Elizabeth Howard, Countess of Carrick

Portrait thought to Elizabeth Southwell as a widow in 1600

Elizabeth Howard (1564—1646) was an English aristocrat and courtier to Elizabeth I of England.

Career

She was a daughter of Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham and Catherine Carey.

She was a maid of honour and lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth I, as was her sister Frances Howard, Countess of Kildare.

She married Sir Robert Southwell (1563—12 October 1598) of Woodrising, Norfolk, on 17 April 1583. He was the son of Sir Thomas Southwell and his second wife Mary Mansell, a daughter of Sir Rice Mansell (1487–1559).

Sir Thomas Southwell had a daughter with his third wife Nazareth Newton (d. 1583), another Elizabeth Southwell, who was a Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth. She was a mistress of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and mother of Walter Devereux, who married Sir Barentine Moleyns or Molyns of Clapcot.[1]

After Robert Southwell's death in October 1598 Elizabeth Howard was left "a rich widow", and there was a rumour she would marry Sir William Woodhouse of Waxham, a cousin of her fellow courtier Lady Walsingham.[2]

She became a lady of the Privy Chamber to Anne of Denmark in 1603. Her daughter, Elizabeth Southwell, was also a maid of honour to Anna of Denmark. A letter of the Earl of Worcester describing the household in 1604 mentioned that "of late the Lady Sothwell [is] for the drawing chamber".[3] After 1608 her daughters Frances and Katherine were gentlewomen of the Privy Chamber. A "Mrs Southwell", who made an unsuccessful trip to meet the queen in Scotland in May 1603, mentioned in the letters of Captain John Skinner from Berwick-upon-Tweed, was Anne Southwell, an author, the wife of a Sir Thomas Southwell.[4]

"Southwell the elder" was one of queen's ladies "taken out" of the audience to dance on 1 January 1604 at Hampton Court during The Masque of Indian and China Knights.[5]

In October 1604 she married Sir John Stewart, a son of Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Orkney, at Chelsea.[6] In a letter of 1605 to the Earl of Salisbury she identifies her husband as the brother of the Master of Orkney.[7] John Stewart became Lord Kinclaven in 1607, and Earl of Carrick in 1628.

She walked in procession at the funeral of Anne of Denmark in 1619, listed as "Lady Kencleven".[8]

She died in 1646 and was buried at Greenwich.[9]

Christopher Sutton, rector of Woodrising dedicated his Disce Mori (1600) and Disce Vivere (?1604) to Lady Southwell, and his Godly Meditations on the Most Holy Sacrament (1613) to her daughters Frances and Katherine.[10]

Portraits of Elizabeth Howard, her mother Catherine Carey, and her daughter Elizabeth Southwell were included in a sale at Cowdray Park in 2011.[11]

Family

Her children included;

References

  1. ^ Alan Davidson, 'MOLYNS, Michael (c.1601-at least 1662), of Clapcot', The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010
  2. ^ Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1939), pp. 52, 64, 70.
  3. ^ Eva Griffith, A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse: The Queen's Servants at the Red Bull Theatre (Cambridge, 2013), p. 121.
  4. ^ HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 15 (London, 1930), pp. 74-5, 90-1, 105-6, 388: Victoria Burke 'Anne, Lady Southwell', in George L. Justice, Nathan Tinker eds, Women's Writing and the Circulation of Ideas (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 97-8.
  5. ^ Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 86.
  6. ^ Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), p. 89, Lodge has failed to correctly identify the couple in his footnote
  7. ^ HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 17 (London, 1938), p. 643.
  8. ^ John Nichols, Progresses of James First, vol. 3 (London, 1828), p. 540.
  9. ^ Daniel Lysons, The Environs of London: Counties of Herts, Essex & Kent, vol. 4 (London, 1796), p. 475.
  10. ^ J. Endell Tyler, Disce Mori: Learn to Die, by Christopher Sutton (London, 1839), pp. viii-xi.
  11. ^ Weiss Gallery, Tudor and Stuart Portraits (2013), pp. 30-41.
  12. ^ Mill Stephenson, 'A list of Monumental Brasses in Surrey', Surrey Archaeological Collections, vol. 32 (1919), p. 70.
  13. ^ Michael Brennan, Noel Kinnamon, Margaret Hannay, The Letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney (Philadelphia, 2013), p. 377.
  14. ^ Michael Brennan, Noel Kinnamon, Margaret Hannay, The Letters of Rowland Whyte (Philadelphia, 2013), pp. 498, 501: Arthur Collins, Letters and Memorials of State, vol. 2 (London, 1746), p. 201: Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth (London, 1977), pp. 28-43.
  15. ^ Catherine Loomis, The Death of Elizabeth I: Remembering and Reconstructing the Virgin Queen (New York, 2010), pp. 83-5.
  16. ^ John Temple Leader, Life of Sir Robert Dudley (Florence, 1895), pp. 9-10, 146.
  17. ^ Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 512.
  18. ^ HMC Rutland vol. 4 (London, 1905), p. 500.