Elizabeth Onslow, Baroness Onslow
Elizabeth Onslow (1692 – 19 April 1731)[1] was an English aristocrat and social reformer.
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She was the daughter of the merchant John Knight, and niece to Colonel Charles Knight, both of whom derived great fortunes from trading in Jamaica.[2] She was heir to both men, whose wealth derived from trading and slave plantations in Jamaica.[3][4]
She was married to Thomas Onslow, 2nd Baron Onslow, at St Paul's Cathedral on 17 November 1708.[5] He may have used her great wealth to contribute to the rebuilding of his family home, Clandon Park House, as a fashionable Palladian-style mansion.[6]
She was one of a group of noblewomen who signed their names to the Ladies' petition for Thomas Coram to establish the London Foundling Hospital.[7] Gillian Wagner speculates that Coram was introduced to her through her husband's cousin Arthur Onslow, who was Speaker of the House of Commons.[8] Coram called her 'a woman of the truest goodness of mind and heart that I ever knew'.[8] She signed the petition on 8 April 1730.[9]
She was survived by one son, Richard, 3rd Baron Onslow.
References
- Mosley, Charles, editor. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes. Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003. Page 3013.
- Burke, John (1832). A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire. Vol. 2 (4th ed.). London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley. p. 258.
- "Richard, 3rd Lord Onslow". Legacies of British Slave-Ownership. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
- "Charles Knight". Legacies of British Slave-ownership. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
- Crisp, Frederick Arthur, ed. (1903). Visitation of England and Wales. Vol. 5, notes. privately printed. p. 195.
- "The Onslow Family at Clandon Park, Part 1". National Trust. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
- McClure, Ruth K. (1981). Coram's children : the London Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth century. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0300024657. OCLC 6707267.
- Gillian., Wagner (2004). Thomas Coram, Gent., 1668-1751. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press. p. 88. ISBN 1843830574. OCLC 53361054.
- Exhibition catalogue, 'Ladies of Quality and Distinction', The Foundling Museum, London, 2018.https://foundlingmuseum.org.uk/events/ladies-of-quality-distinction/