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Female Architectural Patronage in the Eighteenth Century and the Case of Henrietta Cavendish Holies Harley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Lucy Worsley
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Extract

How did the restrictions imposed by eighteenth-century society help and hinder women in their fulfilment of the role of architectural patron? This article will examine the case of Henrietta Cavendish Holies Harley, second Countess of Oxford and Mortimer (1694–1755), and patron of the remarkable remodelling of Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire.

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Architectural History , Volume 48 , 2005 , pp. 139 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2005

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References

Notes

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2 This article seeks to build upon Peter Smith’s assessment of Henrietta’s alterations at Welbeck and would certainly not have been possible without his careful and convincing examination of the building. See his ‘Lady Oxford’s alterations at Welbeck Abbey 1741-55’, The Georgian Group Journal, xi (2001), pp. 133-68.

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21 British Library (hereafter BL), Add. MS 29571, fol. 463 (21 April 1678).

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30 UN, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson, Welbeck Abbey (7 August 1751).

31 Goulding, ‘Henrietta’, pp. 39, 40.

32 Walpole, Letters, 111, pp. 447-48.

33 Nottingham University, Hallward Library, Department of Special Collections and Manuscripts (hereafter NU), Pw 1/291-311.

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36 Amy Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London, 1993).

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44 Many other matrilineal histories can be constructed: Lummis and Marsh re-cast the family history of the Brownlows of Belton House (Lincolnshire) by reinstating the ‘often ignored female lines of descent, through which the inheritance of Belton frequently passed, as in so many aristocratic families’ (Lummis and Marsh, Woman’s Domaine, p. 34).

45 See note 20 above.

46 NA, DD3P.14/19 (1601).

47 Anthony Wells-Cole, The Art of Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England (New Haven and London, 1997)/ P- 26448 Peter Smith, ‘Welbeck Abbey and the 5th Duke of Portland’ in The Victorian Great House, ed. Malcolm Airs (Oxford, 2000), pp. 147-64.

49 Goulding, ‘Henrietta’, p. 11.

50 BL, Add. MS 70431, folder 4, draft letter from Edward Harley to Henrietta (9 June 1728).

51 NA, DD4P.70/55/16, Henrietta’s instructions ‘For Thompson’ (1746).

52 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (21 January 174 7).

53 Ibid.

54 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13a, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Dover Street (7 June 1740).

55 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 4, the Duke of Norfolk to Henrietta (30 December 1743).

56 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (21 January 1747).

57 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (6 January 1750).

58 Ibid.

59 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13b, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (29 August 1744).

60 NU, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson, Cavendish Lodge (20 June 1750) and Welbeck (2 June 1750).

61 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (21 January 1747).?

62 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (19 September 1749); BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (23 June 1745).

63 NU, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson, Welbeck (29 June 1751).

64 Goodwin, ‘Edward Harley’, pp. 394-96.

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72 BL, Add. MS 70432, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (21 January 1747).

73 BL, Add. MS 70432, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (17 September 1743)

74 Goulding, ‘Henrietta’, p. 9.

75 Delaney, , Autobiography, in, pp. 437–38.Google Scholar

76 See in particular Turberville, Welbeck Abbey, and Smith, ‘Lady Oxford’. See also David J. Bradbury, Welbeck Abbey, Treasures (Mansfield, 1986), and Lucy Worsley, "'A Habitation not so magnificent as useful": Life at Welbeck Abbey in the Seventeenth Century’, The Transactions of the Thornton Society of Nottinghamshire, 107 (2004), pp. 123-43.

77 BL, Add. MS 70431, folder 1, Marquis of Titchfield to Henrietta (20 January 1756).

78 NA, DD5P.6/1/1.

79 NA, DD5P.6/1/1, payments to John James 16 December 1742 to 26 February 1746.

80 NU, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson, Welbeck (22 December 1750).

81 Goulding, ‘Henrietta’, p. 34.

82 NU, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson, Welbeck (2 October 1751).

83 Delaney, Autobiography, 111, p. 436.

84 Ibid., p. 436.

85 NA, DDP5.6/26/11 (1749), and DDP5.6/26/19 (1750).

86 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13b, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (25 April 1747).

87 Delaney, , Autobiography, III, pp. 437–38.Google Scholar

88 NU, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson, Welbeck (28th July 1753).

89 NA, DDP5.6/26/26, Robert Birch’s bill (14 December 1750).

90 NU, Pw F, 4732-4768, Henrietta to her grandson the Marquis of Titchfield, Welbeck (21 September 1748).

91 Smith, ‘Lady Oxford’, p. 137.

92 Walpole, Letters, III, pp. 447-48; Lucy Worsley, ‘Bolsover Castle in the Eighteenth Century’, The Georgian Group Journal, 12 (2001), pp. 169-84.

93 For example, Michael McCarthy, The Origins of the Gothic Revival (New Haven and London, 1987); Summerson, Architecture, pp. 368-69; Giles Worsley, ‘What’s in a "K"?’, Country Life, 188 (1994), pp. 74-77; it was the subject of the Georgian Group’s annual symposium in 2000, see Gothic Architecture and its Meanings, 1330-1830, ed. Michael Hall (Reading, 2002).

94 Brooks, Chris, The Gothic Revival (London, 1999), pp. 59, 82.Google Scholar

95 BL, Add. MS 70432, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Dover Street (7 June 1744).

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100 Lees-Milne, James, Earls of Creation Five Great Patrons of Eighteenth Century Art (London, 1962; New Penguin edition, 2001), p. 210.Google Scholar

101 NU, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson the Marquis of Titchfield, Welbeck (7 January 1749) and Cavendish Lodge (5 August 1749).

102 Crook, David, ‘Clipstone Park and “Peel”’ Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, 80 (1976), pp. 35–46.Google Scholar

103 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (21 January 1747).

104 NU, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson (24 October 1753).

105 NU, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson (1 August 1752).

106 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (21 January 1747).

107 BL Add MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Welbeck (21 January 1747); Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Cavendish Lodge (2 August 1749).

108 NU, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson the Marquis of Titchfield, Welbeck (30 December 1747); NA DD5P.2/12/2, accounts for postboy (1751-52).

109 NU, Pw F, 4732-68, Henrietta to her grandson the Marquis of Titchfield, Welbeck (21 September 1748).

110 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Cavendish Lodge (2 August 1749).

111 Delaney, Autobiography, in, p. 383; Chester, Westminster, p. 389.

112 Clifford, Diaries.

113 BL, Add. MS 70432, Misc. 13c, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (17 October 1747); Misc. 13a, draft letter from Henrietta to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Dover Street (7 June 1740).

114 Anon., , A serious PROPOSAL to the Ladies, For the Advancement of their true and greatest Interest. By a Lover of her SEX (London, 1694), p. 27.Google Scholar