Lady Elizabeth Howard, Lady Felton (1656-1681)

Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680) and Studio. Oil painting on canvas, Lady Elizabeth Howard, Lady Felton (1656-1681) by Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680) and Studio, inscribed bottom right, in large gold cursive script: The Lady Elizabeth / Felton Mother to the / Countess of Bristol. A three-quarter-length portrait of a young woman, standing in a landscape, head turned slightly to the left, gazing at the spectator, her left arm resting on her cloak on a rock, wearing a low-cut white chemise and amber dress. A rich blue mantle is draped over her left arm and around her back held by brown strap across her left shoulder. She has short, very curly brown hair with one long ringlet falling on her left shoulder.Muted brown background of trees and rocks with distant view to the left. The sitter was the daughter and co-heir of James Howard, 3rd Earl of Suffolk and 3rd Baron Howard de Walden (1619-1688/9), by the second of his three marriages, to Barbara Villiers (†1681), widow of the Hon. Richard Wenman. In 1676 she married the later Sir Thomas Felton 4th Bt, of Playford, Suffolk, Controller of the Queen’s Household. Her only child, Elizabeth Felton, married John Hervey, later 1st Earl of Bristol (1665-1751), as his second wife, in 1695. It was through her that, after the abeyance of the Howard deWalden barony had been terminated in favour of her elder half-sister’s descendant, John Griffin Griffin, Lord Braybrooke (1719-1797) in 1784, but had become extinct in his line with the death of his sister in 1797, it devolved onto the Earl-Bishop, and from him to Charles Augustus Ellis, the grandson of his eldest son, John Augustus, Lord Hervey, and thus to the present holder of the title. Elizabeth’s father was Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Charles II, and his wife was Mistress of the Robes to and Groomess of the Stool to Catherine of Braganza, so the Court was clearly going to be her destiny – particularly once she showed signs of becoming a ‘Beauty’. In the spring of 1673 she was chosen to speak the prologue in the Court production of the Empress of Morocco, and in July 1675 she eloped with Thomas Felton, then just a Groom of the Bedchamber. It does not seem to have done either of their careers any harm, as he rose to become Comptroller of the Queen’s Household, and she became free to have a series of affairs with leading courtiers, including the poet-Earl of Rochester (who refers to her in a number of his poems – though ‘Rochester’s Farewell’, in which “Betty Felton” is characterised as “whore of honor” to the “queen of lust”, the duchesse de Mazarin, is now not thought to have been written by him), Francis Newport, and possibly the Duke of Monmouth, who certainly commissioned from Benedetto Gennari the provocative portrait of her as Cleopatra with the Pearl now at Kingston Lacy (significantly, a guise in which the duchesse de Mazarin was also painted) - [This biography is heavily indebted to exh. cat. Painted ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II, NPG & Yale Centre, 2001-2, cat.p.79 & p.242]. Ickworth, Suffolk (Accredited Museum)