Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford ( Harington; 1581–1627) was a major aristocratic patron of the arts and literature in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, the primary non-royal performer in contemporary court masques, a letter-writer, and a poet. She was an adventurer (shareholder) in the Somers Isles Company, investing in Bermuda,Lauren Working, The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis (Cambridge, 2020), p. 42. Misha Ewen, 'Women Investors and the Virginia Company in the Early Seventeenth Century', Historical Journal, 62:4 (December 2019), p. 859: John Henry Lefroy, Memorials of the Discovery and Early Settlement of The Bermudas or Somers Islands, vol. 1 (London, 1877), p. 99. where Harrington Sound is named after her.Bermuda Online" Bermuda's Hamilton Parish, bermuda-online.org. Accessed 14 January 2023.Profile, HamiltonParish.bm. Accessed 14 January 2023.
Parentage and marriage Lucy Harington was the daughter of Sir John Harington of Exton, and Anne Keilway. Although the exact date of her birth is unknown, she was christened on 25 January 1581. She was well-educated for a woman in her era, and knew French, Spanish, and Italian. She was a member of the Sidney/Essex circle from birth, through her father, first cousin to Sir Robert Sidney and Mary, Countess of Pembroke; she was a close friend of Essex's sisters Penelope Rich and Dorothy Percy, Countess of Northumberland, and the latter named one of her daughters Lucy after her.
Lucy Harington married Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford, on 12 December 1594, when she was thirteen years old and he was twenty-two, at St Dunstan's on Stepney Green. She miscarried her first child in February 1596 at Bedford House on the Strand in London.Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows (London, 2007), pp. 19, 28.
Courting Anne of Denmark Lucy and the Earl seem to have been expected to visit Berwick-upon-Tweed and Scotland in August 1600.Joseph Bain, Calendar of Border Papers, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1896), p. 678 no. 1221. The Earl of Bedford got himself into serious trouble in 1601 when he rode with the Earl of Essex in rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. The Bedford fortunes revived after the death of Elizabeth I and the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when the reign of James I began.
Several English nobles secretly sent representatives into Scotland to try to gain favour and court appointments.Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham (London, 1902), p. 55. The Countess of Bedford audaciously skipped the late queen's funeral and rode hard to the Scottish border, ahead of a party of gentlewomen appointed by the privy council,Clara Steeholm & Hardy Steeholm, James I of England: The Wisest Fool in Christendom (New York, 1938), p. 245. and got an audience in Scotland with the new king's wife Anne of Denmark.Eva Griffith, A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse: The Queen's Servants at the Red Bull Theatre (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 119-120: Susan Dunn-Hensley, Anna of Denmark and Henrietta Maria, Virgins, Witches, and Catholic Queens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 79: Nadine Akkerman, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Hearts (Oxford, 2021), p. 28: Lesley Lawson, Out of the Shadows: The Life of Lucy, Countess, Countess of Bedford (London: Hambledon, 2007), p. 49. Anne made Bedford a Lady of the Bedchamber and she became a trusted confidant.Susan Doran, From Tudor to Stewart: the regime change from Elizabeth I to James I (Oxford, 2024), p. 120: John Leeds Barroll, Anna of Denmark, Queen of England (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 43-45. The queen came from Stirling Castle to Holyrood Palace with a convoy of English ladies who had come seeking attendance and on 31 May 1603 attended church in Edinburgh accompanied by these would-be companions.'The Diarey (sic) of Robert Birrell', in John Graham Dalyell, Fragments of Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1798), pp. 59-60 Some of the ladies stayed at John Kinloch's house in Edinburgh.Dawson Turner, Descriptive Index, p. 134 no. 90, now British Library Add. MS 19401 f.185.
The Countess of Bedford travelled south with Anne of Denmark and Prince Henry and Princess Elizabeth. There were now a great number of English ladies following the queen.A Chronicle of the Kings of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1830), p. 168. At Dingley, Northamptonshire she rode south to meet Lady Anne Clifford, perhaps at Wymondley Priory, and brought her to Dingley on 24 June.John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 1 (London, 1828), p. 174.Jessica L. Malay, Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing, 1590-1676 (Manchester, 2018), pp. 18-20: Katherine Acheson, The Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616-1619 (Broadview, Toronto, 2006), pp. 50-1.
The French ambassador the Marquis de Rosny identified the Countess of Bedford as an influential courtier, and gave her a gold watch set with diamonds.Maximilien de Béthune Sully, Memoirs of the Duke of Sully, vol. 2 (London, 1890), p. 421: Mémoire des sages et royales oeconomies d'Estat, (Amsterdam, 1639), pp. 271–72. John Coke wrote in 1604 that the "Lady Bedford keepeth her prerogative of greatness at court".Manuscripts of the Earl of Cowper, 1 (London, 1888), p. 52.
Masquing
Bedford performed in several of the masques staged at court, including The Masque of Blackness (1605), Hymenaei (1606), The Masque of Beauty (1608), The Masque of Queens, and The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604). On two occasions she functioned as a theatrical producer, described as rector chori of the New Year masque in 1604,Karen Hearn, 'Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, as Art Patron and Collector', Edward Chaney, The Evolution of English Collecting (Yale, 2003), p. 222. The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, and in 1617 instigating and organising the performance of Robert White's masque Cupid's Banishment, acted by students from the first English girls' school, the Ladies Hall in Deptford. In February 1617 the masque by Ben Jonson presented by Lord Hay to the French ambassador Baron de Tour, the Lovers Made Men, was staged by the Countess of Bedford.Norman Egbert McClure, The Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1939), pp. 51, 55, 57.
A drawing for her costume as Penthesilea in the Masque of Queens by Inigo Jones survives in the collection at Chatsworth House.Karen Hearn, 'Lucy Harington, Countess of Bedford, as Art Patron and Collector', Edward Chaney, The Evolution of English Collecting (Yale, 2003), p. 224. She attended a masque produced by the Earl of Montgomery at Elsyng Palace (Enfield) in December 1618, performed by male courtiers. The theme was a country wedding and George Goring played a farmer's son. According to Gerard Herbert, the masque was performed again at Theobald for King James.David M. Bergeron, "Gerrard Herbert's Reports about Drama Performances, 1617–19", Studies in Philology, 118:4 (Fall 2021), p. 731.David M. Bergeron, "Pericles: A Performance a letter", Sophie Chiari and John Mucciolo, "Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare" (Cambridge, 2019), p. 114.
Patronage Jonson She was a noted patron of Ben Jonson, who dedicated his play Cynthia's Revels (1600) to her and addressed several of his Epigrams to her, extolling her patronage. By his own admission, Jonson portrayed her as Ethra in his lost pastoral, The May Lord – though he may also have depicted her as Lady Haughty, president of the Collegiates in Epicene (1609). When Jonson was imprisoned in 1605 for his role in the Eastward Ho scandal, he wrote a letter to an unknown lady, who is thought by some scholars to have been the Countess of Bedford.Joseph, p. 98.
Others In addition to Jonson, Bedford supported other significant poets of her era, including Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel,Susan Doran, From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I (Oxford University Press, 2024), pp. 393–394. George Chapman, and John Donne. She might be the "Idea" of Drayton's pastoral Idea: The Shepherd's Garland (1593) and of his sonnet sequence Idea's Mirror (1594). Drayton dedicated his Mortimeriados (1594) to her, as Daniel did his Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604). Bedford patronised a range of lesser writers of her era, including the translator John Florio, who credited her help in his translation of the essays of Montaigne. She "received more dedications than any other woman associated with the drama" in her era.Bergeron, p. 82.
Bedford was the godmother of Donne's second daughter, also named Lucy, and the namesake of Sir Henry Goodere's daughter (later wife of Sir Francis Nethersole). Donne seems to have been deeply involved with her on a psychological level – "Most of the poems of Donne's middle years relate, in one way or another, to this glamorous and intriguing woman."Carey, p. xxvii. Her contradictions could be provocative: the Countess was a dedicated Calvinist, and supported many Calvinist authors and thinkers – yet she allegedly performed bare-breasted in Court masques. Her relationships with some of her poets, including Donne and Drayton, were sometimes uneven; poets who dedicated their works to her could also complain of the loss of her favour.
She was also receptive to women poets, such as her cousin Cecily Bulstrode. Bedford occasionally wrote poems herself, including a poem Donne claims he saw in the garden of her Twickenham estate. Only one of her poems is extant, "Death be not proud, thy hand gave not this blow", an epitaph on Bulstrode. This poem has been attributed to Donne, and suggestively shares an opening clause with his Holy Sonnet X; nevertheless, it is now considered much more likely to be Bedford's poem. The elegy has an image of Bulstrode's breast as a crystal palace and the repository of her soul, clearer than the crystal;From out the Christall Pallace of her brestThe clearer soule was call'd to endlesse rest.Michelle O'Callaghan, 'Lucy Russell: British Library Harley 4064', Early Modern Women Research Network.Bedford's Elegy
Bedford certainly wrote an elegy on the death of her cousin Bridget Markham at Twickenham Park in 1609.See external links.
While best remembered for her patronage of writers, Bedford also supported musicians, John Dowland being a noteworthy example. She is the dedicatee of Dowland's Second Book of Songs (1600).
A few scholars have identified the Earl and Countess of Bedford as the allegorised couple in Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle, who left "no posterity" (line 59) – yet since the poem was published in 1601, when the Countess was only twenty years old, the identification has struck others as unlikely.
Gardens She was a significant figure in the development of English country-house and garden design, centering on her estates at Twickenham Park and Moor Park.Sally Jeffery, The Formal Gardens at Moor Park in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries, Garden History, 42:2 (Winter 2014), pp. 157–177. An Italian writer Giacomo Castelvetro dedicated a book on fruit and vegetables to her.Joan Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England (London, 2007), p. 67. She described her building and improvements at Moor Park in a letter to a friend; "my works att the More, whear I have been a patcher this sommer and I am still adding some trifles of pleasure to that place I am so much love with, as I were so fond of any man I were in hard case."Lord Braybrooke, The Private Correspondence of Jane Lady Cornwallis (London, 1842), p. 48.
Art collection