Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Winifred Maxwell Countess of Nithsdale
-
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.
"Winifred Maxwell, Countess of Nithsdale" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Winifred_Maxwell%2C_Countess_of_Nithsdale.jpg.
They had known each other as students at Birmingham Art School, and met again in 1907 when he designed the decor for a special dinner which CS
gave at the Lyceum Club
.
Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Crusaders. Chatto & Windus, 1912, x, 416 pp.
179-83
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Tillie Olsen
Tillie's father, Samuel Lerner
, came from the same part of Russia (now Belarus) as his wife. As the only boy in a family of girls he had grown up with many privileges, but...
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...
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...
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...
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, 1992.
55-7
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...