Elizabeth Roper (d. 1658) was a member of the household of Anne of Denmark. She married Robert Mansell, a glass-making entrepreneur and became involved in his business.Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (Routledge, London, 1993), p. 69. She was noted for her business activities as a "capitalist" by the historian Alice Clark.Alice Clark, The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (1919 repr. Abingdon 2009), p. 35.

Also called Anne Roper in some sources, and after her marriage, Elizabeth Mansell or Lady Mansell.

Career

She was probably a daughter of Christopher Roper, 2nd Baron Teynham (died 1622), and Catherine Seborne, of Lynsted Lodge, Lynsted, (or a daughter of John Roper, 1st Baron Teynham (died 1618) and Elizabeth Parke). John Roper was the first man of note in Kent to proclaim James VI and I King after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, an event known as the Union of the Crowns. The monument to Christopher Roper and his wife at Lynsted Church was made by the sculptor Epiphanius Evesham.Christopher Greenwood, An Epitome of County History: Kent, vol. 1 (London, 1838), p. 267.

An ordinance for establishing the English household of Anne of Denmark made on 20 July 1603 allowed for six maids of honour and a supervisory mother of maids, with four chamberers.HMC 6th Report: Moray (London, 1877), p. 672.

Elizabeth Roper was appointed a Maid of Honour to the queen in 1604, her companions were Anne Carey, Mary Gargrave (b. 1576), Mary Middlemore, Elizabeth Harcourt, and Mary Woodhouse.Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (London, 1990), p. 69: Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1791), p. 228.See Helen Margaret Payne, 'Aristocratic Women and the Jacobean Court, 1603-1625 ', Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, PhD (2001), p. 283 for a list of the queen's maids of honour. A letter of the Earl of Worcester describing the queen's household in 1604 mentions that "Roper, the sixth [maid of honour] is determined but not [yet] come".Eva Griffith, A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse: The Queen's Servants at the Red Bull Theatre (Cambridge, 2013), p. 121.Nadine Akkerman, 'The Goddess of the Household: The Masquing Politics of Lucy Harington-Russell, Countess of Bedford', The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-waiting across Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2014), pp. 307-8. These positions at court were established by a household ordinance of 20 July 1603, with places for six maids of honour, a mother of the maids (Katherine Bridges), and four chamberers.HMC 6th Report: Moray (London, 1877), p. 672

Rowland Whyte mentioned the maids of honour and others dancing at Hampton Court in the presence chamber of Anne of Denmark, with a French visitor, the Count of Vaudémont.John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 2 (London, 1828), pp. 99-100: Michael Brennan, Noel Kinnamon, Margaret Hannay, Letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney (Philadelphia, 2013), pp. 566-7. "Mrs Roper" was given mourning clothes on the death of Prince Henry in 1612.Folger Shakespeare Library, catalogue X.d.572 On 20 August 1613 Anne of Denmark was received at Wells, Somerset during a progress to Bath. The mayor William Bull hosted a dinner for members of her household including the four maids of honour.John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 2 (London, 1828), p. 675.

Elizabeth Roper married Sir Robert Mansell in March 1617 with a feast at Denmark House paid for by the queen.G. T. Clark, 'Sir Robert Mansell', Archaeologia Cambrensis, vol. 4 (London, 1873), p. 38.Jemma Field, Anna of Denmark: The Material and Visual Culture of the Stuart Courts (Manchester, 2020), p. 140. John Chamberlain wrote Mansell had married "his old mistress Roper, one of the Queen's ancient maids of honour".Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 62: Thomas Birch & Folkestone Williams, Court and Times of James the First, vol. 1 (London, 1848), p. 466. Edward Sherburn noted that the king gave Mansell £10,000 when he married Mrs Roper.Eleanor Smith Godfrey, The development of English glassmaking, 1560–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), p. 77: Calendar State Papers Domestic: 1611-1618, pp. 406, 446. She was usually known as "Lady Mansell". They had no children.Andrew Thrush, 'MANSELL (MANSFIELD, MANSFELT), Sir Robert (1570/1-1652)', The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010.

James Howell noted in 1621 that Mansell's marriage to Roper had made him a kinsman to Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador in Venice.Joseph Jacobs, Epistolae Ho-Elianae: the familiar letters of James Howell, vol. 1 (London, 1892), p. 65. Mansell had been Treasurer of the Navy since 1604, appointed by Earl of Nottingham, in the place of Fulke Greville. The Earl was married to Elizabeth Stewart, a Scottish former lady in waiting of Anne of Denmark.Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (Routledge, London, 1993), p. 117.

Mansell had become involved in glass-making in 1611, and in 1618 bought out the interests of Sir Edward Zouch of Woking who was married to Roper's old colleague in the queen's household, Dorothea Silking. Mansell's interests included a glass-house in Scotland.Jill Turnbull, The Scottish Glass Industry 1610-1750: to Serve the Whole Nation with Glass (Edinburgh, 2001), pp. 75-6. Elizabeth Mansell made business decisions, especially when Mansell was on business abroad. In response to a report on the quality of their glass by Inigo Jones, Lady Mansell switched from using Scottish coal in their London glass-houses to Newcastle coal.Harry J. Powell, Glass Making in England (Cambridge, 1923), pp. 31-3: Acts of the Privy Council: 1619-1621 (London, 1930), p. 343. She complained to the Privy Council that a rival patent-holder, Sir William Clavell of Smedmore, had enticed some of their expert workmen to leave their glasshouses and go to work in Scotland. She thwarted such attempts to damage the business while her husband was abroad or at sea.Jill Turnbull, Scottish Glass Industry 1610-1750: To Serve the Whole Nation with Glass (Edinburgh, 2001), pp. 78, 85.

At the funeral of Anne of Denmark, "Lady Maunsell" walked in procession with the ladies of the Privy Chamber.John Nichols, Progresses of James First, vol. 3 (London, 1828), p. 541.

In 1621 Elizabeth Mansell petitioned King James against other glass-makers encroaching on their patent, and claimed they tried to take advantage, thinking her "a weak woman unable to follow the business".Jill Turnbull, The Scottish Glass Industry 1610-1750: to Serve the Whole Nation with Glass (Edinburgh, 2001), p. 78 quoting TNA SP16/521/206. In 1623 three glass-making artificiers petitioned the Privy Council that she should reverse a pay-cut that meant that they could not support their families.CSP Domestic James I, 1623-1625 (London, 1859), p. 9: Alice Clark, The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (1919 repr. Abingdon 2009), p. 35.

She died in 1658 and was buried at St Alfege Church, Greenwich, on 19 November 1658.Daniel Lysons, The Environs of London: Counties of Herts, Essex & Kent, vol. 4 (London, 1796), p. 475.

References