ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

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...