Frances Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater

Frances Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater (May 1583 – 11 March 1636), formerly Lady Frances Stanley, was an English art patron and book collector.

Frances Egerton
Countess of Bridgewater
portrait by Paul van Somer
BornMay 1583
Died11 March 1636
Noble familyStanley
Spouse(s)John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater
IssueLady Frances Hobart
Lady Elizabeth Egerton
Lady Arabella Egerton
Lady Mary Egerton
Lady Penelope Egerton
Lady Catherine Egerton
Lady Magdalen Egerton
John Egerton, 2nd Earl of Bridgewater
Thomas Egerton
Alice Vaughan, Countess of Carbery
FatherFerdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby
MotherAlice Spencer, Countess of Derby

She was born in May 1583, the second daughter of Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby, and his wife, the former Alice Spencer. Her sisters were Anne Stanley, Countess of Castlehaven, and Elizabeth Stanley, Countess of Huntingdon. After her father died in 1594, her mother married the widower Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley. Her mother arranged Stanley's marriage to her stepbrother, John Egerton, around 1601. In 1617, James I named her husband the first Earl of Bridgewater and thus she became the Countess of Bridgewater.[1][2]

Stanley owned a substantial collection of books, catalogued in 1627 and amounting to 241 titles. Many of her books are inscribed with her initials F. B. Many of the works were Christian devotional literature by popular authors like William Perkins, Joseph Hall, and Francis Rous. It also included history and literature, including Aesop's Fables, Don Quixote, Plutarch's Lives, The Faerie Queene, and works by William Shakespeare. This was her personal collection, stored separately from her husband's larger household library, but incorporated into that library after her death. Augmented over generations, the formidable household collection became known as The Bridgewater Library, much of which is now owned by the Huntington Library in California.[1][2][3][4]

Stanley was acquainted with a number of leading literary figures, including John Donne[5] and John Milton. She, her mother, and her sisters were the subject of the verse dedication of John Davies of Hereford's The Holy Roode. Thomas Newton dedicated his Atropoïon delion to her mother and followed it with acrostic verses to Stanley and her sisters. John Attey dedicated his The First Booke of Ayres of Four Parts to Stanley and her husband. Her death was the occasion of a long funereal poem and acrostic by Robert Codrington. Milton's masque Comus, written to honor her husband's ascension to Lord President of Wales, was performed at Ludlow Castle in 1634 with her three youngest children, John, Thomas, and Alice, in the leading roles.[1]

Children

Frances Stanley and her husband John Egerton had eleven daughters and four sons, including:[1]

References
  1. O'Donnell, Mary Ann (2004-09-23). "Egerton [née Stanley], Frances, countess of Bridgewater (1583–1636), noblewoman". Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/65143.
  2. Tabor, Stephen. "The Bridgewater Library." Pre-Nineteenth-Century British Book Collectors and Bibliographers, edited by William Baker and Kenneth Womack, Gale, 1999. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 213. Gale Literature Resource Center. Accessed 9 July 2022.
  3. West, Susie (2013-12-01). "An Architectural Typology for the Early Modern Country House Library, 1660–1720". The Library. 14 (4): 441–464. doi:10.1093/library/14.4.441. ISSN 0024-2160.
  4. "Frances Egerton 1583-1636 - Book Owners Online". bookowners.online. Retrieved 2022-07-09.
  5. John Donne; William A. McClung; Gary A. Stringer (1995). The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne: The epigrams, epithalamions, epitaphs, inscriptions, and miscellaneous poems. Indiana University Press. p. 25. ISBN 0253318122.
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