Mary Countess Cowper

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Most of MCC 's extant writings were produced with some immediate political purpose. Even her loving letters to her husband are attentive to the state of the nation and to his career within it. Other letters address key players on the political stage. MCC 's reputation rests on the lively Court diary which she kept early in the reign of George I , while she was a Lady in Waiting, but to the regret of later historians she burned most of it.
  • BirthName: Mary Clavering
  • Married: Cowper
  • Styled: Lady
    Both as a baroness and as a countess she was often known as Lady Cowper.
  • Titled: Baroness; Countess
Portrait of Mary, Countess Cowper, by Godfrey Kneller or one of his school, 1709. She sits facing the viewer, head a little turned to her right, on a stone bench, by a fountain in front of a stone column and landscape. She wears a voluminous golden gown with white lace showing at the wrist and deep neckline, and holds a book in her right hand. A piece of paper with writing on it lies beside her.

Milestones

8 November 1685

Mary Clavering (later MCC ) was born, the elder of her parents' two surviving children.
Cowper, Mary, Countess. Diary. Editor Cowper, Charles Spencer, John Murray, 1864.
14
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Late October 1714

On her appointment as Lady in Waiting to Caroline of Anspach , the new Princess of Wales, MCC began keeping a private diary to record the true version of what went on at Court, in opposition to the perpetual Lies that One hears.
Cowper, Mary, Countess. Diary. Editor Cowper, Charles Spencer, John Murray, 1864.
1

1722

With her husband, Lord Cowper , suddenly under suspicion of harbouring Jacobite sympathies, MCC gave way to anxiety about the outspokenness of the Court diary she had been keeping since October 1714: she destroyed most of it.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Cowper, Mary, Countess. “Introduction”. Diary, edited by Charles Spencer Cowper, John Murray, 1864, p. v - xvi.
xi, xiv

10 December 1723

MCC wrote her will two months to the day after the death of her husband, Lord Cowper .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

5 February 1724

MCC , not yet forty and a widow of less than four months, died at Cole Green near Hertingfordbury in Hertfordshire, of what is often talked of, but seen in very few Instances—a broken Heart,
Cowper, Mary, Countess. “Introduction”. Diary, edited by Charles Spencer Cowper, John Murray, 1864, p. v - xvi.
xiv
according to her elder daughter.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1864

MCC 's descendant Charles Spencer Cowper edited and first published her surviving diary; he omitted, however, passages which he considered salacious or unsuitable.
Black, Jeremy. “The Language of Licentiousness”. The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, Vol.
26
, No. 2, 1 Mar.–31 May 1994, pp. 153-9.
155

Biography

Birth and Background

8 November 1685

Mary Clavering (later MCC ) was born, the elder of her parents' two surviving children.
Cowper, Mary, Countess. Diary. Editor Cowper, Charles Spencer, John Murray, 1864.
14
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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