# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Villiers, Barbara

​VILLIERS (afterwards Palmer), BARBARA, Countess of Castlemaine and Duchess of Cleveland (1641–1709), born at Westminster in the autumn of 1641, and baptised in St. Margaret's Church on 27 Nov., was the daughter of William Villiers, second viscount Grandison, who received a commission as colonel-general at the outset of the war to raise a regiment for the king, captured Nantwich in 1642, fought at Edgehill, and was mortally wounded at the siege of Bristol in July 1643. His epitaph may be read upon the stately white marble monument in the cathedral at Oxford, and his handsome face was depicted by Van Dyck in a portrait now in the possession of the Duke of Grafton (for the character of Grandison see Clarendon's Hist. 1826, iv. 144-51, and Collin's Peerage, ed. Brydges, iii. 784). Barbara's mother was Mary (d. 1684), third daughter of Paul Bayning, first viscount Bayning. The scandalous story related in the 'Secret History of Charles II' (1690), that she was the daughter of Henrietta Maria by the Earl of St. Albans, is devoid of foundation.
Barbara, who was named after her grandmother, the wife of Sir Edward Villiers [q. v.], was first seen in London at the house of her stepfather (for her mother married again in 1648), Charles Villiers, second earl of Anglesey [see under Villiers, Christopher, first earl]. There about 1656, as Boyer credibly relates, she became the object of divers young gentlemen's affections (Queen Anne, 1735, Append, p. 48; cf. Letters of Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield, 1829). On 14 April 1659, at the church of St. Gregory-by-Paul's, she gave her hand to Roger Palmer [q. v.], who was shortly afterwards created Baron Limerick and Earl of Castlemaine; but he does not appear to have been the father of any of her offspring. It is impossible to say precisely when the intimacy commenced between Mrs. Palmer and Charles II, but it certainly was not later than 28 May 1660, or the night of the king's return to Whitehall. On 'Shrove-munday,' 25 Feb. 1660-1 (not, as Steinmann, p. 25, and Sanford say, on 1 March), was born Barbara's first child, Anne, the paternity of which was claimed by Palmer, but was afterwards acknowledged by the king (by a royal warrant of 1673), though the child was generally assigned to the Earl of Chesterfield, whom, says Lord Dartmouth, she resembled very much both in face and person (Burnet, i. 64 n.) In the following December Pepys saw at the privy seal office the patent creating Roger Palmer Earl of Castlemaine, and remarked upon the limitation of the honours to the lady's heirs male, 'the reason whereof every body knows' (Diary, ed. Wheatley, ii. 151). On 13 May 1662 Catherine of Braganza [q. v.] arrived in England, and it was noticed that Lady Castlemaine was out of fashion, for she had no bonfire before her door; but Pepys observes that Charles spent the evening with her, and that 'the king and she did send for a pair of scales, and they did weigh one another' (Pepys, ed. Wheatley, ​ii. 239). As a means of freeing the young queen's mind of possible delusion, Barbara designed that her impending confinement should take place at Hampton Court during the honeymoon of the royal pair, and this intention was with difficulty overruled by the king. Her second child, Charles, was , born early in June 1662 at her house in King Street, Westminster. The child's baptism was performed by a Romish priest by order of Castlemaine, who had recently become a papist, and the ceremony gave his lady the requisite pretext for leaving the earl and conveying all her effects and 'all the servants except the porter' to the residence of her uncle at Richmond (Lister, Life of Clarendon, iii. 208). The infant was rebaptised by the rector of St. Margaret's, Westminster, on 18 June 1662, the king and Aubrey de Vere, twentieth earl of Oxford [q. v.], being the two godfathers (cf. Pepys, ii. 288-9 and n. Aubrey has a story that Barbara's cruelty to her eldest son when a mere child impaired an intellect which never promised very well; cf. Aubrey, Wiltshire, ed. Britton, 1847, p. 72; Letters of Dean Prideaux; Camden Soc. pp. 21, 48, 55). On the very same day (18 June) the queen was surprised into receiving her rival at Hampton Court, and Clarendon relates how the unfortunate lady was carried from the apartment in a fit on discovering the cheat. Such an exhibition of ill-humour seemed to the king to need reparation. Lady Castlemaine's name was accordingly submitted to the queen upon a list of ladies designed for her bedchamber. The queen promptly pricked out the name, and a painful contest of two months' duration ensued. By the end of August, however, Clarendon, stimulated by messages of cumulative urgency from Charles, whose ferocity in this matter is justly likened to that of a wild boar showing his tusks (see the remarkable letter preserved in the British Museum, Lansdowne MS. 1236, f. 121; cf. Stowe MS. 154, f. 16), succeeded in breaking down Catherine's opposition. Barbara had official lodgings assigned to her hard by the cockpit at Whitehall, where her rooms thenceforth became a focus of intrigue against Clarendon (cf. Bramston, Autobiogr. p. 256). There during this autumn was matured her first political triumph, the supersession of the old and tried loyalist and friend of Clarendon, Sir Edward Nicholas [q. v.], in the secretaryship by Sir Henry Bennet (afterwards Earl of Arlington) [q. v.], who thus started in life as the minion of the royal mistress. The pacification of the royal household; seems to have been complete by 7 Sept. 1662, when Pepys observed the king, queen, and Lady Castlemaine in a coach together, and 'hanging much upon the favourite, Mr. Crofts, the king's bastard, who is always with her.' The king is believed to have hurried on the marriage of Monmouth in order to withdraw him from Lady Castlemaine's attractions.
Liaisons were already being spoken of between the Countess of Castlemaine and Sir Charles Barkeley and Colonel James Hamilton [see Hamilton, Anthony]. The king was alleged to be 'past jealousy,' but he still spent on an average four evenings a week at the lady's lodgings, going 'home through the privy garden all alone privately, so as the very sentries take notice of it and speak of it,' . . . 'which,' says Pepys, 'is a poor thing for a prince to do.' In his first irritation at the squibs and pasquils circulated about him and the countess, Charles meditated an order for the closing of the coffee-houses, but the proposal was soon dropped. Early in 1663 the countess was addressed in terms of extreme adulation in Dryden's fourth poetical 'Epistle,' in return, it would appear, for the patronage she had extended to his unsuccessful first play, 'The Wild Gallant' (see Dryden, Works, ed. Scott, xi. 18-22). Her second son, Henry, was born on 20 Sept. 1663. The king refused to acknowledge the child. Nevertheless that same Christmas Charles handed over to the rapacious beauty all the Christmas presents that he had received from the peers; and about the same time was announced her conversion to Roman Catholicism. 'If the church of Rome,' remarked Stillingfleet, 'has got no more by her than the church of England has lost, the matter will not be much' (Oldmixon, ii. 576). On 25 Jan. 1664 a fire broke out at her lodgings, whereupon the king gave orders for the buildings to be supplied with waterpipes, buckets, ladders, and other appliances (Hist. MSS. Comm. 15th Rep. App. ii. 19). On 5 Sept. in this year Lady Castlemaine gave birth to her fourth child, Charlotte, and three weeks later, to the wrath and indignation of Charles, she was rebuked as a Jane Shore while taking the air in St. James's Park (Pepys, ii. 222). A few months afterwards the French ambassador,Comminges, wrote mockingly to Lionne of the perturbation of the Earl of Castlemaine upon arriving at court and finding his family unexpectedly increased by two strapping infants (Baillon, p. 164). During the plague year the mistress en titre, as she was now termed, migrated with the court to Hampton Court, Salisbury, and Oxford; and at Merton ​College on 28 Dec. 1665 she gave birth to another son (see Fitzroy, George; Brodrick, Memorials of Merlon, 1885, p. 116). In February 1666 she had some rooms most luxuriously fitted at Hampton Court for her personal use (Harl. MS. 1658, f. 138); in the following October Harry Killigrew was banished the court for describing her as a wanton.
After the marriage of 'La Belle Stuart' to the Duke of Richmond in March 1667 [see Stuart or Stewart, Frances Teresa; and Stuart, Charles, third Duke of Richmond], Barbara's supremacy at court seemed more assured than ever. Louis XIV, who had hitherto been merely amused to hear the latest scandal about the ladies of the English court, now began to manifest a stronger interest in personages who, as he truly said, were become the most important in the country. The French ambassador, Colbert de Croisy, was accordingly specially commended for the attempts he had made to coax state secrets out of Lady Castlemaine. Every kind of attention was lavished upon the favourite, but De Croisy was not long in finding out that no dependence whatever could be placed upon her steady support, so completely was she dominated by the passion of the moment. In the meantime we have glimpses of her and the king 'mad at hunting a poor moth at the Duchess of Monmouth's' (13 June 1667), or buying jewellery, and 'making notes to the privy purse for money.' But with these pacific scenes alternate 'tiffs' of extravagant violence. On 12 July she called the king a fool to his face, à propos of the Duke of Buckingham's captivity, and her suspicious intimacy with Sir Harry Jermyn was the occasion of another quarrel, in the course of which she threatened that if the king refused to own the child she was expecting, she would bring it to Whitehall and dash its brains out (cf. Coxe MSS. xlv. 201). Eventually the king was 'pardoned' upon his knees for his well-founded suspicions, but not before the scandal (which is referred to in some coarse lines in Marvell's ' Last Instructions to a Painter about the Dutch War,' 1667) had obtained a wide circulation. The reconciliation was sealed by a gift of 5,600 ounces of plate from the jewel-house (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1667, p. 425). At the end of August in this year Lady Castlemaine and her faction had a large share in administering the coup de grâce to Clarendon's influence. She had candidly expressed her desire to see the minister's head on a stake (Carte, Ormonde, ii. 276) and when she heard he was finally taking his leave of the king, it is related that she rushed out in her smock into her aviary, overlooking Whitehall, and bandied jests with the courtiers upon the event (Pepys; cf. picture by E. M. Ward in Tate Gallery). A few weeks after this malign influence was removed from her path she had the satisfaction of making a bishop of her otherwise undistinguished great-uncle, Dr. Henry Glemham (consecrated at St. Asaph on 13 Oct. 1667). In February 1668 she retaliated upon the king for his growing weakness for actresses such as Moll Davis and Nell Gwyn, by forming a liaison with the tragic actor Charles Hart [q. v.] Next month, after the destruction of the city brothels by the London apprentices, an ingenious libel was levelled against her under the title 'The Poor Whores Petition to the most Splendid, Illustrious, Serene, and Eminent Lady of Pleasure, the Countess of Castlemaine . . . signed Madame Cresswell, Damaris Page' (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1667-8, p. 306), followed in a few days' time by a burlesque answer 'given at our closset in King Street, die Veneris, 24 April 1668.' By way of a solatium, the king at the close of this month gave her Berkshire House, St. James's. Two years later she disposed of the mansion, and sold the large garden for building plots, reserving only the south-west corner of the estate, on which, near the present Bridgewater House, was erected Cleveland House. The connection of the duchess with this quarter of the town survives in Cleveland Court, Cleveland Square, and Cleveland Row, St. James's.
The change of residence was an agreeable diversion for the countess, as in each case it implied a sale for the benefit of her cardpurse, and a refurnishing upon a scale of superlative luxury at the royal expense. On 19 Jan. 1669 she received what became an annual grant of 4,700l. from the post office. On 3 Aug. 1670 (not 1679, as given in Doyle's Official Baronage), she was created Baroness Nonsuch of Nonsuch Park, Surrey, Countess of Southampton, and Duchess of Cleveland, with remainder to her first and third natural sons, Charles and George 'Palmer' (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1670, p. 357). The title was conferred in consideration of her noble descent and of 'her own personal virtues' ('et decus et pretium recti,' remains the motto of the Fitzroy family). At the same time the king gave her the park and palace of Nonsuch, near Cheam. In addition to money presents from the king, one amounting to 30,000l., and grants of plate from the jewel-house (ib. Dom. 1668-9, p. 39), she obtained shortly after this date large grants for a term of years from the excise ​and customs, these increments being in addition to the income which she obtained from the sale of offices and other favours (such as that which she granted to Sir Edward Hungerford (1632-1711) [q. v.] for 10,000l.) and the huge 'rents' which she exacted from a number of place-holders, including the lord-lieutenant of Ireland. Marvell states that Lord Berkeley paid no less than 10,000l. to 'his landlady Cleveland' (Works, 1776, i. 406). From 1675 she was to have 1,000l. per annum out of the 'undisposed lands' in compensation for claims which she had upon Phoenix Park, Dublin (D'Alton, County of Dublin, p. 536; Essex Papers, pp. 68-9, 70, 122). Other grants were made to her through the agency of 'trustees' (Williamson, Letters, Camden Soc. i. 40, ii. 62), yet, large as her income from the sources enumerated must have been, it seems hardly commensurate with her expenditure. Her jewels at the theatre one afternoon were estimated as worth 40,000l. in the money of that day, and in one single night at cards, according to Pepys, she lost considerably more than half this sum. Her personal expenditure, including the maintenance of a coach-and-eight, was extravagant in the extreme; and now that she had obtained the titles and 'settlements' from the king which she considered to be her due, every year added a new paramour to her pension list. It is not suprising, therefore, that she should have soon found herself unable to keep up Cleveland House, or that, with a total disregard for its historical associations, she should have dismantled and sold the contents of Nonsuch (see Remembrancia, p .51 n; Brayley, Surrey, iv. 409; Gent. Mag. 1837, ii. 135-44).
The concession of the title and appropriate 'settlements' was the signal for Charles's emancipation from what had become a most distressing infatuation, and during the ensuing period of what M. Forneron calls 'Cytherean anarchy' the influence of the duchess steadily dwindled until by 1674 it was entirely supplanted by that of Louise Renée de Keroualle [q. v.], who had in August 1673 been created Duchess of Portsmouth. In the interests of her children it was still desirable for Barbara to propitiate Charles, but this consideration did not prevent her smiling upon a regular though ill-assorted series of lovers. Prominent among these were the rope-dancer Jacob Hall [q. v.], whom she discovered in Bartholomew fair, and to whom she granted a salary (cf. Granger, iv. 211; Morley, Bartholomew Fair, p. 190); John Ellis [q. v.], afterwards under-secretary of state (cf. State Poems, i. 192; Pope, Works, ed. Warton, 1797, vi. 45); and John Churchill (afterwards Duke of Marlborough), who is credited with the paternity of a third daughter, Barbara, born at Cleveland House on 16 July 1672. Buckingham, who had recently quarrelled with his 'cousin Barbara,' contrived that the king should surprise the handsome young guardsman with his 'open-hearted' mistress. Churchill is stated to have leapt out of the window, but not to have escaped recognition by Charles, who cried after him, 'I forgive you, for you do it for your bread.' There is no doubt that shortly after this date Churchill received a present of 5,000l., with which he prudently purchased an annuity from George Savile, marquis of Halifax [q. v.] (cf. Foxcroft, Halifax, ii. 166; French Archives, Affaires Étrang. cxxxvii. f. 400; Wolseley, Life of Marlborough, i. 68-9). The dramatic supplement to this true story, that Churchill 'lived to refuse his mistress half a crown' (related in the New Atlantis, 1720, i. 57, where Fortunatus is Churchill and the Duchesse de l'Inconstant the lady), was rightly described by Curll as 'a piece of travelling scandal.' In Pall Mall during the same autumn the duchess commenced an intrigue with one of the handsomest men then in London, William Wycherley, who dedicated to her his first play, 'Love in a Wood' (1672), and the outspoken gallantries of either party in this affair furnished matter for the pleasantries, not only of Pope and Dennis, but also of Voltaire (Lettres sur les Anglais, xix.; cf. Wycherley, ed. W. C. Ward, 1888, vols, xxvii-xxx.; Dennis, Familiar Letters,1721; Macaulay, in his account of this 'brazen intimacy' in his Essay on the Comic Dramatists, follows Spence, whose account, if more pungent, is clearly less authentic than that of Dennis).
From the close of this year (1672) Barbara's name ceases to appear on the list of bedchamber women, but in compensation for this harsh application of the Test Act she received several douceurs from the king, in addition to grants of arms for her three sons, Charles, Henry (now acknowledged by the king), and George Fitzroy, all of whom were to be elevated to dukedoms within the next few years (all three are separately noticed under Fitzroy). For her eldest son the duchess intrigued vigorously during 1675-6 to obtain the hand of the great heiress Elizabeth Percy [see under Seymour, Charles, sixth Duke Of Somerset]. It is true that the boy was already married (since 1671), but the duchess was sanguine that she would be allowed to ride roughshod over all legal obligations, as in 1671, when by fraud ​and violence she had enticed her son's promised wife out of the hands of her lawful guardians, and insisted upon an immediate marriage and transference of fortune, though the bride was but seven years old (for details of these scandalous proceedings see The Case of Mrs. Mary Wood, an Infant, ap. Harl. MS. 5277, ff. 85 sq.; cf. Waters, Chesters of Chichele, p. 486). In this instance, however, the Duchess of Cleveland, unscrupulous as she was, found herself outmanœuvered by the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland [see under Percy, Algernon, tenth Earl]. With regard to her two daughters acknowledged by the king, Anne and Charlotte Fitzroy, they were granted the precedence of duke's daughters previous to their being married, the former (at Hampton Court on 11 Aug. 1674) to Thomas Lennard, lord Dacre, afterwards (1684) Earl of Sussex [see under Lennard, Francis, fourteenth Lord Dacre; the countess died 16 May 1722]; the latter in February 1677 (three years after a formal act of betrothal) to Edward Henry Lee, earl of Lichfield [see under Lee, George Henry, third Earl]. Lady Lichfield, who was celebrated for her 'blameless' beauty and her numerous issue, and who figures in St. Evremond's 'Scene de Bassette,' died on 17 Feb. 1718, aged 55. During 1674 the Duchess of Cleveland was repaid upwards of 1,200l. out of the secret-service money for the sums which she had expended upon 'wedding cloathes, millenary, mercery, and lace' for her daughters.
These family matters settled, the duchess, who felt that her influence at court was past recovery, but who had been cheered by a grant on 7 April 1677 of the stewardship of Hampton Court, together with the rangership of Bushey Park, migrated to Paris. She was much piqued at the neglect of the great ladies of the French court, but consoled herself by an intrigue with the English ambassador, Ralph Montagu (afterwards Duke of Montagu) [q. v.], to revenge herself on whom a little later on for a rapid transference of affection (in the direction of her eldest daughter, Lady Sussex) she commenced an animated correspondence with the king. Her previous intimacy with Montagu enabled her to reveal to Charles the low estimation in which the king was held by his unscrupulous envoy. Montagu hurried back to defend himself without waiting for leave, only to find himself completely ostracised at the English court (July 1678; Harris, Lives, 1814, v. 872; Burnet, ii. 148). He was succeeded at Paris by Sunderland, one of the most assiduous flatterers of the still powerful ex-favourite [see Spencer, Robert, second Earl]. Other recalcitrant lovers of the duchess, secretary Ellis for example, did not get off so easily. Towards the close of 1677 the duchess gave the sum of 1,000l. to the English nuns of the Immaculate Conception, Rue Charenton, Paris, a nunnery in which she placed as pensionnaire her youngest daughter, Barbara, of whom the Duke of Marlborough was father. This young lady, who was never married, and who subsequently, as Sister 'Benedicta,' made her profession as a nun, became in 1691 by the Earl of Arran the mother of Charles Hamilton (1691-1754) [q. v.], and died prioress of the nunnery of St. Nicholas at Pontoise on 6 May 1737 (Douglas, Peerage of Scotland, ed. Wood, 1813, i. 720 n.) A few months before the death of Charles II (cf. Evelyn, Diary, 4 Feb. 1685) the Duchess of Cleveland would appear to have returned to England, and Charles on his deathbed asked his brother to be kind to her. A little before this date, while living in Arlington Street, Piccadilly, she would seem to have commenced a liaison with the actor Cardonnell Goodman [q. v.] Goodman had in November 1684 been convicted of a conspiracy to poison two of the duchess's sons (Luttrell, i. 322), but he was now so zealous in her service that he would not allow the curtain to ascend before 'his duchess' had entered her box; and by him, it appears, 'the gratious lady' in March 1686 had a son, 'which the town has christained Goodman Cleveland' (Peregrine Bertie to the Countess of Rutland, ap. Rutland Papers, ii. 107). The Earl of Castlemaine died on 21 July 1705, and four months later the widow married, at St. James's, Westminster, Major-general Robert Feilding [q. v.] A comical account of the courtship is given in a letter from Lady Wentworth to her son (Wentworth Papers, p. 50). Their married life was brief and stormy. On 24 July 1706 Feilding was committed for a brief period to Newgate by an order of Justice Holt for threatening and maltreating his 'wife' (see A Faithful Account of Feilding's Examination, Brit. Mus. 1851, c. 38). Fortunately for the duchess, a previous wife of 'Beau' Feilding's was proved to be in existence, and on 23 May 1707 the nullity of her second marriage was pronounced at Doctors' Commons. The indecency of some of the letters put into court as evidence by the duchess is noteworthy in connection with anecdotes of the lady's depravity (see Cases of Divorce: The. Trial of R. Feilding, 1776, 4to; cf. Stowe MS. 1055, and art. Ellis, John). The remaining years of her life were spent at Chiswick, where ​she found shelter for the illegitimate son of her daughter Barbara, and where 'Walpole House' is traditionally associated with her residence. In July 1709 she fell ill of a dropsy, which 'swelled her gradually to a monstrous bulk' (Boyer), and she died at Chiswick on Sunday, 9 Oct. 1709. Four days later she was buried in Chiswick parish church, her pallbearers including James, duke of Ormonde, James, duke of Hamilton, Algernon, earl of Essex, and Henry, earl of Grantham. No monument was erected.
By her will, dated 11 Aug. 1709, and proved the day after her death, the duchess appointed her second son, the Duke of Grafton, her residuary legatee. Greedy and ravenous as her whole life had been, her extravagance was more than commensurate with her avarice, and she seems to have had little to leave beyond her personal effects and the park of Nonsuch (cf. Gent. Mag. 1837, ii. 144). The title passed to her eldest son Charles, first duke of Cleveland, who settled in 1722 at Cleveland House, St. James's Square (Dasent, Hist. pp. 101 sq.)
All her contemporaries agree that Barbara Villiers was possessed of great beauty, both in face and form (she was, says Oldmixon, at once the fairest and the lewdest of the royal concubines); she was twitted in her early years for her 'black eyes' and plump 'baby-face,' but after her first triumphs she affected the pose of the jealous termagant with the result that it became almost habitual to her. She had dark auburn hair and blue eyes, and looked equally irresistible whether in 'full panoply' or in the lighter costumes which Pepys describes as especially becoming to her. There are at least five distinct full-length portraits of the Duchess of Cleveland either by, after, or in the school of Sir Peter Lely, and of these several replicas exist. The beautiful Lely at Hinchinbroke (1663), a present to the first Earl of Sandwich, was described by Pepys as 'a most blessed picture,' and 'one I must have a copy of;' but he had eventually to content himself with some engravings from Faithorne's shop (Diary, ii. 368, iv. 179). The portrait now at Bretby, in which she is represented dressed in grey and seated on a throne, has been engraved by Williams and by Cooper; and the print, slightly modified, has also done duty as the Empress-queen Maria Theresa. The full-length of the duchess as Mary Magdalen at Panshanger has been modified in the etchings made by Enghels (1667) and others. Of the three-quarter-lengths by or after Lely the finest are at Hampton Court (as Bellona, many engravings), at Ditchley (in mourning for Castlemaine—a replica in National Portrait Gallery), at Savernake (as Saint Catherine of Alexandria—replicas at Oakley Grove and in the National Portrait Gallery), at Dorney Court (as St. Barbara), at Holker Hall, at Combe Abbey, and the two at Althorp. Half-lengths after Lely are at Hatfield (on a stone parapet in a yellow-brown dress), Belhus (co. Essex), Middleton Park (in a horned head-dress), and elsewhere. The beautiful half-length by William Wissing [q. v.] has been engraved by R. Williams (this portrait is selected for reproduction in 'Twelve Bad Women,' ed. Vincent, p. 99, and it is probably the one which does most justice to the lady's charms). Among the portraits of the duchess by Gascar are a fine three-quarter-length at Belhus, sitting on a carved sofa with her daughter Barbara in her lap (mezzotint, in British Museum), and a half-length at Lee Priory. A portrait of the duchess as the Madonna is mentioned by Walpole (Anecd. 1786, iii. 133), and by Granger, who says that the original was at Dalkeith House, and that a replica was sent to a convent in France (iv. 161); and one of her as Iphigenia (with Charles II as Cymon) is described by Mason (Memoir of Gray, 1775, p. 307). She was specially fond of posing as a saint or as a mourner; the portrait of her in weeds at the National Portrait Gallery was for many years supposed to represent Rachel, lady Russell. Miniatures and crayon portraits, some of the latter by Faithorne, are numerous. A very long, though by no means complete, list of the Cleveland portraits is given in Steinmann's 'Memoir' (pp. 238-52).
The British Museum print-room has three interesting engravings by Sherwin, one of which, a three-quarter-length (no painter's name), in pastoral dress, with a shepherdess's crook, probably suggested to Pope his description of the duchess: 'here in ermined pride, And there Pastora by a fountain's side' (Mor. Epist. ii. 8). Granger enumerates fifteen engraved portraits of the Duchess of Cleveland (Biogr. Hist. 1775, iv. 160), and Steinmann just over twice that number (Memoir, pp. 250-1); twenty-three are enumerated in the 'Catalogue of the Sutherland Collection' (now at Oxford), 1837, i. 216.
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