Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Winifred Maxwell, Countess of Nithsdale
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Standard Name: Nithsdale, Winifred Maxwell,,, Countess of
Birth Name: Winifred Herbert
Styled: Lady Nithsdale
Titled: Countess of Nithsdale
Styled: Lady Winifred Herbert
Self-constructed Name: The Countess of Nithsdale
During the early eighteenth century Winifred, Lady Nithsdale
, wrote family letters about business and relationships. She is remembered for the letter to her sister which tells, with a historian's narrative flair and command of detail, how when her husband (a Jacobite) was condemned to death for treason, she planned and carried through the daring coup of smuggling him out of prison.
The Lincoln's Inn Fields house of Lord Powis
(recently released after years in prison on suspicion of treasonable Catholic
plotting, father of future writers Lucy
and Winifred
) was burned to the ground by chance...
MMB
wrote bridal verses for a young woman she knew in August 1833.
Betham, Ernest, editor. A House of Letters. Jarrold and Sons.
231
She was also commissioned for the portrait of a young nun, great-grand-daughter of the Lord Nithsdale who had barely escaped execution...
Textual Production
John Buchan
His later biographies include Sir Walter Scott, 1932, and Oliver Cromwell, 1934. His later essay collections include A Book of Escapes and Hurried Journeys, 1922 (which relates among other things the story...
Textual Features
Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Fully half of this three-volume publication is taken up by the tale of how Lady Nithsdale
liberated her husband from the Tower of London in 1716.
Textual Features
Edna Lyall
The story revolves around Jacobite plots and persecution of Quakers
in the period when Queen Mary II
was Regent for her husband, William
, during his absences abroad. It introduces actual characters like the former...
Residence
Anne Finch
AF
and her husband lost their home in Westminster Palace at James's exile. They did not accompany him into exile, like Lady Nithsdale
or Jane Barker
; instead, they took shelter with various friends and connections.
McGovern, Barbara. Anne Finch and Her Poetry: A Critical Biography. University of Georgia Press.
55-7
politics
Mary, Countess Cowper
Though she was, against the traditions of her birth family, whole-heartedly a Whig and anti-Jacobite, MCC
was troubled by the execution of the rebel lords after the 1715 rebellion. Of Lord Nithsdale
's escape from...
politics
Lady Lucy Herbert
It was LLH
who persuaded her sister Winifred
to write out the full story of how she engineered her husband's escape from the Tower and who then preserved and apparently circulated the story. She no...
Occupation
Lady Lucy Herbert
Under her rule the community grew in numbers, celebrated its centenary in 1729 (with two barrels of beer for the neighbours as well as two hundred loaves of bread given to the poor), rebuilt its...
Occupation
Lady Eleanor Butler
In addition to their better-known activities, the women became antiquarians with a particular interest in women's writing. They copied early texts by women, like Ann Fanshawe
's still unpublished Memoirs. Henrietta Maria Bowdler
sent...
Friends, Associates
Jane Barker
She addressed to an unnamed Jacobite lady an account of this miraculous cure, in a covering letter with which she sent the piece of tissue she called the tumour. The recipient of this odd gift...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Lucy Herbert
Lady Powis
, mother of two future writers (Lucy
and Winifred
, then about ten and seven), joined her husband
in the Tower of London, on a charge of Roman Catholic plotting against...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Lucy Herbert
Mother Teresa Joseph (LLH
) was visited at her Brugesconvent
by her sister Lady Nithsdale
, in shaken health after her successful rescue of her husband
from the Tower of London and her...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Lucy Herbert
LLH
's younger sister, Winifred, later Lady Nithsdale
, acquired a reputation as a heroine by successfully carrying through a daring plan to spring her husband from his captivity in the Tower of London the...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Winifred Maxwell, Countess of Nithsdale, and Sheffield Grace. A Letter from the Countess of Nithsdale. J. Rider, 1827.
Winifred Maxwell, Countess of Nithsdale,. Genuine Account of the Escape of Lord Nithsdale. F. Humble, 1816.
