Mary (Dudley) Sutton

Mary (Dudley) Sutton, Countess of Home (c. 1585 – 1644), noblewoman and patron of the arts, was the eldest daughter of Edward Sutton, 5th Baron Dudley and his wife Theodosia Harington (d. 1649), youngest daughter of Sir James Harington.

Early years and marriage

Lady Anne Clifford described Mary as a childhood companion, her 'old companion',[1] later meeting her at Greenwich with her cousin Lucy Russell (née Harington), Countess of Bedford.[2] On 11 July 1605 Mary married the wealthy Scottish widower Alexander Home, 1st Earl of Home (c. 1566 – 1619), a marriage perhaps arranged and intended to promote the Anglicization of Scottish aristocracy. The newly created title of Earl of Home was counted in 1605 as a title in the English peerage.

Old Moray House

Life as a widow

In 1617 David Hume of Godscroft wrote a Latin verse which contrasted Mary’s hand rebuilding of the earl’s houses with the destruction wrought by her grandfather Lord Dudley, Edward Sutton, 4th Baron Dudley (c.1515–1586) during the war of the Rough Wooing.[3] After the earl of Home’s death Mary maintained houses in London and in Edinburgh, employing Nicholas Stone and Isaac de Caus to work on her house in Aldersgate,[4] and building a summerhouse at Twickenham Park. In Edinburgh Mary rebuilt the house in the Canongate now called Moray House, employing William Wallace (d. 1631),[5] and set out a garden with terraces, mount and wilderness. She kept detailed inventories of her houses which record purchases made in London, including beds, tapestries, distilling equipment, a telescope, bronzes by Francesco Fanelli, and paintings some bought from George Geldorp (d. 1665) others from the New Exchange, many with religious subjects including the Nativity and Christ and the Samaritan Woman.[6] In 1638 she discussed the design of a tomb for her family to be built at Dunglass with Nicolas Stone, which was not executed.

Family and Legacy

Mary had seven children: three reached adulthood. James Home, 2nd Earl of Home (d. 1633) was probably born in 1612. Anne of Denmark instructed the chamberlain of her Dunfermline estates, Henry Wardlaw of Pitreavie, to distribute presents of money at the christening, and Ann Hay, Lady Winton was to be her representative.[7] James married firstly Catherine Cary daughter of Henry Cary, 1st Viscount Falkland (c.1575 – 1633) and Elizabeth Cary née Tanfield, (1585–1639), according to John Chamberlain this marriage was arranged by the king.[8] After Catherine's death in childbirth in 1625, James married Grace Fane daughter of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland (1583/4–1629).[9] Mary Fane, Countess of Westmorland wrote letters to Grace in Scotland solicitous of her health: James died in London in February 1633, and Grace died soon afterwards at Apethorpe. The two countesses continued a bitter lawsuit over their children’s properties. The earldom passed to a distant cousin James Home, 3rd Earl of Home (1615–1666).

Patrick Hannay (fl. 1616–1630) dedicated A Happy Husband (Edinburgh, 1618/1619?) to Mary’s eldest daughter Margaret, who married James Stewart, 4th Earl of Moray (c. 1608 – 1653) in 1628.

In 1632 Mary’s younger daughter Anne married John Maitland later Duke of Lauderdale. Mary left a complicated will reflecting her English and Scottish properties and identity. She hoped her granddaughters would inherit her furnishings and collection, dividing house contents in London and Scotland between them. She was aware that was problematic writing, ‘And I am not ignorant that my houses both in Edinborough as Canygate in Aldersgate Street being inheritance I cannot dispose so of them by this my late will neither by the laws of England nor Scotland’, (NLS Ms. 14547). Mary’s will appointed her granddaughter Lady Mary Stewart (d. 1668) as executor, but she was still a minor when the countess died in London in March 1644.

In 1649 Lauderdale’s share of her possessions and furniture in London was forfeited by his delinquency to John Ireton and William Geere. A challenge to the administration of the will by a third-party William Dudley demonstrating that these goods belonged not to Lauderdale but to his daughter failed in 1658. Lauderdale was enabled to recover his property at the Restoration. It is due to the complexities of dividing her goods and this legal battle that her inventories survive to give a unique insight into the material culture of Anglo-Scottish aristocrat in the 1630s.

References

Sources:

  • ODNB, Home, Alexander, first earl of Home (c. 1566 – 1619), Maureen M. Meikle, (2008) Accessed (paywall) 30 December 2017
  • The Muses Welcome to the High and Mightie Prince James (Edinburgh, 1618).
  • HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of Col. David Milne Home, (London, 1902).
  • Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for the Advance of Money, 1642-1656 (London, 1888).
  • HMC 7th Report, House of Lords (1879).
  • W. Spiers, ‘Note-book and account book of Nicolas Stone’ Walpole Society Volume 7 (London, 1919).
  • K. Brown, ‘The Scottish Aristocracy, Anglicisation and the Court, 1603-1638’, The Historical Journal, vol. 36 no. 3 (Sept. 1993)
  • K. Acheson, ed., The Memoir and Diary of Anne Clifford 1616-1619 (London, 2006).
  • Sir Thomas Hope’s Diary (Edinburgh, 1843).
  • Edmund Calamy, An Abridgement Of Mr. Baxter's History Of His Life And Times (London, 1713).
  1. ↑ Jessica L. Malay, Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing, 1590-1676 (Manchester, 2018), 80.
  2. ↑ K. Acheson, Ann Clifford: The Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616-1619 (Broadview, Toronto, 2007), 91-3, 165, 167.
  3. ↑ The Muses Welcome to the High and Mightie Prince James (Edinburgh, 1618).
  4. ↑ W. G Spiers, ‘Account Book of Nicolas Stone’, 7th Volume of the Walpole Society (Oxford, 1919), 117.
  5. ↑ Nick Haynes & Clive B. Fenton, Building Knowledge, An Architectural History of the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 2017), 236-9, 237-8.
  6. ↑ Michael Pearce, 'Approaches to Inventories' in Journal of the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland, vol, XXVI no.1, (Edinburgh, 2015).
  7. ↑ John Fernie, A History of the Town of Dunfermline (Dunfermline, 1815), 105 Anna's letter to Wardlaw 28 October 1612.
  8. ↑ N. E. McClure, The Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2 (Piladelphia, 1939), 437.
  9. ↑ Barbara Kiefer Lewalksi, Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge, Mass, 1993), 184-5: Meikle (2008).
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