Various - Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853

Agreeing with Mr. Peter Cunningham (vide History of Nell Gwyn ), that a new edition of Grammont is much wanted, I beg to avail myself of your pages, and to offer a few remarks and notes which I have made in reference to that very entertaining work for the consideration of a future annotator.

Of the several maids of honour mentioned therein I will begin with those of the queen. They are Miss Stewart, Miss "Warminster," Miss Bellenden, Miss Bardon, Miss de la Garde, Miss Wells, Miss Livingston, Miss Fielding, and Miss Boynton.

The names of Miss Stewart (Frances Theresa), Miss Boynton (Catherine), Miss Wells (Winefred), and Miss Warmistre are found among the original six, appointed on the queen's marriage, May 21, 1662. The affiliation and marriages of the first two have been well ascertained, but Miss Warmistre's birth is yet open to some conjecture, whilst her marriage, like Miss Wells's parentage, is wholly unknown.

Horace Walpole, on the authority of the last Earl of Arran, of the Butler family, has confounded her with Mary, one of the daughters of George Kirke, Esq., a groom of the bedchamber to Charles I., by Mary his wife, daughter of Aurelian Townsend, Esq., "the admired beauty of the tymes," on whose marriage at Christ Church, Oxford, February 26, 1645-6, "the king gave her." She herself was maid of honour to the Duchess of York in 1674, and the year following left the court, we may believe, under the same circumstances as Miss Warmistre, more than ten years before, had quitted it: after being the mistress of Sir Thomas Vernon, the second Baronet of Hodnet in Shropshire, she became his wife, and ended her life in miserable circumstances at Greenwich in 1711.

"1711, 17 August, Dame Mary, relict of Sir Thomas Vernon, carried away."—Burial register of Greenwich Church.

She was sister to Diana, the last De Vere, Earl of Oxford's, countess, a lady of as free a morality as herself and as her mother, and second wife of Sir Thomas, whose first lady, Elizabeth Cholmondley, died in June, 1676. Sir Thomas died February 5, 1682-3, leaving by her three children, Sir Richard, the last baronet, Henrietta, and Diana, who all died unmarried.

A portrait of Lady Vernon, by Sir Peter Lely, has been engraved in mezzotinto by Browne, and lettered "Mary Kirk, Lady Vernon, maid of honour to Queen Catherine." Another portrait (?) has been engraved by Scheneker for Harding's Grammont , 1793. A third portrait was purchased at the Strawberry Hill sale, by Mr. Rodd of Little Newport Street, for 1 l. 5 s.

A portrait of the Countess of Oxford is or was at Mr. Drummond's of Great Stanmore. It was bequeathed to his family by Charles, first Duke of St. Alban's, who was her ladyship's son-in-law.

Of Mrs. Anne Kirke, who was "woman to the queen" Henrietta Maria, there are several portraits. Granger records:

"Madam Kirk. Vandyck p. Gaywood f. h. sh.

"Madam Anne Kirk. Vandyck p. Browne, large h. sh. mezz."

These engravings are most probably from the same painting—the fine whole-length exhibited last year among the collection of pictures by ancient masters in Pall Mall:

"Madam Kirk, sitting in a chair, Hollar, f. h. sh."

He also mentions her miniature at Burghley.

There is at Wilton a splendid painting by Vandyck of Mrs. Kirk, seated with the Countess of Morton, Lady Anne Keith, eldest daughter of George, fifth Earl Mareschal, and wife of William Douglass, seventh Earl of Morton, K.G. She was governess to the Princess Henrietta.

This painting has been engraved by Grousvelt. There is another engraving from the first-named Vandyck by Beckett.

Of Lady Vernon and her mother there is to be found mention, in the secret service expenses of Charles II. and James II., lately printed. The elder lady on her husband's death (he was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, April 5, 1679) seems to have had a pension of 250 l. per annum. The younger was the recipient, on two occasions, of 100 l. "bounty" only.

Mrs. Kirke and her daughter Diana are unfavourably alluded to by Mrs. Grace Worthley, a lady of the same class, who will not "be any longer a laughing-stock for any of Mr. Kirk's bastards" (vide letter to her cousin Lord Brandon, September 7, 1682, Diary of Henry Sidney, Earl of Romney , i. pp. xxxiii. xxxiv.). And again, the same lady, in another letter, speaks of "the common Countess of Oxford and her adulterous bastards" ( Ibid. ). Mr. Jesse's quotation from "Queries and Answers from Garraway's Coffee House" (vide The Court of the Stewarts , vol. ii. p. 366.) may be here reproduced in support of the epitaph which this angry lady has been pleased to assign the countess, who, it would seem, had robbed her, well born and well married, of her noble keeper "the handsome Sidney:"

" Q. How often has Mrs. Kirk sold her daughter Di. before the Lord of Oxford married her?

A. Ask the Prince and Harry Jermyn."

The following curious extract from one of the Heber MSS. at Hodnet has been kindly furnished me by Charles Cholmondeley, Esq., of the Ivy House, Wisbeach, co. Cambridge, to whom the MS. belongs:

"H–,

"Sir Thomas the second baronet's death is mentioned in Lady Rachael Russell's letters. His second wife was one of King Charles's Beauties, but the account in Granger of her is not correct, as it appears that she lived some time with Sir Thomas, as mistress, before their marriage. He left her in great distress, as the profits of the estate were embezzled by attorneys and stewards. The following is a copy from a letter from her to one Squibb, an attorney who had the management of the estate:

'Sir,

'When you were last here you were pleased to say that in some little time I should be payd some money. I have had with me my woman's husband y tdid serve mee about two yeares since; and hee is soe impatient for what I owe her y thee will staye noe longer. It is given me to understand I must goe to prison or paye part of w tI owe him. Things fly to a great violence, and if you thinke it will bee for the credit or advantage of my childerne y tsuch an afront should come to mee, is the question. I have nothing to depend on but w tmust come from the estate of Sir Richard Vernon. How I have been used by the trustees you are noe stranger to. I am now forced to live on charity, and I grow every day more and more weary of it. For my childern's sake I remain in England, or else I would seeke my fortune elsewhere. Pray to take this into consideration, and see w tcan be done.

'P.S.—If you can, pray doe mee y efavour to send mee by to-morrow at one of y ecloke, twenty shillings, to pay for wood, or I must sit w thoute fyer; y twill be ill for a person confined to the house.'"

It is not certain whether it is to "Mistris Kirke," Lady Vernon's mother, that Charles I. refers in his letter addressed to Colonel Whaley on the day of his escape from Hampton Court, November 11, 1647, but it is very likely to have been so. There was a Mistress (Anne) Kirke, sworn in a dresser to Queen Henrietta Maria in Easter week, 1637 (vide Strafford Papers , vol. ii. p. 73.), whose full-length portrait by Vandyke has been frequently engraved, by Browne, Garwood, Hollar, Beckett, &c.; and this lady may be the "Mrs. Anne Kirke, unfortunately drowned near London Bridge," who was buried in Westminster Abbey, July 9, 1641.

In Westminster Abbey was buried, May 23, 1640, "Mr. Kirk's daughter." Captain George Kirke married there, February 10, 1699-1700, Mary Cooke. George Kirke, Esq., died Jan. 10, 1703-4, and was buried in the abbey cloisters (Mon. Inscr.); and Mrs. Mary Kirke died December 17, 1751, and was also buried there (M. I.). We may presume that all these Kirkes were of the same family.