Barbara Berkeley, Viscountess Fitzhardinge

Barbara (left) playing cards with her closest friend, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, c. 1702[1]

Barbara Berkeley, Viscountess Fitzhardinge (née Villiers; c. 1654 – 19 September 1708) was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne of Great Britain and governess to Prince William, Duke of Gloucester.[2] Her sister Elizabeth Villiers (later Countess of Orkney) was the acknowledged mistress of William III of England from 1680 to 1695.

Born to Colonel Sir Edward Villiers of Richmond and Lady Frances Howard (a descendant of John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk), Barbara became a maid of honour to the princesses of York before Mary married William in 1677. Instead of accompanying her sisters Anne, Katherine and Elizabeth to The Hague, Barbara remained in England to join Anne's household, attracting the companionship of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, and invoking a sense of jealousy and rage within their royal mistress, Queen Anne.[1] Naturally ambitious like the rest of her family, Barbara mixed scintillating wit with devious deception in order to promote dissatisfaction against the Churchills, who came to abhor the reign of William and Mary (1689–1702).

Barbara was thought to be a secret Jacobite.

Issue

Barbara married John Berkeley, 4th Viscount Fitzhardinge of Berehaven (1650 – 19 December 1712). They had two daughters, neither of whom inherited their father's title:

Notes

  1. 1 2 Field, Ophelia. The Favourite: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2002. (ISBN 0-340-76808-8), pp. ix and 73.
  2. ↑ Exhibition of the Royal House of Guelph, Harvard University. 32044012939096X, p. 3.
  3. 1 2 Burke, John Evelyn. A General and heraldic dictionary of the peerage and baronetage of the British Empire, Volume 1. London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1832, p. 287.

Further reading

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