Fermor, Henrietta Louisa, Countess of Pomfret (1698 -1761)

Henrietta Louisa Fermor was the daughter and heir of John Jefferys, 2nd Baron Jefferys of Wem, and Charlotte, daughter and heir of Philip Herbert, 7th Earl of Pembroke. She married Thomas Fermor, Lord Lempster in 1720. The following year he was created Earl of Pomfret. He was Master of the Horse to Queen Caroline, Queen of George II, to whom Lady Pomfret was one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber. On the death of the Queen in 1737, she retired from public life and, with her husband, lived on the continent for three years. Her correspondence with her friend Lady Hertford from 1738 to 1741 was published in three volumes in London in 1805, and there are many letters to her in the years 1738 1744 in volume two of Lady Wortley Montagu's Letters and works in Wharncliffe's edition. Her diaries and accounts of tours in the Low Countries, France and Italy 1736 1761 were in 1879 in the possession of G. H. Finch. Historical MSS Commission 7th Report Part 1 p.514. A blue stocking, she was often ridiculed by Horace Walpole. Her ladyship sometimes used her maiden name after her marriage. Her bookplate reads `Henrietta Louisa Jefferys Countess of Pomfret'. Her granddaughter Sophia, daughter of the 2nd Lord Carteret, married William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, afterwards Marquess of Lansdowne, and most of her books also have his bookstamp. The Shelburne books were sold at auction by Leigh & S. Sotheby 6 January, 14 and 30 April 1806 and the manuscripts on 27 April 1807. The manuscripts were bought entire for the British Museum.