Venetia Stanley

Venetia Anastasia, Lady Digby ( Stanley; December 1600 – 1 May 1633) was a celebrated beauty of the Stuart period and the wife of a prominent courtier and scientist, Sir Kenelm Digby. She was a granddaughter of Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland and a great-granddaughter of Edward Stanley, 3rd Earl of Derby. Life Venetia Stanley was the third daughter of Sir Edward Stanley (died 1629?), of Tong Castle, Shropshire, a baronet (and grandson of Edward Stanley, 3rd Earl of Derby), and Lucy Percy (daughter and co-heiress of the Earl of Northumberland who had been imprisoned for treason for his part in a Catholic plot against Elizabeth I). Lucy Stanley died a few months after giving birth to Venetia. According to The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, "Venetia" is most likely a Latinization of "Gwyneth", and the name was popularized by Venetia Stanley. A celebrated beauty, Venetia was presented at the court of James I in her teens. At some point around this time she re-encountered Kenelm Digby, whom she had known in childhood, and they fell in love, exchanging a lock of Venetia's hair for a diamond ring from Digby. Digby, not yet of age, was sent off on a Grand Tour of Europe by his mother, who disapproved of the relationship. Later he recorded that in 1620, in Angers, France, he caught the eye of Marie de' Medici, queen mother of France. In order to remove himself from this situation, when fighting broke out in Angers, he let it be understood that he had died, and shortly after he joined the English monarchy’s diplomatic mission to Spain. However in England, Digby’s secret letters of reassurance to Venetia that he was alive were withheld by his mother, and Venetia was overcome with grief. It may be during this period that her behaviour caused the gossip later reported as fact by the antiquary John Aubrey, who claimed that she was the "concubine" of either the courtier Sir Edmund Wylde or Richard Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the latter of whom, Aubrey said, had children by her and settled upon her an annuity of £500 per annum. However Wylde had died in 1620, before the reports of Digby’s death, and Dorset’s will makes no reference to any children by Venetia, even as twentieth-century biographers refer to their child as fact.