Elizabeth (Cavendish) Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater

01 January 1626 - 14 June 1663

ECECB , born Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, used to be known as a collaborator with her sister Lady Jane in poems and plays written in the 1640s. Recent scholarship, while arguing that her part in these juvenile writings was slight, has developed new interest in what she wrote during her married life: an ambitious commentary on every book in the Bible, and a series of prose meditations and prayers, deeply religious in tone, on topics ranging from Holy Communion to marriage, and including her emotional but faith-driven responses to her many pregnancies, and her children's illnesses and deaths.

Milestones

1626

Elizabeth Cavendish (who later wrote under her married titles, both as Lady Brackley and as Lady Bridgewater ) was born into a family of five surviving children.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1 June 1648

This date, which heads the future Countess of Bridgewater 's collection of private prayers and meditations (now Egerton MS 607 in the British Library ), may or may not mark the earliest of its contents.

Travitsky, Betty, and Elizabeth (Cavendish) Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater. “Subordination and Authorship: Elizabeth Cavendish Egerton”. Subordination and Authorship: the case of Elizabeth Cavendish Egerton and her &quot:loose papers", Tempe, Ariz., pp. 1-172.

159

June 1649

Elizabeth, Countess of Bridgewater , composed a prose prayer for her husband 's twenty-seventh birthday.

Elizabeth (Cavendish) Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater,. Subordination and Authorship in Early Modern England: the case of Elizabeth Cavendish Egerton and her "loose papers". Editor Travitsky, Betty, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

197

At some time after June 1663

After Lady Bridgewater died, a servant transcribed True Coppies of certaine Loose Papers left by ye Right Honorable Elizabeth, Countess of Bridgewater. Collected and Transcribed together here since Her Death, anno Dni 1663.

155

14 June 1663

Elizabeth, Countess of Bridgewater , died in bearing a dead son in premature labour, in a Strange [that is unfamiliar] place,

153

Black Rod's House in London. She was visiting her husband , who had been arrested two days before.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

under John Egerton

Cokayne, George Edward. The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant. Editor Gibbs, Vicary, St Catherine Press.

79n132, 86-7

Biography

Birth and Family

1626

Elizabeth Cavendish (who later wrote under her married titles, both as Lady Brackley and as Lady Bridgewater ) was born into a family of five surviving children.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.