Elizabeth Stanley, Countess of Huntingdon was an English noblewoman and writer who was third in line of succession to the English throne.
Background
Lady Elizabeth was born and baptised on 6 January 1588, in Knowsley, Lancashire, the third and youngest daughter, and co-heir of Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby, Lord of Mann, and Alice Spencer (4 May 1559 -January 1637). As the great-great-granddaughter of Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, the younger sister of King Henry VIII, Elizabeth became, after the death of her grandmother, Lady Margaret Clifford in 1596, third in line of succession to the English throne.
Career
She was the wife of Henry Hastings, 5th Earl of Huntingdon. (See main article: Alternative successions of the English crown). Lady Elizabeth was a patron of the arts, as well as a writer
She was the author of five Huntington Library manuscripts: four copies of prayers, biblical extracts, and meditations, and one volume of sermon notes.
Forty-six of her letters (written from 1605 until late 1632), which provide a keen insight into her life and personal sentiments, survive in the Hastings Collection of the Huntington Library. In one of these letters, she described a visit to the royal court where she watched the rehearsals and final production of a masque, at which she was kissed by both King James and Queen Anne.
James Knowles of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that Elizabeth danced in The Masque of Queens which was performed at Whitehall Palace on 2 February 1609. A miniature portrait by Nicholas Hilliard was painted sometime between 1601 and 1610.
She was also the subject of a portrait by Paul van Somer painted in about 1614.
A procession took her body to the parish church of Saint Helen in Ashby-de-la-Zouch where she was buried on 9 February. The minister praised her in conventional terms, but he also mentioned her literary activities. The four manuscripts of her religious writings represented her thoughts right up to her death.
In three of her four manuscripts, her final meditation was Of Her husband died 10 years later in 1643.