[BITList] Shee will runn with it

[John Feltham]

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Murray  [married names Tollemache, Maitland],  Elizabeth, duchess of Lauderdale and suo jure countess of Dysart  (bap. 1626, d. 1698), noblewoman, baptized on 28 September 1626 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, was the eldest of the five daughters of William Murray, first earl of Dysart  (d. 1655), and his wife, Catherine (d. in or after 1651), daughter of Colonel Norman Bruce. At about this time her parents moved to Ham House, near Richmond. Realizing that she was highly intelligent, her father made sure that she received an intellectual education, and she was taught philosophy, history, divinity, and mathematics as well as the more conventional domestic skills. Well-shaped and pretty, with a long, oval face and unfashionable red-gold hair, she always attracted attention and revelled in showing off her learning.

At the outbreak of the civil war in England in 1642 Lord Dysart was sent to Scotland to liaise with the royalists there, while his redoubtable wife remained at Ham to repel parliament's repeated attempts at sequestrating the property. These preoccupations prevented them from arranging marriages for their daughters, and it was not until Lady Elizabeth was in her early twenties that they finally addressed the question of her future. Her father had thoughts of marrying her to the learned but impoverished Sir Robert Moray, later one of the founders of the Royal Society, but in the end she was engaged to Sir Lionel Tollemache, bt (1624-1669), the unexceptional but extremely rich owner of estates in Suffolk and the midlands.

After the wedding in 1648 Lady Elizabeth was expected to settle down to domesticity. She did produce eleven children, including Lionel Tollemache (1649-1727), born on 30 January 1649, and Thomas Tollemache  (c.1651-1694), both later members of parliament, but a quiet life in the country was not for her. The advice which her husband later gave to their eldest son was a vivid reflection of his own experience. Wives, he said:

are but too apt to take advantage of the fondness of theire husband, and upon it growe insolent and imperious, and inclined to pervert the laws of nature by indeavouringe a superiority over the husband and if shee getts the reignes in her own hands, away shee will runn with it, you scarce ever will stopp her in the whole course of her life. (Tollemache, 63)
Dominating, energetic, sexually attractive, and ambitious, Elizabeth much preferred the role of 'the Lady of Ham House', where she held court after her mother's death in 1649; among her regular guests was Oliver Cromwell. She also claimed to have been in correspondence at this period with John Maitland, second earl of Lauderdale  (1616-1682), a presbyterian Scot with an arrogant manner, a fierce intellect, and a quick humour. According to Gilbert Burnet, who knew her later in Scotland, when Lauderdale was a prisoner after the battle of Worcester in 1651 'she made him believe he was in great danger of his life, and that she saved it by her intrigues with Cromwell', but there is no contemporary evidence for this, and Lauderdale was in no such predicament.

Lady Elizabeth's friendship with Cromwell was useful in providing a cover for her own royalist activities. In 1653 she became an active member of the secret organization known as the Sealed Knot, carrying on a coded correspondence with exiled supporters of Charles II, travelling on the continent on mysterious missions and even visiting the king himself. She inherited her father's titles on his death in 1655, becoming countess of Dysart in her own right, but she still did not halt her espionage activities. Her worried husband, who took no part in politics, asked her to give up her continental trips, but she paid no heed and in 1659 their house at Helmingham seems to have become a rallying point for royalists, who were by now rejoicing at the death of Cromwell and the visible disintegration of his son's government. In 1660 Charles II was restored, and the following year he rewarded Elizabeth with a pension of £800 a year.

Sir Lionel had never been robust. He went to France for treatment in 1668, but died in Paris in January 1669 at the age of forty-four. One of the first people to go to Ham to offer his sympathy was the earl of Lauderdale, now Charles II's powerful secretary of state for Scotland. His own wife was ill, his visits to Ham grew ever more frequent, and it was generally believed that Countess Elizabeth became his mistress at this time. Lauderdale and his wife separated, and she travelled to Paris, where he rented a house for her and paid her a large allowance on condition that she never return to Britain. Elizabeth complained to the countess of Tweeddale that people defamed 'the best of men, our good friend [Lauderdale]' and made him 'guilty of all his ladyes faults', while pitying his wife's 'tryales under his tirany'. Afraid that Countess Anna might return to Britain, she suspected 'the old mialling lady will be invited to settle at Brunstin [one of Lauderdale's Scottish properties] which I only suspect as I often do wheer my friend is concerned'  (Cripps, 89-90). Countess Anna died in Paris on 6 November 1671, sending her husband a last message to say that she retained nothing but tender memories of him despite 'the unhappy truth' that his love for her 'had suffered an interruption'  (NL Scot., MS 14414, fol. 3). Less than four months later, on 17 February 1672, Elizabeth scandalized even the relaxed court of Charles II by marrying the recently bereaved widower. On 1 May that year, Lauderdale became a duke.

In her element as the consort of a powerful man with a character as strong as her own, Elizabeth used all her influence to further his career and wherever they were-at Ham, in Edinburgh, or at Thirlestane Castle, his new Scottish residence-they lived in extravagant style. Together they set in hand an elaborate programme of improvements at Ham House, installing stuccowork ceilings, carved panelling, and rich furnishings, and they employed craftsmen from England and the Low Countries to decorate Thirlestane Castle and their other Scottish properties. As time passed there were increasing complaints about Elizabeth's greed and the corruption of Lauderdale's regime in Scotland. Finally, he fell from power after suffering a stroke in March 1680. He died at Tunbridge Wells on 24 August 1682. Genuinely grief-stricken, Elizabeth none the less plunged immediately into a long and bitter legal dispute with her brother-in-law over the payment of her husband's debts and his funeral expenses. Elderly and arthritic, she seldom left Ham in her later years, and died there on 5 June 1698. She was buried in Petersham church on 16 June.

Rosalind K. Marshall 

Sources  D. Cripps, Elizabeth of the Sealed Knot (1975) + W. C. Mackenzie, The life and times of John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale, 1616-1682 (1923) + Bishop Burnet's History of his own time, new edn, ed. G. Burnet, T. Burnet, and others, 4 vols. (1809) + W. H. Harland, Ham common and the Dysarts (1894) + Scots peerage + M. Tomlin, Ham House (1986) + E. D. H. Tollemache, The Tollemaches of Helmingham and Ham (1949) + P. Watson and B. D. Henning, 'Tollemache, Lionel', HoP, Commons, 1660-90, 3.575-6 + B. D. Henning, 'Tollemache, Hon. Thomas', HoP, Commons, 1660-90, 3.576 + BL, Add. MS 23 + Leics. RO, Tollemache papers + Ham House inventories, V&A, department of furniture and woodwork + NL Scot., MS 14414, fol. 3
Archives Darnaway Castle, Moray MSS + Leics. RO, Tollemache MSS
Likenesses  attrib. J. Carlile, group portrait, oils, c.1648, Ham House, London · P. Lely, oils, c.1648, Ham House, London [see illus.] · P. Lely, oils, 1650-54, Ham House, London · P. Lely, double portrait, oils, c.1672, Ham House, London · J. Carlile, oils, Thirlestane Castle, Berwickshire · attrib. P. Lely, oils, Buccleuch Estates, Selkirk · oils, Ham House, London · pastel, Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh
Wealth at death  considerable wealth, incl. Ham House; duke of Lauderdale had left her all his personal possessions, as well as property in Scotland