Mary CLAVERING [12685]

  General Notes:

Mary Countess Cowper.
Mary married William 1st Earl in 1706, the marriage was kept secret some months. The first letter she wrote to her husband after the marriage bears the following endorsement by him: "first letter received from my wife, having been privately married to her without consummation, by which it appears I judged rightly on her understanding; I hope also of her other good qualities; I was not introduced to the choice by any ungovernable desires; but I very coolly and deliberately thought her the fittest wife to entertain me and to live as I might when reduced to a private condition, with which a person of great estate would hardly have been contented" etc.
She seems to have been a lady of considerable attractions, intelligence and accomplishments. On the accession of George I she was appointed a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales with whom she had corresponded for some years, and whose confident she became. Though of a Jacobite family, she ardently espoused her husband's political principles. On entering the Royal household she began to keep a diary it consisted of 2 fragments, 1st covering period between October 1714 and October 1716, the 2nd being the record of little more than 2 months in April and May 1720, during which negotiations for the reconciliation of the King and Prince of Wales were in progress. The records of intermediate and subsequent periods were destroyed by Lady Cowper in 1722 when her husband fell under suspicion of complicity in the Jacobite plot and she was apprehensive lest his house be searched. The earlier papers probably contain matter relating to the quarrel between the King and the Prince which would not have been grateful to the former. The reason for destroying the papers is not apparent, as it seems very unlikely that Cowper was really involved in the conspiracy.

Mary married Lord William COWPER 1st Earl [12627] [MRIN: 4261], son of Sir William COWPER 2nd Bt MP For Hertford [12625] and Sarah HOLLED Lady [12626], in 1706. (Lord William COWPER 1st Earl [12627] was born in 1665 and died on 10 Oct 1723 in Coln Green Panshanga.)