Mary Watson-Wentworth, Marchioness of Rockingham

British noblewoman

Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham

(m.

Thomas Bright
Margaret Norton

Mary Watson-Wentworth, Marchioness of Rockingham (née Liddell, later Bright; 1735 – 19 December 1804)^[1] was the wife of Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, who was prime minister of Great Britain in 1782 and again from 1765 to 1766.

Early life

Born c. 1735 in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England, she was the only child and heiress of Thomas Liddell, Lord of the Manor of Ecclesall, South Yorkshire, and Margaret Norton.^[1] She was baptized at Ackworth, West Yorkshire, on 27 August 1735. She and her father were both born with the surname Liddell, but her father took the surname Bright when he inherited Badsworth Hall from his father John Bright.^[2]

Marriage

On 26 February, 1752, Lady Liddell married Whig politician Charles Watson-Wentworth.^[1] They were married until Watson-Wentworth's death on 1 July 1782.

She was acknowledged as a skilled politician by contemporaries, with opposition party members sometimes directing their letters straight to her.^[3] She was described by herself and others as Rockingham’s "secretary", but Rockingham called her "My Minerva at my elbow."^[4] After Rockingham’s death, her correspondent Edmund Burke wrote to her, "Your Names indeed ought to go down together; for it is no mean part you have had in the great services which that great and good man has done to his Country."^[5]

Lady Rockingham was the owner of Rockingham Mantua, a silk satin mantua brocaded in silver thread with silver lace trim. It is thought that the Mantua was part of a matching set with her husband. Lady Rockingham mentioned the sets in her letters "Lord Stormont says being in your dress is quite bourgeois, but I hope you will approve of it, I shall take it monstrous if you don't, for I mean it as a compliment to you".

The widowed Lady Rockingham settled at Hillingdon House, Middlesex, in 1785, where she died in 1804 and was buried with her husband at York Minster.^[3]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage. Vol. 3 (107 ed.). Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd. p. 3288. ISBN 978-0971196629.
^ "Bright of Badsworth and Carbrook Hall". Archived from the original on 2008-05-11.
^ ^a ^b "Wentworth, Mary Watson- [née Mary Bright], marchioness of Rockingham (bap. 1735, d. 1804), political wife". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/68349. Retrieved 2023-11-25. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ Chalus, E (1998) '"'My Minerva' at my elbow" - the political roles of women in 18th-century England.' In: Taylor, S, Connors, R and Jones, C, eds. Hanoverian Britain and empire: essays in memory of Philip Lawson. Boydell Press, Suffolk. ISBN 0851157203. p. 227.
^ The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. T. W. Copeland and others, 10 vols. (1958–78), 5.46.