Elizabeth Craven and her Drax Ancestors

Elizabeth Craven's mother was Elizabeth Drax, who came from an old, noble family that owned Ellerton Abbey in Yorkshire and Charborough Park in Dorset.  

Before her marriage she was one of the ladies in waiting to Augusta, Princess of Wales, mother George III, and she and her sister were considered beauties. 

The household of the Prince and Princess of Wales was an excellent place to meet the most eligible men, and in 1744 she married the 4th Earl of Berkeley.

Here she is painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1759. The painting looks as if it was done in winter time, as it shows her swathed in fur and with a silky shawl draped over her bosom. 

   Lady Berkeley was no more renowned for virtue than her daughter Elizabeth Craven. Her second husband, Robert Craggs-Nugent separated from her on grounds of infidelity. Many of her children, not only Elizabeth, led rather wild lives. As a matter of fact, so prior to his marriage did the 4th Earl of Berkeley. Well, they say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. 
  Lady Berkeley was noted for her card-parties and her pleasure-trips to Paris, where she at one time owned a house. She was also remarkable for one strange event - in 1748, two years before the birth of Elizabeth, she gave birth to triplets, all girls. The babies survived only a day, but Horace Walpole thought fit to write an ode on the subject, and wits and wags went on alluding to it for a long time afterwards.
  In 1778 and 1779, Lady Berkeley went on a prolonged trip to Italy, in the company of her daughter Lady Louisa Nugent (sometimes also known as Lady Louisa Berkeley, or simply as "Chance"). They visited Pisa, Florence where they were received by Sir Horace Mann, and the court of Naples. These were very popular destinations for upper-class English people hoping to soak up a bit of culture. Lady Berkeley's travels to Italy may have inspired her daughter Elizabeth to follow in her footsteps.
 In the last years of her life, she went blind. She died peacefully in 1792.

The handsome estate of Charborough Park in Dorset came into the Drax family with Elizabeth's mother, the heiress Elizabeth Ernle. Subsequently one of their descendants married into a family named ERLE, and ended up with the names Plunckett-Drax-Ernle-Grosvenor-Erle all hyphened together. Eventually they decided to drop everything apart from Drax, which is a name related to Drake as in Sir Francis Drake.

Charborough House has played an important part in English history. It was here that the conspirators met to agree to invite William of Orange to become King of England instead of James II.
 It also has literary connections. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) included Charborough Park and its folly tower in his novel Two on a Tower (1882), where it is called Welland House.

The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford

Volume 1

By Horace Walpole, Peter Cunningham · 1857. Shortly after the event Walpole wrote of Lady Ailesbury "always provided that she does not bring three at once, like my Lady Berkeley."3

3 On the 22nd July, 1748, the Countess of Berkeley was delivered of three daughters who died the same day.-CUNNINGHAM.

http://www.charborough.co.uk/

http://www.drakesfamily.org/id50.htm