ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

If you go to Hamstead Marshall, near Newbury, in Berkshire, you will see a pair of enigmatic gateposts standing in the middle of what looks like open farmland. They lead nowhere, and the effect is surreal. There are seven other pairs of gateposts of similar style in the locality, giving a clue to the existence of a now-vanished house and park. In fact there have been many buildings on this site, including a mediaeval castle. The name comes from the Marshall family who owned it in the reign of Henry II. In 1550, Edward VI gave the estate to his sister, the young Princess Elizabeth.  There are some scandalous rumours that the Tudor house was a hiding-place for a secret love-child the Queen bore in her youth, but this is probably legend. Elizabeth I when a Princess   c.1546. Did she have a secret love-child  at Hampstead Marshall? After she came to the throne, the Queen gave Hamstead to  Sir Thomas Parry, formerly her bursar, who built a new reside...

Elizabeth Craven lived in France just before the French Revolution of 1789 and visited it several times at the height of the Revolution and during the Napoleonic period. She met Napoleon, and knew many people who were closely bound up in the tumultuous events of that time. Wherever she went she  had her ear to the ground for new and important ideas, and enjoyed intellectual stimulation. If she thought ideas were extreme or absurd, she  seized on them with mockery and u sed them in her comedies. This is the title page of one of her most remarkable works, a play written in 1790. To find out more about Elizabeth Craven and her writings, read: Vernon Press - Elizabeth Craven: Writer, Feminist and European ... https://vernonpress.com/title?id=334 23 Jun 2017 -  Elizabeth Craven's  fascinating life was full of travel, love-affairs and scandals but this biography, the first to appear for a century, is the only one ... To read the full t...

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 o...