Mary (Dudley) Sutton, Countess of Home


Mary Sutton, Countess of Home, was a landowner and patron of the arts, living in England and Scotland.

Early years and marriage

Mary Sutton was the eldest daughter of Edward Sutton, 5th Baron Dudley and his wife Theodosia Harington, youngest daughter of Sir James Harington. The title "Dudley" and surname "Sutton" were interchangeable.
Little is known of her childhood, and there were problems in the family because her father had abandoned her mother for Elizabeth Tomlinson. In 1597 her younger brother Ferdinando and her sister Anne were lodged in Clerkenwell, as wards of their aunt Elizabeth Harington and uncle Edward Montagu of Boughton. Lady Anne Clifford described Mary as a childhood companion, "my old companion" and "my old acquaintance", and said their mothers had been friends.
Her sister Anne Dudley married Hans Meinhard von Schönberg and was the mother of Friedrich Hermann von Schönberg. She was a lady in waiting to Elizabeth of Bohemia, as was her cousin Elizabeth Dudley, Countess of Löwenstein, daughter of her uncle John Dudley, both appointed to the royal household because of their Harington family connection. Her youngest sister, Margaret married a Miles Hobart whose identity is unclear, in later years Theodosia Dudley moved to Norwich to be near Margaret.
On 11 July 1605 Mary married the wealthy Scottish widower Alexander Home, 1st Earl of Home, a marriage perhaps arranged by James VI and I and intended to effect the Anglicization of Scottish aristocracy. The newly created title of Earl of Home was counted in 1605 as a title in the English peerage. They had a historical connection, her grandfather Edward Sutton, 4th Baron Dudley had been the keeper of Hume Castle in the Scottish borders which he had captured from Alexander Home's grandmother, Mariotta Haliburton in 1548. For King James's arrival at Dunglass Castle in 1617 David Hume of Godscroft wrote a Latin verse which contrasted Mary's rebuilding of the earl's houses with the destruction wrought by her grandfather during the war of the Rough Wooing. At the time of her marriage, the king gave her an annual pension of £300, which she resigned in 1617.
She still travelled to London from time to time. In June 1616 Anne Clifford recorded meeting her at the house of her cousin Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford.

Life as a widow

Alexander, Earl of Home died in London in a house in Channel Row on 5 April 1619. Anne Clifford and the Countess of Bedford visited Lady Home there on 19 April. Lady Home was left wealthy, but she had to defend her young son's rights as Earl of Home. She disputed the ownership of lands of Coldingham Priory, and particularly the Northfield of Coldingham and the teinds of Auldcambus and Fast Castle, with Francis and John Stewart, sons of Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell before the Privy Council of Scotland in 1620 and the issue continued in following years with interventions from James I and Charles I.
Abraham Hume, a recent graduate of St Andrews University, was her chaplain around the year 1630, and he is said to have composed "remarks" objecting to London life and public affairs based on his experience of the Caroline court with his patron. Hume was subsequently chaplain to her son-in-law, John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale, then called Lord Maitland, and accompanied him on a Grand Tour.
The Countess of Home employed the lawyer Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall and he recorded some details of her business in his diary. On Tuesday 1 April 1634 she came to his lodging in Edinburgh with her family, the Earl of Lauderdale, John, Lord Maitland, James, Lord Doune and his wife, her daughter Margaret Lady Doune. They offered him 2,000 merks as an inducement in a legal process. Hope noted that she spoke to him first apart from the others, but offered £2,000 Scots as if she were unfamiliar with Scottish money.

Many sundry particular things

Mary maintained houses in London and in Edinburgh, employing Nicholas Stone and Isaac de Caus to work on her house in Aldersgate, which was later known as Lauderdale House. She built a summerhouse at Twickenham Park. In Edinburgh she rebuilt the house in the Canongate now called Moray House, employing the master mason William Wallace. She set out a garden with terraces, mount, walks and wilderness, with two summerhouses. In February 1633, the Earl of Morton obtained her permission for the house to be at the disposal of Charles I during his visit and coronation in Scotland, but the plan was cancelled due to the death of her son.
' at Highgate in 1640
She kept detailed inventories of her houses which record purchases made in London, including beds, tapestries, books, some at Donibristle, distilling equipment, loadstones, telescopes, a weather glass, bronzes by Francesco Fanelli, and paintings some bought from George Geldorp others from the New Exchange, many with religious subjects including the Nativity and Christ and the Samaritan Woman''. She also acquired items with Harrington knot heraldry from the sale of the effects of her cousin the Countess of Bedford. These inventories include notes she wrote for her housekeepers and their written replies which form short dialogues. Lady Home wrote of an unsatisfactory inventory that it "has byn wildely tacken in & are no way to bee trusted tow for comparein them with my own little book. I find in some roomes that neather in theare notes of what they say wants nor in that they say restes will bothe make up togeather which is sayde to bee in my booke of maney sondre partikeulor thinges."

Nicholas Stone

In 1638 she discussed the design of a tomb in white and black marble for her family to be built at Dunglass with Nicolas Stone in person at his workshop in Long Acre, which was not executed. Dunglass Castle was destroyed by an explosion in August 1640 and among the fifty two dead was John White, an English plasterer who also worked for her at The Hirsel, and at Winton House for George Seton, 3rd Earl of Winton. She sold Twickenham Park that year and bought a house at Highgate, now called Lauderdale House.

Family and Legacy

In May 1622 at Whitehall Palace her son James, Earl of Home, married Catherine Cary daughter of Henry Cary, 1st Viscount Falkland and Elizabeth Cary née Tanfield. John Chamberlain noted that the marriage had been arranged by the king. In Scotland, before the wedding, following the king's instructions, the lawyer Thomas Haddington convened a meeting of the six lairds of the Home surname to tell them about the marriage plans. They promised to help the earl, but had reservations, hoping that Lady Home would "make her intentions and courses known to them" and she would "hear and respect their faithful advice" concerning the earl, and if she neglected to consult them, they could have "no contentment in the business."
After Catherine's death in childbirth in 1625, James married Grace Fane, daughter of Francis Fane, 1st Earl of Westmorland. James still had legal guardians called "curators" including the Earl Marischal, the Earl of Morton, and Sir Robert Kerr of Ancram, a gentleman in the king's bedchamber. Mary wrote to Morton for help over dowry payments, wanting an installment of £1000 Sterling cash sent to her in Scotland rather than allow the Earl of Westmorland to invest the money in a project in England and buy land. She hoped the rest of the curators would agree with her, deferring to their "wiser judgements" but insisting "I will bee the last consentor to such a bisnes". She wanted the cash for dowries for her daughters.
Mary Fane, Countess of Westmorland wrote letters to her daughter Grace in Scotland solicitous of her health, including passages in cipher, one referring to loss of her hair through illness. She hoped Grace would come to London to take her sisters to see the masques at court in 1631, Love's Triumph Through Callipolis and Chloridia. James died in London in February 1633, and Grace died soon afterwards at Apethorpe. The two countesses continued a bitter lawsuit over their children's properties. The earldom passed to a distant cousin James Home, 3rd Earl of Home. Mary wrote to Sir David Home of Wedderburn from Aldersgate after James' death about the future of the Home family, name, and "ancient raice", asking him to "express your love both to the living and to the dead".
Patrick Hannay dedicated to Mary's eldest daughter Margaret Home, who married James Stewart, 4th Earl of Moray in 1628. Hannay's title refers to Sir Thomas Overbury.
In 1632 Mary's younger daughter Anne married John Maitland later Duke of Lauderdale.

Lady Home's will

Mary made a will in 1638 reflecting her English and Scottish properties and identity. She hoped her granddaughters would inherit her furnishings and collection, dividing house contents in London and Scotland between them, according to the inventories of each house. She was aware that was problematic writing, "And I am not ignorant that my houses both in Edinborough as Canongate and in Aldersgate Street being inheritance I cannot dispose so of them by this my late will neither by the laws of England nor Scotland". Amongst personal bequests to her family and servants, she left a purse of gold coins to her nephew, Frederick Schomberg, 1st Duke of Schomberg, the son of her sister Anne. The will appointed her granddaughter Lady Mary Stewart as executor, but she was still a minor when the countess died in London in March 1644. Her daughters and their husbands instead acted as executors.

The will and the Commonwealth

In 1648 Lauderdale's share of her possessions and furniture in London was forfeited by his delinquency and given to John Ireton and William Geere. Claims that the furnishings belonged to his daughter or had been sold to a Scottish merchant in London, Robert English, were disregarded. Some goods at Aldersgate were sold in October 1648. It also came to light that Mary had lent £2,000 to the Earl of Cleveland and obtained property in Hackney and Stepney, and £1000 to Elizabeth Ashfield, a neighbour in Aldersgate, gaining her lands at North Barsteed in Suffolk. A challenge to the administration of the will by a third-party William Dudley, demonstrating that goods belonged not to Lauderdale but to his daughter, and that the executors had not been lawfully appointed, failed in 1658. Lauderdale was enabled to recover his property at the Restoration. It is due to the complexities of dividing her goods and this legal battle that her inventories survive to give a unique insight into the material culture of Anglo-Scottish aristocrat in the 1630s. The inventories include a set of portraits after Van Dyck now at Darnaway Castle.

Children

Lady Home had seven children, all of whom were born in Scotland attended by Mrs Cuthbert, an English midwife. Three reached adulthood; James, Margaret and Anne. One child was born in Scotland in October 1612. Anne of Denmark sent instructions to the chamberlain of her Dunfermline estates, Henry Wardlaw of Pitreavie, to distribute presents of money at the christening, and Ann Hay, Lady Winton was to be her representative. Three children of Mary, Countess of Home survived to adulthood: