Mary Mildmay

Mary Mildmay, or Mary Fane Countess of Westmorland (b. c.1582 - d. 9 April 1640).

Mary Mildmay continued her mother Grace Mildmay's interest in physic and was a significant author of spiritual guidance and writer of letters.

Family background

Mary was the daughter and eventual sole heiress of Sir Anthony Mildmay (d. 1617), of Apethorpe Hall, Northamptonshire, and Grace Sherington (1552–1620), who was daughter and co-heir of Sir Henry Sherington (alias Sharington) (c. 1518-1581) of Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire. Mary built an imposing monument to her parents at Apethorpe Church in 1621, the sculpture attributed to Maximilian Colt. On 15 February 1598/99 Mary married Francis Fane, and he became the Earl of Westmorland.

Writing and Letters

Mary collated and transcribed her mother's medical works. Grace had dedicated her 'Spiritual Meditations' to Mary.[1] Mary wrote a 'Book of Advices to the Children' for her sons Francis and Mildmay.[2] She also wrote letters of advice to Francis.[3] Other letters include a group of business letters sent to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and four letters to her daughter Grace Fane, Countess of Home.[4]

On 6 May 1639 Mary wrote a letter to Secretary Windebank advising against sending an army to Scotland in the first Bishop's War.[5] The letter has sometimes been attributed to her daughter-in-law, Mary Vere.[6] Gerald Morton published the original text.[7]

Writing to her daughter Rachel Fane on 9 January 1640, Mary, now dowager countess, called herself an old hen, her daughter Katherine a chick, and praised Mary Vere, "the olde hen left at home, with her best chick, my daughter of Westmorland hath proved a good Christmas woman & has made on, & allowed of much mirth".[8]

Family and Children

Mary and Francis had seven sons and six daughters:[9]

Sons

  1. Mildmay Fane, 2nd Earl of Westmorland (24 January 1602 – 12 February 1666), a poet and Member of Parliament.
  2. Thomas Fane, died in infancy
  3. Sir Francis Fane (c. 1611–1681?) of Fulbeck, third but second surviving son. He was a Royalist governor of Doncaster, and afterwards of Lincoln Castle. He was the great-grandfather of Thomas Fane, 8th Earl of Westmorland.
  4. Anthony Fane (1613–1643), a colonel in the Parliamentary army, who suffered a shot wound to the cheek at the siege of Farnham Castle on 9 December 1642 and died at his home in Kingston upon Thames early the following year.[10]
  5. Col. George Fane (c. 1616 – April 1663), fifth but fourth surviving son. A Royalist officer and later Member of Parliament.
  6. William Fane
  7. Robert Fane

Daughters

References

  1. ↑ Linda Pollok, With Faith and Physic, (London, 1993), 11-2, 15-8, 70
  2. ↑ Femke Molekamp, Women and the Bible in Early Modern England, (Oxford, 2013), 94-98
  3. ↑ Susan E. Hrach, "Maternal Admonition as Devotional Practice: Letters of Mary Fane, Countess of Westmorland', ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles Notes and Reviews, 24 (2011), 63-74.
  4. ↑ Notes & Queries 4th S II (11 July 1868), 25-8: NRAS 217.
  5. ↑ Conrad Russell, Fall of the British Monarchies, 1537-1642, (Oxford, 1991), 81
  6. ↑ Jacqueline Eales, 'Anne and Thomas Fairfax, and the Vere connection' in Andrew Hopper & Philip Major, England's Fortress: New Perspectives on Thomas, 3rd Lord Fairfax, (Farnham, 2014), 161 (attributes the letter to Mary Vere).
  7. ↑ Philip Yorke, Miscellaneous State papers from 1501 to 1726, (London, 1778), 128-130: W. Douglas Hamilton, Calendar State Papers Domestic, Charles I, 1639, (London, 1873), 123-4: Gerald W. Morton in Helen Ostovich, Elizabeth Sauer, Melissa Smith, Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print (Routledge, 2004), 221-4
  8. ↑ Marion O'Connor, 'Rachel Fane's May Masque at Apethorpe, 1627', English Literary Renaissance, vol. 36, No. 1 (Winter 2006), pp. 90-113, 97-8.
  9. ↑ Collins 1812, pp. 294,295
  10. ↑ Brayley, Edward Wedlake (1844). The History of Surrey. 3, Part 1. R.B. Ede. p. 34.
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