Dorothy Spencer, Countess of Sunderland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dorothy Spencer, Countess of Sunderland (October 5, 1617 - February 5, 1684), was the wife of Henry Spencer, 1st Earl of Sunderland and the daughter of Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester.

In about 1635, she rejected a proposal of marriage from the poet Edmund Waller, who addressed verses to her under the name of "Sacharissa". In 1639, she married Henry Spencer, and he was created 1st Earl of Sunderland in 1643, in recognition of his service to the king in the English Civil War. He was killed at the First Battle of Newbury shortly afterwards, leaving Dorothy with two children, and pregnant with a third, who died in infancy. The two surviving children were:

• Lady Dorothy Spencer
• Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland

The widowed countess lived at Brington, Northamptonshire, but eventually returned to live with her parents at Penshurst Place in Kent. In 1652 she remarried, to Robert Smith or Smythe.

[edit] Bibliography

Sacharissa; some account of Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland, her family and friends, 1617-1684 by Julia Mary Cartwright Ady (1926)