Elizabeth Germain

Lady Elizabeth "Betty" Germain (1680-1769) was a wealthy English aristocrat and courtier, a philanthropist and collector of antiquities, who corresponded with literary and political figures.

Lady Elizabeth "Betty" Germain, née Berkeley, was second daughter of Charles Berkeley, 2nd Earl of Berkeley and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Baptist Noel, 3rd Viscount Campden. In 1738, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough wrote of her that "notwithstanding the great pride of the Berkeley family she married an innkeeper's son," and maliciously adds in explanation that "she was very ugly, without a portion, and in her youth had an unlucky accident with one of her father's servants." The so-called innkeeper's son was Sir John Germain, 1st Baronet (1650-1718), who was rumored to be the illegitimate son of William II, Prince of Orange and accordingly half-brother of King William III. Lady Betty met Germain at the Hot Wells, Bristol, and they were shortly thereafter married in October 1706. He was a recent widower, having first married Mary Mordaunt, Baroness Mordaunt, only child and heiress of the 2nd Earl of Peterborough, after her first husband, Henry Howard, 7th Duke of Norfolk had divorced her in 1700 over her love affair with Germain. Betty was thirty years younger than her husband, but her good sense made their union happy.

They had three children, two boys and a girl, who all died young, and in acknowledgment of her devotion in nursing them Germain left her the estate of Drayton in Northamptonshire, and the vast property which he had inherited from his first wife, who had died childless. On his deathbed, he expressed the wish that she would marry a young man and have children to succeed to her wealth, but hoped that otherwise her fortune might pass to a younger son of Lionel Sackville, 1st Duke of Dorset, who had married Elizabeth, daughter of Lieutenant-general Walter Philip Colyear, Germain's friend and colleague in the Dutch service. Though almost persuaded in later years to marry Lord Sidney Beauclerk, a handsome and worthless fortune-hunter, she remained a widow for more than fifty years, and fulfilled her husband's wishes by leaving the estate of Drayton, with £20,000 in money and half the residue of her wealth, to the politician Lord George Sackville, the Duke's second son, who in turn assumed the name of Germain (see George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville).

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