ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

  Fulwar Craven, fourth Baron Craven, portrait by James Latham c.1740.      Fulwar Craven, fourth Baron Craven of Hamstead Marshall, was born in about 1701. The exact date is unknown. Nobody expected him to succeed to a peerage so they don't seem to have kept a record. He was the second son of William Craven, 2nd Baron Craven and his wife Elizabeth née Skipwith, who died in childbirth on 16th May 1704, so this may be Fulwar's date of birth, unless she was giving birth to another child, who also died. ¹     Fulwar got his rather unusual name from his mother's side of the family. Her father had been named Humberston Skipwith, and his father had been Fulwar Skipwith. The Skipworth family seat was at Newbold Hall in Warwickshire, not far from Coombe Abbey.      Fulwar was extremely fond of racing, and hunting on his Berkshire estates at Hamstead Marshall and Ashdown Park. He was a typical Tallyho country squire, always in the saddle. He kept his own stud of racehorses and set

                              Newsletter of the Elizabeth Craven Society 2023     We await news about the future of 16, Charles Street, the former Mayfair home of the Craven family from the 18th to the 20th century. There have been many objections raised to the plan to turn it into a large-scale restaurant, particularly to proposals to alter the front and other parts of the structure. We hope that English Heritage, which has been alerted, is now taking appropriate action.           16, Charles Street, Mayfair, once home of Elizabeth Craven      Publications.     Clive Williams' book The Cravens is the most significant recent publication, and it has been separately reviewed on this site.      In academic circles , it is Elizabeth Craven's travelogue that has received most critical attention. An essay by A.Ö.Çalik et al "The Cultural Heritage of Ottoman Anatolia Through the Eyes of Female Traveller" that mentions Craven among other female travellers to Constantinople

       Elizabeth Craven's remarkable novel  The Witch and the Maid of Honour is concerned with witch-hunting in the reign of King James I. She obviously felt very strongly about the evils of witch-hunting and superstition. And curiously enough, a genealogical chart shows that she was descended from Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Duchess of Bedford, who was arraigned for witchcraft in the reign of Edward IV. Jacquetta is one of the most famous "witches" in English history, although it was undoubtedly because of political rivalry that she faced these charges.          Jacquetta was the daughter of Pierre de Luxembourg, Count of St Pol, one of the ancient nobility of Burgundy, whose family was related to the Emperor and descended from monarchs of England too. In the reign of Henry VI, his uncle Prince John, Duke of Bedford was sent to act as Regent of France. On the death of his first wife, he married the young Jacquetta, and two years later died childless, leaving her all his pos