Frances (Jennings) Talbot (1648 - 1731)

Born 1648 in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 17 Mar 1731 at about age 83 in Dublin, Ireland

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Biography

Frances Jennings was a member of the aristocracy in England.

Frances (Jennings) Talbot is Notable.

If it were not for her younger sister Sarah, Frances might be better known than she is. When a maid of honour at court she was known as "La Belle Jenyns".

Frances was born, almost certainly at Holywell House, in St. Albans in 1648 to Richard Jenyns and France Thornhurst. She was the eldest daughter, her two brothers both died young.

At the age of fifteen or sixteen she went to court to be maid of honour to Anne, Duchess of York.^[1] Within a year she had attracted the attentions of the Duke of York, the King, and several others, and was mentioned in the diary of Samuel Pepys. One of her early suiters was Richard (Dick) Talbot who ended up being her second husband.

The winner of her hand in marriage was George Hamilton, and they married in 1665. As he was a Catholic he was not, at that time, able to serve in any public position. As a result he served in the army of Louis XIV, who conferred upon him the title of Count. He died in an engagement in Alsace in 1676 and left Frances with six children. Shortly before this time she had become a Catholic, and remained in France. There she was reunited with Richard Talbot, who was then an exile in Paris, and they married in 1679.

Once James took the throne they were able to return to England and then Ireland, and both received honours; Frances was appointed lady of the Queen's bedchamber. During this period Frances found husbands for the three surviving children from her first marriage - Elizabeth, Frances and Mary. Elizabeth, born in London, married Richard Viscount Rose; Frances and Mary, both born in France, married Henry Viscount Dillon and Nicholas Viscount Kingsland, respectively.

In 1690, after the battle of the Boyne, Richard sent Frances back to France and he joined her there, at the Court of St. Germains, soon after. In January 1691 he returned to his military command in Ireland and died in Limerick in August that year.

Frances eventually returned to Ireland and spent the rest of her life in Dublin, where she died in 1731.

Sources

1. ↑ Hamilton, Anthony. Memoirs of the Count de Grammont. p237

• Piers Wauchope, ‘Talbot , Frances, duchess of Tyrconnell (1648–1731)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 8 June 2017

• Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys. London: George Bell & Sons, 1897

• Steinman, G. Steinman. Althorp memoirs. 1869. Accessed January 22, 2017. https://archive.org/stream/althorpmemoirso00steigoog#page/n18/mode/2up.

• Wolseley, Garnet Wolseley. The Life of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, to the Accession of Queen Anne, Volume 1. London: R. Bentley and son, 1894

• Diary of Samuel Pepys 21 February 1665 "What mad freaks the Mayds of Honour at Court have; that Mrs Jennings, one of the Duchesse's mayds, the other day dressed herself like an orange wench, and went up and down and cried oranges; till falling down, or by such accident, though in the evening, her fine shoes were discerned, and she put to a great deale of shame; that such as these tricks being ordinary, and worse among them, thereby few will venture upon them for wives"

• Wikipedia: Frances Talbot, Countess of Tyrconnel