page_title: Elizabeth Home, Countess of Home
section_title: Marriage to William Home, 8th Earl of Home
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Home, Countess of Home / Marriage to William Home, 8th Earl of Home
caption_attribution_description: Home House
context_page_description: Elizabeth Home, Countess of Home was a Jamaican-born English plantation owner and enslaver. Already rich from her merchant father, she married James Lawes, the eligible son of Jamaica's governor, in 1720. They moved to London, and his death in 1734 left her a wealthy widow. Home married the spendthrift William Home, 8th Earl of Home in late 1742. He abandoned her soon after, and she spent her next years living an extravagant lifestyle. She owned plantations in the parishes of St Andrew and Vere in Jamaica. She enslaved over 423 people on her plantations.
  Home earned the nickname "Queen of Hell" for her "irascible behaviour and lavish parties". During the 1770s, Lady Home commissioned James Wyatt to design Home House, a lavish town house in Portman Square, London. It was then considered to have one of the finest interiors in London and still remains today. She died in 1784 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. Neither of her marriages produced any children.
context_section_description: Little is known of Home's nine years of widowhood until her second marriage. William Home, 8th Earl of Home, a known spendthrift, married Home for her fortune on 25 December 1742. The couple would have no children, and the Earl deserted her in February 1743 for unknown reasons. A lifelong army officer, he later was appointed Governor of Gibraltar in 1757 but died on 28 April 1761. His younger brother Alexander succeeded him as Earl. Despite the separation, Home retained her title and remained independently wealthy due to her father and first husband.
  After Home's desertion, Home opted to remain in England with members of Lawes' family, which included his sister, Judith Maria, and brother-in-law, Simon Luttrell (later 1st Earl of Carhampton). The Luttrells were disreputable, and Simon was termed the "King of Hell". Lady Home was one of the few colonial elite who was able to integrate reasonably well into English upper society, though, like many others in this group, she possessed a tendency to overcompensate and engage in hedonistic pursuits, flagrantly displaying her wealth. Home became popularly known as the "Queen of Hell" for her "irascible behaviour and lavish parties". William Beckford, her neighbour who also had ties to colonial wealth, described Home as 
  "the Countess of Home, known among all Irish chairmen and riff-raff of the metropolis by the name, style and title of Queen of Hell..."
  Wealthy and childless, the Dowager Countess moved to Portman Square in 1771, renting a house in the area's south side. Several of her new neighbours at this time were constructing residences in the square's newly developed north side, and Home followed suit. In June 1772, she bought a ninety-year lease on a parcel of land. She commissioned the young architect James Wyatt, who had just completed the Pantheon in London, to construct a lavish town house at the site. Wyatt worked on the project until 1775, when a disagreement led to his replacement with the brothers Robert and James Adam. This new estate, Home House, was built in part to entertain and house two large portraits by Thomas Gainsborough of her friends the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland and Strathearn; the Duke was a royal prince shunned from court for his unequal marriage, and his wife was a daughter of the Luttrells. The project produced one of the city's finest interiors; architectural historian Eileen Harris writes that the inside of Home House is "rightly regarded as among Robert Adam's masterpieces." Historians have remained uncertain as to why Lady Home decided to build the house, considering that she was childless and in her dotage. Home died on 15 January 1784 in London and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
caption: An interior of Home House, as seen in 2004
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