Anne Cecil, Countess of Salisbury

  • The Right Honourable
  • The Countess of Sailsbury
Born(1693-08-09)9 August 1693
Died22 March 1757(1757-03-22) (aged 63)
Spouse(s)
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(m. 1709; died 1728)​
Issue
Parents

Anne Cecil, Countess of Salisbury (9 August 1693 – 22 March 1757),[1][2] formerly Lady Anne Tufton, was the wife of James Cecil, 5th Earl of Salisbury.

She was the daughter of Thomas Tufton, 6th Earl of Thanet, and his wife, the former Lady Catharine Cavendish.[3] She and her elder sister Catherine (later Viscountess Sondes) were friendly with Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, whose poem "A Nocturnal Reverie" praises Anne.[4] Anne was known to Anne Finch by the poetic pseudonym, "Lamira".[5]

On 12 February 1709, Anne married the earl, who had succeeded his father in the earldom in 1694. They had four children:[3]

The earl died in October 1728, aged 37, and was succeeded by their only son, James.

Anne's youngest daughter, Margaret, died in 1752 of smallpox, at the home of her eldest daughter, Catherine, Countess of Egmont, in Pall Mall, London. Another daughter, Anne, died later in the same year.[2]

The Countess Anne school in Hatfield, founded in 1735, was named after the countess, but the original charity school closed in 1912, to be replaced by the current Church of England school.[6]

  1. ^ Samuel Johnson (16 February 2006). Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets. OUP Oxford. pp. 627–. ISBN 978-0-19-928482-5.
  2. ^ a b Egerton Brydges (1812). Collins' peerage of England. pp. 494–.
  3. ^ a b Charles Mosley, editor. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 1, page 1064-1065
  4. ^ Barbara McGovern (1992). Anne Finch and Her Poetry: A Critical Biography. University of Georgia Press. pp. 111–. ISBN 978-0-8203-1410-5.
  5. ^ Anne Kingsmill Finch Countess of Winchilsea (1998). The Anne Finch Wellesley Manuscript Poems. University of Georgia Press. pp. 152–. ISBN 978-0-8203-1995-7.
  6. ^ Christine Martindale. "COUNTESS ANNE SCHOOL". Our Hatfield. Retrieved 4 March 2018.