Archives

Lady Eleanor Cave
Category: 17th century women’s history Published on: 10th November 2012

When it come to memorials, whether in stained glass, marble or oil painting, no family does it better than the St John...

Katherine Fitzgerald Villiers, Viscountess Grandison
Category: 17th century women’s history Published on: 4th November 2012

In the 1660s the war torn medieval castle of Dromana high above the River Blackwater in County Waterford commanded stunning...

Lady Constance Lytton
Category: 20th century women’s history Published on: 24th October 2012

Lady Constance Lytton will be a name familiar to anyone who has studied the Votes for Women campaign waged between 1903 and...

Edith Villiers, Countess of Lytton
Category: 19th century women’s history Published on: 17th October 2012

Symbolist, sculptor and portrait painter George Frederic Watts is widely considered to be the greatest Victorian painter....

Elizabeth St John, Lady Bernard
Category: 17th century women’s history Published on: 20th September 2012

For those who really like a challenge, try following the intermarriages between the St John, Cromwell and Bernard...

The Codrington Divorce
Category: 19th century women’s history Published on: 15th September 2012

Returning to our screens this weekend, Downton Abbey portraits an establishment where gentry and servants co-exist in a...

Abigail Masham
Category: 17th century 18th century women’s history Published on: 9th September 2012

And just when you thought you had heard the last of the St John family at the court of Queen Anne - along...

The Mapledurham Portrait
Category: 16th century women’s history Published on: 4th September 2012

You know how it is - you flip through the family photograph album and suddenly you come across that old snap, a woman...

Betty Felton - lewd and pocky
Category: 17th century women’s history Published on: 28th August 2012

Elizabeth Felton was a chip off the proverbial Villiers's block. The only daughter of James 3rd Earl of Suffolk and his...

Another Barbara Villiers
Category: 17th century women’s history Published on: 22nd August 2012

Two first cousins named Barbara Villiers - born thirteen years apart and named after their grandmother Barbara St John....