Frances Waldegrave

Frances Elizabeth Anne Waldegrave, Countess Waldegrave (4 January 1821 – 5 July 1879), was the daughter of John Braham, the singer, and a noted society heiress. Life Frances was born in London on 4 January 1821. She married, on 25 May 1839, John James Waldegrave (illegitimate son of John Waldegrave, 6th Earl Waldegrave) of Navestock, Essex, who died in the same year. She married secondly, on 28 September 1840, his younger legitimate brother, George Edward, 7th Earl Waldegrave. After the marriage her husband was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for assault. During his detention she lived with him in the Queen's Bench prison, and on his release they retired into the country. On the death of Lord Waldegrave on 28 September 1846, she found herself possessed of the whole of the Waldegrave estates (including residences at Strawberry Hill, Chewton in Somerset, and Dudbrook in Essex), but with little knowledge of the world to guide her conduct. In this position she entered for a third time into matrimony, marrying on 30 September 1847 George Granville Harcourt of Nuneham and Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire. Her third husband, who was a widower and her senior by thirty-six years (being sixty-two at the date of the marriage, while she was only twenty-six), was the eldest son of Edward Harcourt, Archbishop of York, and a follower of Peel, whom he supported in Parliament as member for Oxfordshire.