/IDasters ot tbe IRogal Buchbount)s 215 



beautiful, and, after the earl's death, she became the 

 wife of a country gentleman of good family and estate, 

 Thomas Savage of Elmley Castle, Worcestershire. The 

 second earl had a remarkable spouse in Anne, daughter 

 of Henry Somerset, first Duke of Beaufort, a lady of 

 very strong religious views, the authoress of Meditations 

 and Reflexio7is, Moral and Divine, who survived her 

 husband for fifty-three years, and died a nonagenarian. 

 The sixth earl excited the envy of his contemporaries 

 by carrying off from a host of rivals, Maria, the eldest 

 and loveliest of the three beautiful Gunnings, daughters 

 of a penniless Irish Squire, who owed their successful 

 marriages to the generosity of kind-hearted George 

 Ann Bellamy, who lent the poor girls clothes in which 

 to appear at a levee of the Lord-Lieutenant in Dublin 

 Castle, where their dazzling beauty set all the men 

 raving about them. Elizabeth, the second sister, was 

 married under romantic circumstances to the Duke of 

 Hamilton, at midnight, in Mayfair Chapel, with a ring 

 of the bed curtains as the wedding circlet. 



Three months later Mariabecame Countess of Coventry. 

 Lord Coventry, whom Horace Walpole describes as 'a 

 grave young lord of the remains of the patriot breed,' had 

 long dangled after the eldest Miss Gunning, and the im- 

 petuosity of the Duke of Hamilton spurred him into 

 emulation. When Lady Coventry was presented at 

 Court she created 2. furore. The King, good old George 

 HI, openly expressed his admiration of her extraordinary 

 beauty. She was mobbed wherever she went, by people 

 eager to look upon the loveliest woman of the day, 

 and, on one occasion, when she was taking her Sunday 

 walk in Hyde Park, she was so seriously crushed by 

 a reckless throng of admirers that His Majesty ordered 



