of September 1599 and died on the 24 of April 1674.

So Mary Mildway was age-wise almost precisely between them, the only obstacle I can see to a friendship between the women.

They did however share enough years of their lives on this earth together for an acquaintanceship to be almost unavoidable. In addition, they were of similar rank, Mary Mildmay and Frances Walsingham becoming countesses and Frances Devereux acquiring the rank of duchess.

Furthermore, after the disgrace and execution of her second husband, the 2nd Earl of Essex, Frances Walsingham remarried again, retiring to Ireland. Ireland is of course also where Henry Boyle, 1st Baron Carleton hailed from.

Letters, too, can promote intimacy, such as letters going to and fro England and Ireland, and a copy of an old portrait (which, again, had probably lost its identity by then) would make for an excellent New Year's or Twelfh Night's gift.

«In 1601, with the support of Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham, Fane was returned as a Member of Parliament for Kent. He was created a Knight of the Bath at the Coronation of King James I on 25 July 1603.»

Rachel Fane, the great-granddaughter of Anne Paget, and who bears such an uncanny resemblance to the Carleton Portrait, became in 1663 the guardian of her nephew, Sir Henry Fane (d.1706), the only child of her brother George Fane. He was confirmed in her Irish estates on his marriage in 1668, by which time she was also his guardian. These lands, the Bourchier estate, comprised the manors of Lough Gur and Glenogra in county Limerick and of Clare in county Armagh.

So also the Fane Family had ties to Ireland.

It would have been very strange if these people did not at least have a passing knowledge of each other.

Notes

Ursula St. Barbe and her daughter Frances Walsingham, both direct ancestors of Henry Boyle (1669–1725), 1st Baron Carleton, the first known owner of the Carleton Portrait, can be excluded on the grounds of the lack of similarity between the lady in the Carleton Portrait and their known portraits. The same applies to Mildred Cooke, Lady Burghley, also a direct ancestress of Henry Boyle, 1st Baron Carleton.

CB Correction: Parents of Jane Weston (c.1560-1637), 2nd Wife of Sir Thomas Bishopp, 1st Baronet

Sir Henry Sharington of Lacock, MP – Geni Profile

Grace Sharington, Lady Mildmay (ca. 1552–1620) – Geni Profile

GRACE FARRINGDON (d.1542+)

Grace Farringdon was the daughter of John Farringdon of Farringdon, Devon and Elizabeth Wilford. Her first husband was Robert Paget (d. January 1541/2), alderman of London and sheriff in 1536. By him she had two children, Anne (d.1607) and James (d. May 7, 1604). In July 1542, she married, as his third wife, Sir William Sharington of Lacock Abbey (c.1495-1553). Sharington had no surviving children. He was sketched by Hans Holbein and it is likely that the sketch identified as Lady Sharington is Grace, although some sources identify her as Anne Paget, her daughter, who married Sir William’s brother and heir, Sir Henry Sharington, in 1548. See ANNE PAGET. Portrait: engraving by GS and JG Facius after a picture by Hans Holbein.

Grace Farringdon – A Who's Who of Tudor Women

Sir William Sharington (c.1495 - 1553)

and

Possibly Grace Paget (née Farrington), Lady Sharington

Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmoreland, and his wife, Mary Mildmay

The Long Gallery Portraits of Apethorpe Hall, Northamptonshire

Further portraits.

«Abstract

Between 1624 and 1640 16 full-length portraits were set into the full-height panelling of the Long Gallery of Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire, the country seat of the earls of Westmorland. This ensemble, as we shall see, was doubly innovative, in terms of both its physical construction and its subject matter. In the 18th century, new panelling was erected in front of several windows, creating space for an additional five portraits. Substitutions were made from time to time, yet the series remained substantially intact until it was dismounted, and the paintings dispersed, in the late 19th century. Although over a century has elapsed since this happened, surviving evidence has made it possible to reconstruct the history of the portrait series and to trace reproductions of most of the paintings, even if their present locations, generally private collections, are not always known or readily accessible.»

Mildred Cooke, Lady Burghley by Hans Eworth, at Hatfield House

Mildred Cooke, Lady Burghley, c.1563, by Hans Eworth, at Hatfield House