Name	Frances Howard
Height
Naionality	British
Date of Birth	31 May 1590
Place of Birth	Chiswick, England
Famous for

Frances Howard was the daughter of Thomas Howard 1st Earl of Suffolk and his wife Katherine Knyvet. She was thus the grand-daughter of Thomas Howard 4th Duke of Norfolk who was executed in 1572. Thomas had managed to inherit the estate which his mother had left him at Audley and he had done well out of Royal favour, and he had successfully cultivated this in the reigns of both Elizabeth I and James I.

In the early seventeenth Century Lady Frances Howard, by marriage Countess of Essex,managed to get a marriage nullity from her husband the Earl of Essex on grounds which were regarded at the times as somewhat peculiar. She claimed that the Earl was impotent towards her, but not with other women, (see 'The Weaker Vessel, by Antonia Fraser'). It was a political divorce. She had quite high support as she wished to remarry with Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, a favourate of King James I. The necessary annulment went through, enabling the remarriage. Sadly it did not end there. Sir Thomas Overbury had tried to advise Carr not to marry Frances, but Carr was a desirable ally for the Howards. The family managed to get Overbury imprisoned where Frances managed to have him poisoned through an agent. After her divorce she married Carr and had an only daughter. The anti-Howard faction managed to get the Somersets convicted of murder, though the Somersets were spared execution they suffered life long disgrace.

For more information about the life of Frances Howard see, Unnatural Murder, poison at the Court of James I, Anne Somerset, Phoenix, 1998.

The only daughter of Frances Howard and Robert Carr Earl of Somerset managed due to the determination of her father to make a match which was not only equal to her rank, but a love match.

Lady Ann Carr, born 9th December 1615 and died 10th May 1684. She became the wife of William Russell 5th Earl of Bedford and the First Duke, 1613-1700 on the 11 July 1637. They had two sons, William Russell Lord Russell, 1639-1683,and James Russell, who married Elizabeth Lloyd and died in 1712.

William Russell Lord Russell, 1639-1683, Executed as part of the Rye House Plot. He married in 1669 Lady Rachel Wriothesley, who died in 1723 aged 87. They had two daughters and a son. One daughter was Rachel Russell (see below), and their son was Wriothesley, from whom all the later Dukes of Bedford descend as does the late Princess of Wales.

Rachel Russell married William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire 1672-1729 and became the ancestress of the house of Cavendish. Their eldest son was:

William Cavendish 3rd Duke of Devonshire 1695-1755 who married in 1715 Catherine Hoskins and had several children. From one of their daughters descends the late Princess of Wales. Their eldest son was:

William Cavendish 4th Duke of Devonshire 1720-1764 married the heiress Charlotte Baroness Clifford (died 1754) and had issue. From their younger son George 1st Earl of Burlington 1754-1834, and his wife Elizabeth Compton descends all the later Dukes of Devonshire and Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. Their daughter Dorothy (died 1794) married in 1766 William Cavendish-Bentinck 3rd Duke of Portland 1738-1809 who is ancestor of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, wife of King George VI. The eldest son of the 4th Duke of Devonshire was:

William Cavendish 5th Duke of Devonshire 1748-1811 married the famous Lady Georgiana Spencer 1757-1806 as his first wife and Lady Elizabeth Foster 1759-1824 as his second. The second wife bore him two children during the lifetime of his first wife. She was daughter of the 4th Earl of Bristol.

Lady Georgiana Spencer was the daughter of John Spencer, the First Earl Spencer and was a very popular public figure. By the Duke she was the mother of two daughters and one son. She had a further daughter by Earl Grey. One daughter Georgiana married the 6th Earl of Carlisle and her other daughter Harriet married Granville Leveson-Gower, who was the ex-lover of her aunt Henrietta Spencer, Countess of Bessborough. The present Duke of Devonshire does not descend from her son, but from her daughter Georgiana who gave her husband 12 children at Castle Howard in Yorkshire. For her descents see the main page about the Howards of Castle Howard.