Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne

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Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore (1749 - 1800), also known as "The Unhappy Countess", was the daughter of George Bowes.

Mary Bowes was well educated for her time, and, in 1769 she published a poetical drama entitled The Siege of Jerusalem (1769). She was also a leading botanist.

She became engaged at eighteen to John Lyon, the 9th Earl of Strathmore.

As her father's will made clear that her husband should assume his wife's family name, the Earl addressed the Parliament, which approved the arrangement.

The two lived in wealth and had five children:

Her husband was often abroad and, "to amuse herself" (Marshall), she wrote her verse drama, The Siege of Jerusalem (1769). The Earl showed little interest in his wife except as a breeder of children, and she perhaps understandably took comfort elsewhere and by the time of his death was pregnant by a lover, George Gray, of whom little is otherwise known. On March 7, 1776, Lord Strathmore died at sea on his way to Portugal, from tuberculosis.

Upon her first husband's death, given their combined fortunes, Countess Bowes became one of the richest heiresses in the Kingdom of Great Britain. She had promised marriage to Gray but was seduced by an Irish adventurer, Andrew Robinson Stoney, whom she married. Stoney took his wife's surname. In order to win her heart (and her fortune), Stoney had manipulated the Countess into believing that he had fought to clear her name in the newspaper, and had even invited the newspaper's editor to a duel (which the latter lost). He had, in fact, written both the articles criticising her as well as those defending her; and the duel between Stoney and the editor was probably staged. Supposedly wounded by Parson Bates, he almost fainted at the altar during his marriage to the Countess on January 17, 1777.

Stoney Bowes (who, it was commonly supposed, had already caused the death of a previous wife, Hannah Newton, in order to obtain her inheritance) abused the Countess and attempted to relieve her of her fortune, which, however, he was largely prevented from accessing. Among other outrages he imprisoned her in her own house, and carried her and one of her daughters (by Strathmnore) off to Paris, whence they returned after a writ had been served on him.

In 1785 the Countess managed to escape his custody and filed for divorce. Stoney Bowes abducted her with the help of a gang of accomplices, carried her off to the north country, threatened to rape her, gagged and beat her, and carried her around the countryside on horseback in one of the coldest spells of the coldest winter of the century. The country was alerted, and Stoney Bowes was eventually arrested and the Countess rescued.

Several trials followed — of Stoney Bowes for abduction, and of the various men who had assisted him. The trials were sensational and the talk of London. Public sympathy was not extended to the Countess — partly because of the libels Stoney Bowes succeeded in putting about (buying a newspaper publication for the purpose) — and partly because the general apprehension was that she had behaved badly in attempting to prevent her husband's access to her fortune. There had also been an affair between her and the brother of one of the lawyers, which became public knowledge, and, Stoney Bowes alleged, an affair with her footman, George Walker. The divorce was finalised in a trial which revealed how Bowes had systematically deprived the Countess of her liberty and abused her. Stoney Bowes died in prison, on June 16, 1810.

Some years later, the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray heard Bowes' life story from the Countess' grandson, and used it in his novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon.

After 1792, the Countess lived quietly in Purbrook Park in Hampshire. She died in April 1800 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Her tombstone is in the Poets' Corner.

[edit] References

  • Arnold, Ralph, The Unhappy Countess (1957)
  • Foot, Jesse, The Lives of Andrew Robinson Bowes, Esq., and the Countess of Strathmore, written from thirty-three years professional attendance, from Letters and other well authenticated documents (1810)
  • Marshall, Rosalind K., Bowes, Mary Eleanor, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne (1749–1800), H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (eds), Oxford: OUP, 2004, 18 November 2006 ([1])
  • Parker, Derek, The Trampled Wife (2006)
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