Rachel Bourchier, Countess of Bath ( Fane; 28 January 1613 – 11 November 1680), wife of Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath (1587–1654), was an English noblewoman and writer,Caroline Bowden, "The Notebooks of Rachael Fane: Education or Authorship?," in: Early Modern Women's Manuscript Writing, edited by Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan Gibson; London, Ashgate, 2004; pp. 157-80. best known for her activities during the English Civil War.

Origins She was born at Mereworth Castle in Kent, the fifth daughter of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland by his wife Mary Mildmay, a daughter of Sir Anthony Mildmay of Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire, where Rachel grew up. Rachel's brother, Mildmay Fane, 2nd Earl of Westmorland, a poet and dramatist, was close to King Charles I, who became a godfather to Fane's son in 1635. Another of Rachel's brothers was Colonel George Fane, who also supported the Royalist cause.

Youth and writing In her youth, Rachel Fane wrote masques for performance at family entertainments.Erin Julian, '"Of no consequence"? Rachel Fane's Manuscripts and Archival Erasure', Shakespeare Bulletin, 42:2 (Summer 2024), pp. 135-162. Marion O'Connor, 'Rachel Fane's May Masque at Apethorpe, 1627', English Literary Renaissance, vol. 36, No. 1 (Winter 2006), pp. 90–113.Alison Findlay, Playing Spaces in Early Women's Drama (Cambridge, 2006), p. 96. These include A New Year's gift to my Lady, a poem addressed to her mother, which refers to the year 1627 by reference to the calculations of James Ussher and Thomas Lydiat.Marion O'Connor, "Entertainments and Poems by Lady Rachel Fane", Malone Collections, 17 (2016), pp. 178–179.Edel Lamb, "Drama and Entertainments by Rachel Fane", The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing (Springer Nature, 2026), pp. 344–350.

Other pieces, included in one of Rachel Fane's notebooks, include May Masque of 1627, possibly a Christmas or twelfth night masque, another is known as the "Wishing Chair Entertainment". Speeches in The Wishing Chair address Rachel's mother, Lady Westmorland, and the performance may have been conceived as an all-female event. The chair is brought on stage by Puck, the seasons and shepherds dance in turns. At the finale, Night brings sleep.Marion O'Connor, "Entertainments and Poems by Lady Rachel Fane", Malone Collections, 17 (2016), pp. 180–186.

A fragment of a tragicomedy features a Duchess who asks her gentlewomen about the progress of embroidering a petticoat, and gives orders for preserving fruit with sugar. She receives news of the Duke's death. The text ends abruptly and Rachel Fane noted "I lost the rest".Marion O'Connor, "Entertainments and Poems by Lady Rachel Fane", Malone Collections, 17 (2016), pp. 186–192. Another fragment discusses a play involving Robin Goodfellow and Nobody.Marion O'Connor, "Entertainments and Poems by Lady Rachel Fane", Malone Collections, 17 (2016), p. 193.

The "May Masque" includes pastoral elements which would have been dramatised with props from the Apethorpe estate farms. These masques were either performed in the Long Gallery at Apethorpe,Alison Findlay, Playing Spaces in Early Women's Drama (Cambridge, 2006), p. 97. or the older Great Hall.Julie Sanders, 'Daughters of the House', Elizabeth Scott-Baumann, Danielle Clarke, Sarah C. E. Ross, Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700 (Oxford, 2022), p. 342: Marion O'Connor, 'Rachel Fane's May Masque at Apethorpe, 1627', English Literary Renaissance, 36:1 (Winter 2006), p. 101.

Around the time her masques were performed, Rachel Fane made a translation of a section of the French romance, Amadis de Gaul, which survives with some of her other notebooks at the Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone.Nandini Das, Renaissance Romance: The Transformation of English Prose Fiction, 1570–1620 (Ashgate, 2011), pp. 156-157.

Marriages First marriage On 13 December 1638, at the age of 25, in the church of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, she married the 50 year-old Henry Bourchier, 5th Earl of Bath (1587–1654) of Tawstock Court in Devon.Todd Gray, Devon Household Accounts: Henry, fifth Earl of Bath and Rachel, Countess of Bath (Devon and Cornwall Records Society, 1996), pp. xix, xxi. Several of her account books survive. Rachel bought furnishings for their houses at Tawstock and Lincoln's Inn Fields and pictures from George Geldorp. From 1640, she had a servant of African origin who was recorded in her accounts as "James the blackamore". He may have worked as a cook.Todd Gray, Devon Household Accounts: Henry, fifth Earl of Bath and Rachel, Countess of Bath (Devon and Cornwall Records Society, 1996), pp. xxxix, xxxi, 117, 173–174, 297.Nandini Das, João Vicente Melo, Haig Z. Smith, Lauren Working, Blackamoor/Moor, Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England. (Amsterdam, 2021), pp. 40–50.

By 1642, during the Civil War, the Earl of Bath was active in the Royalist cause, and wrote to his wife from York and London about the progress of the War. In December 1642 the House of Lords ordered Thomas Browne to return the horses he had commandeered from Rachel on behalf of Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, the Parliamentary commander. They had no children, although in 1663 she became the guardian of her nephew, Sir Henry Fane (d.1706), the only child of her brother George Fane.

Following Bourchier's death in 1654, Rachel commissioned a striking monument in his memory, which survives in the south aisle chapel of St Peter's Church, Tawstock. Opinions vary as to its artistic merit, with Hoskins (1954)Hoskins, W.G., A New Survey of England: Devon, London, 1959 (first published 1954), p. 489 calling it "massive and ugly", while J. H. Marland deemed it "almost unequalled in singularity and absurdity". It is constructed in black and white marble, with four dogs supporting a sarcophagus on their shoulders with a black obelisk at each corner.

Second marriage Six months after the earl's death, she married Lionel Cranfield, 3rd Earl of Middlesex (1625–1674), who was 12 years her junior, a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King Charles II. The marriage was not a happy one and the couple lived apart from 1661 onwards. After Cranfield's death in 1674, Rachel did not remarry.

Monuments The life-size white marble statue of Rachel Fane, sculpted by Balthasar Burman (son of Thomas Burman),Pevsner, Nikolaus & Cherry, Bridget, The Buildings of England: Devon, London, 2004, p.790 which survives in St Peter's Church, Tawstock, is a copy of the statue of Mary Cavendish (1556–1632) the wife of Gilbert Talbot, 7th Earl of Shrewsbury, sculpted in 1671 by Thomas Burman at the cost of her nephew William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle (1592–1676), which stands in a niche on the Shrewsbury Tower of the Second Court (which she partly financed) of St John's College, Cambridge.'St. John's College', in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Cambridge (London, 1959), pp. 187-202 See images:File:St John's College Second Court, Cambridge, UK - Diliff.jpg:File:St John's College, Cambridge, second court 04.JPG

Sir Anthony van Dyck painted two portraits of Rachel, one prior to her first marriage, which survives, and another in 1641, for which she paid him £20, of which only an engraving survives, by Pierre Lombart. A miniature of the countess by David des Granges is held by the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

In a 1670 work by Sir Kenelm Digby, a recipe for syllabub appears, attributed to the countess.

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References

External links Rachel Fane, Household Entertainments: Site site specific early modern drama