Slashed sleeves. Brown mantle.
No. 5.
MARY CLAVERING, WIFE TO THE FIRST EARL, LORD CHANCELLOR COWPER.
Yellow satin gown. Holding a book. Fountain in the background.
BORN 1635, DIED 1724.
By Sir Godfrey Kneller.
THE daughter of John Clavering, Esquire of Chopwell, county Durham, a younger branch of an ancient Northumbrian family, all Jacobite in their tendencies. Mary Clavering and William Cowper became acquainted in consequence of some law transactions, on which she had occasion to consult him at his chambers. Their marriage took place shortly after he was appointed Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. ‘The wooing was not long a-doing;’ but it was far from being calm or uninterrupted in its progress; and though Lady Cowper’s Diary, from which most of our materials are taken, does not commence till 1714, when she began her Court life, yet she goes back several years to tell us how many adverse influences were at work to prevent the union, which proved so well assorted. How my Lord, being a widower when the Queen gave him the Seals, it was no wonder (particularly as he was still young and very handsome) that the young women laid out all their snares to catch him. Lady Harriet de Vere especially marked him as her prey. This lady, daughter of the last Earl of Oxford of that family, was very poor, and of a damaged reputation. She had made several advances to my Lord through her kinswoman, Mrs. Morley, but finding nothing come of it, set a spy on his actions, and dogged his steps to find out the cause of this coldness, which turned out to be no other than pretty Mistress Mary Clavering; upon which a clandestine correspondence was begun,—letters purporting to be from some great personage, and threatening him with the ruin of his official prospects if he married the lady in question. The first letter came the day before the marriage; but as the union was kept a secret, the plotters still continued to prosecute their schemes. ‘And so for months my Lord had a letter of whole sheets every day to tell him I was a mean wretch and a coquette, and the like, and how that one night the Lord Wharton (a noted profligate) had said to my Lord Dorchester at the theatre, “Now let us go and hear Molly Clavering sing the opera all over again.” Which was a lie, for I never did play in any public company, but only at home when visitors asked me.’ Some time afterwards the Lord Keeper agreed to accompany one Mrs. Weedon (who said she had a fine lady to recommend to him), in order to discover who his clandestine correspondents were, and found his suspicions confirmed, for Lady Harriet de Vere and Mistress Kirke were the very ladies who waylaid and ogled him whenever he came out of chapel. Lady Harriet was full of ‘airs and graces,’ which were of no avail. She told Lord Cowper that the Queen was very anxious she should be married, and had promised to give her a dowry of £100,000, upon which the gentleman replied, on that score he durst not presume to marry her, as he had not an estate to make a settlement answerable to so large a fortune. At length they pressed him so hard, he was forced to confess he was already married, and that, in spite of all their abuse, he could only find one fault in his wife, and that was that she played the harpsichord better than any other woman in England. Now Lady Cowper says she never would have told this story had she not thought it incumbent upon her to do so, when the Duchess of St. Albans (Lady Harriet de Vere’s sister) recommended Mrs. Kirke as a fit person to be bedchamber woman to the Princess of Wales. For some reason, public or private, perhaps a combination, the Lord Keeper kept his marriage a secret at first. In one of his letters to his wife (with whom he kept up a brisk and affectionate correspondence) he says: ‘December, 1706. I am going to visit my mother, and shall begin to prepare her for what I hope she must know in a little time.’ In another letter he gives an account of a cold, dark journey, and how his only consolation was to think her journey was shorter, and by day-light, so that he was not in fear for what he was most concerned for.
In answer to her declaring she disliked grand speeches, he agrees, and thinks the truest love and highest esteem are able to give undeniable proofs of themselves; therefore he shall depend for ever on making love to her that way. A little later he writes playfully about the lady he has carried into the country (presumed to be a fat old housekeeper); and hopes that the picture of his ‘dear life’ may soon be finished, so as to console him in some measure in his next banishment. He begs her not to imagine from anything that may look a little trifling or cheerful in his letters, that his mind is constantly in that tune: ‘’Tis only when I enjoy this half conversation with you, who, I assure you, are the only satisfaction that I propose to my hopes in this life.’ Again, he cannot go to rest without expressing his concern and amazement at her collecting ‘so much disquiet from so harmless a passage,—’tis my want of skill, if it was not the language of a lover.’ He writes at great length to dispel his dear love’s ‘melancholy fancy,’ and values no prospect in life as the continuance of her favour, and the unspeakable satisfaction he shall ever derive from doing her all the good in his power; and so on.