ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

  Like many other great English families, in the late nineteenth century the Cravens were strapped for cash. Running numerous stately homes and mixing in London society had become ruinously expensive, particularly after the ambitious building projects of the third Earl. So the fourth Earl decided to follow the trend and in 1893 he married an American heiress, which was the obvious solution. Cornelia Martin, 1877-1961.     The Martins, an  immensely wealthy family of New York bankers, bought an an estate in Scotland where in the early 1890s they met William George Robert Craven, the fourth Earl, and introduced him to their daughter Cornelia. With no discouragement from her parents, he  proposed to Cornelia and married her in 1893 when he was twenty-four, and she was only sixteen.       Cornelia entered London society, where other American heiresses such as Lady Randolph Churchill and the Duchess of Marlborough, took a leading rôle. With he...

DR671/56 Jane Austen is listed as receiving jewellery after the death of Mary Leigh in 1806 This document from the archives of Stoneleigh Abbey is a page from the Will of the Hon. Mary Leigh who died in 1806, listing the names of female relatives to whom she left small bequests of jewellry. On the left hand side are listed "Miss Austen" and "Miss Jane Austen" - that is, the novelist and her elder sister Cassandra. On the right hand page we find the names of three of the daughters of Elizabeth Craven, the writer who was at one time married to the 6th Lord Craven. The married daughters are "The Countess of Sefton" and "The honourable Mrs St. John" while the unmarried Georgiana is "The honourable Miss Craven". Both the Cravens and the Austen family were related to the Leigh family, and so they are mentioned side by side in this list of beneficiaries. This common link was one of several connections Jane Austen had with the family of Elizabe...

  Maria Johnstone was the niece of William, 6th Baron Craven, Elizabeth Craven's husband, so she was the writer's niece by marriage. Several watercolour paintings by her of Coombe Abbey and its surroundings are preserved in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry.  They give a vivid picture of the house as it was in 1797, before the ambitious alterations of later generations. Seen at this distance and from this angle, it merges into one harmonious whole, with the Georgian wings on the left and the Tudor  and Stuart buildings visible on the right, unified by being in stone of the same colour. A few sheep graze peacefully in the foreground.  Coombe Abbey was by this time owned by Elizabeth Craven's son, the next Lord Craven, who was too busy on active service during the war to spend much time there.  Maria Johnstone was aged twenty when she did these paintings. Her father, the Rev. Robert Augustus Johnstone, had married Anna Rebecca Craven in 1773, and M...

Since most public places in the UK are still not open because of the quarantine restrictions, try taking a virtual tour of some of the gorgeous places you would like to visit. Here are some pictures of Coombe Abbey, in Warwickshire, once the ancestral home of the Craven family. Elizabeth Craven spent a lot of time there while she was married to William, 6th Baron Craven. The house was owned by the Craven family until the 20th century, when it became a hotel. The house was built out of the remains of a mediaeval monastery, and as you approach the front entrance you see the oldest parts of the building. There are one or two Gothic style windows still remaining in the Tudor structure. This central courtyard combines Tudor and Jacobean features. It is on the site of the quadrangle of the original monastery, and some vestiges of this remain here and there, well covered in ivy.  On the Eastern side of the house, the architecture changes dramatically, morphing into a...

The Witch and the Maid of Honour is a two-volume novel published privately and anonymously in London in 1799. It has a dedication to the Maids of Honour, signed "the Old Woman". To THE MAIDS OF HONOUR. LADIES, The writer of the following trifle requests the honour of presenting to you the History of a Lady who formerly held the same exalted situation that you hold now. Permit Isabella Markham to solicit your patronage for the Author, who has the honour of being,                          With great respect,                                         Your obedient humble Servant,                                                                   ...