Elizabeth Richardson

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Elizabeth Richardson, Lady Cramond (formerly Ashburnham), was a seventeenth-century devotional writer (of prayers and meditations, maxims, and a treatise on life and death, as well as letters) over a period of almost forty years. She had a strong commitment to the religious education of her daughters, and for them, and for other readers too, she left a published mother's legacy made up of revisions of earlier writings.
  • BirthName: Elizabeth Beaumont
  • Married: Ashburnham; LadyRichardson
  • Titled: Lady Ashburnham; LadyRichardson; Baroness of Cramond
    Her first marriage had lasted some years before her husband got the knighthood that made her Lady. Her second husband was Sir when she married him, yet she still chose to call herself Madam on her printed title-page. She was granted a title in her own right in 1628, perhaps because her husband was barred from the award because of his position as a judge.

Milestones

About 1577

Elizabeth Beaumont (later ER ) was born at Stoughton in Leicestershire, the eldest of ten children.
Leigh, Dorothy et al. Women’s Writing in Stuart England. Editor Brown, Sylvia, Sutton, 1999.
153n10
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1606

Elizabeth, Lady Ashburnham (later Elizabeth Richardson, Lady Cramond) , wrote her earliest surviving text: a manuscript book of prayers. It is now in the Folger Shakespeare Library .
Leigh, Dorothy et al. Women’s Writing in Stuart England. Editor Brown, Sylvia, Sutton, 1999.
142

By 24 November 1645

The second and third collections of devotional writings by Elizabeth Richardson (Lady Cramond) were published together, re-ordered and revised, with her permission, as A Ladies Legacie to her Daughters.
English Short Title Catalogue. http://estc.bl.uk/.
Leigh, Dorothy et al. Women’s Writing in Stuart England. Editor Brown, Sylvia, Sutton, 1999.
150

3 April 1651

Elizabeth Richardson, now Lady Cramond , died after sixteen years of second widowhood, at Covent Garden in London.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Biography

Birth and Family

About 1577

Elizabeth Beaumont (later ER ) was born at Stoughton in Leicestershire, the eldest of ten children.
Leigh, Dorothy et al. Women’s Writing in Stuart England. Editor Brown, Sylvia, Sutton, 1999.
153n10
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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