Elizabeth Delaval

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ED is remembered for her manuscript book about her own early life, drafted in 1663-72, during her teens and early twenties (sometimes called either a diary or a commonplace-book). Its obvious motive was religious self-examination, and meditations and prayers alternate with narrative and commentary on her courtships and her family relationships. The whole is flavoured with fictional romance.
  • BirthNames: Lady Elizabeth Livingston
    As an earl's daughter she was entitled from birth to the courtesy title Lady.
    ; Livingstone
    Her surname is often spelled this way.

  • Nickname: Lady Betty
    This was the name by which she was generally called in Court circles.
    Ezell, Margaret J. M. “Elizabeth Delaval’s Spiritual Heroine: Thoughts on Redefining Manuscript Texts by Early Women Writers”. English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, edited by Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths, Vol.
    3
    , British Library; University of Toronto Press, 1992, pp. 216-37.
    219

  • Married: Delaval; Hatcher
    This name seems sometimes to have been given as Thatcher.
    Greene, Douglas G., and Elizabeth Delaval. “Introduction”. The Meditations of Lady Elizabeth Delaval: Written Between 1662 and 1671, edited by Douglas G. Greene and Douglas G. Greene, Northumberland Press, 1978, pp. 1-25.
    14
  • Styled:

Milestones

Probably late 1648

Elizabeth Livingston (later Delaval) , the only child of her parents, was born probably in England before they fled for political reasons to the Hague.
Ezell, Margaret J. M. “Elizabeth Delaval’s Spiritual Heroine: Thoughts on Redefining Manuscript Texts by Early Women Writers”. English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, edited by Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths, Vol.
3
, British Library; University of Toronto Press, 1992, pp. 216-37.
219
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Later 1663

Lady Elizabeth Livingston (later Delaval), in her mid teens and in the second year of a Court post, began to record her personal life in passages both of narrative and of pious meditation or analysis: she kept up this practice until 1672.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1717

ED died in this year, in Jacobite exile at Rouen in France.
Greene, Douglas G., and Elizabeth Delaval. “Introduction”. The Meditations of Lady Elizabeth Delaval: Written Between 1662 and 1671, edited by Douglas G. Greene and Douglas G. Greene, Northumberland Press, 1978, pp. 1-25.
17
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

Probably late 1648

Elizabeth Livingston (later Delaval) , the only child of her parents, was born probably in England before they fled for political reasons to the Hague.
Ezell, Margaret J. M. “Elizabeth Delaval’s Spiritual Heroine: Thoughts on Redefining Manuscript Texts by Early Women Writers”. English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, edited by Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths, Vol.
3
, British Library; University of Toronto Press, 1992, pp. 216-37.
219
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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