George Perfect Harding , 1781 –1853 Portrait of Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford (Née Harington) (1580–1627) Pencil and Watercolour

George Perfect Harding , 1781 –1853

Portrait of Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford (née Harington) (1580–1627)

pencil and watercolour

Provenance

J. Heugh Esq., 1878

Picton Morris Collection

Notes

Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford (née Harington) (1580–1627) 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, where Harrington Sound is named after her.

Lucy Harington was the daughter of Sir John Harington of Exton, and Anne Keilway. 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 Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford, on 12 December 1594, when she was thirteen years old and he was twenty-two, at St Dunstan's on Stepney Green. She miscarried her first child in February 1596 at Bedford House on the Strand in London.

The Earl of Bedford got himself into serious trouble in 1601 when he rode with the Earl of Essex in rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. The Bedford fortunes revived when the reign of James I began in 1603. Several English nobles secretly sent representatives into Scotland to try to gain favour and court appointments.The Countess of Bedford audaciously skipped the late queen's funeral and rode hard to the Scottish border, ahead of a party of gentlewomen appointed by the Privy Council, and got an audience in Scotland with the new king's wife Anne of Denmark. The new queen immediately made her a Lady of the Bedchamber and she became a trusted confidant.The queen came from Stirling Castle to Holyrood Palace with a convoy of English ladies who had come seeking attendance and on 31 May 1603 attended church in Edinburgh accompanied by these would-be companions.Some of the ladies stayed at John Kinloch's house in Edinburgh.

The Countess of Bedford travelled south with Anne of Denmark and Prince Henry and Princess Elizabeth. At Dingley, Northamptonshire she rode south to meet Lady Anne Clifford, perhaps at Wymondley Priory, and brought her to Dingley on 24 June.

Bedford performed in several of the masques staged at Court in the early 17th century, including The Masque of Blackness (1605), Hymenaei (1606), The Masque of Beauty (1608), The Masque of Queens, and The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. On two occasions in 1617, she functioned as a theatrical producer, instigating and organising the 1617 Court 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.

Jonson

She was a noted patron of Ben Jonson, who dedicated his play Cynthia's Revels (1600) to her and addressed several of his Epigrams to her, extolling her patronage. By his own admission, Jonson portrayed her as Ethra in his lost pastoral, The May Lord — though he may also have depicted her as Lady Haughty, president of the Collegiates in Epicene (1609). When Jonson was imprisoned in 1605 for his role in the Eastward Ho scandal, he wrote a letter to an unknown lady, who is thought by some scholars to have been the Countess of Bedford.

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" o