Alice Barnham

Alice Barnham, Viscountess St Albans (1592–1650) was the wife of English scientific philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon.

She was born 14 May 1592, to Benedict Barnham and his wife Dorothy, née Smith. Benedict Barnham (1559–1598) was a London merchant, who held the positions of Alderman, Sheriff of London (1591–1592), and Member of the English Parliament for Yarmouth. His father had been Sheriff before him. Her mother, Dorothy, or Dorothea (d. 1639), was the daughter of Humphrey Ambrose Smith, an important Cheapside mercer and the official purveyor of silks and velvets to Queen Elizabeth. Alice was the second of a family of daughters, her sisters being Elizabeth, Dorothy, and Bridget; a fifth, Benedicta, died at the age of 16 days. Her father died 4 April 1598, when Alice was not even six, but Alice was apparently a favourite, as his will said:

I give to my daughter, Alice Barneham, my lease of certain lands at Moulsham and Chelmsford in the County of Essex. And if it happen that the same Alice doe die and unmarried then I give the same lease to Elizabeth my eldest daughter, etc.

Her mother was also left well off, with legacies of land and plate, and quickly remarried, to Sir John Pakington of Worcestershire, 22 November 1598. After John died in 1625, she would remarry again, two more times, to Robert Needham, earlier that year made 1st Viscount Kilmorey, and when he died in 1631, Thomas Erskine, Earl of Kellie.

Her older sister Elizabeth Barnham (1591–1623) married Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, who would become infamous for his depravity. The third sister married Sir John Constable, a friend of Bacon's, and the fourth married Sir William Soames.

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