Lucy Bedford

Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford (née Harington) (1580–1627) was a major aristocratic patron of the arts and literature in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, the primary non-royal performer in contemporary court masques, a letter-writer, and a poet.

Lucy Harington was the daughter of Sir John Harington of Exton, and Anne Kelway; well-educated for a woman in her era, she knew French, Spanish, and Italian. She was a member of the Sidney/Essex circle from birth, through her father, first cousin to Sir Robert Sidney and Mary, Countess of Pembroke; she was a close friend of Essex's sisters Penelope Rich and Dorothy Percy, Countess of Northumberland (the latter named one of her daughters Lucy after the Countess).

Lucy Harington married Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford, on 12 December 1594, when she was thirteen years old and he was twenty-two. The 3rd Earl of Bedford got himself into serious trouble in 1601 when he rode with the Earl of Essex in Essex's rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. The Bedford fortunes revived when the reign of James I and Anne of Denmark began in 1603: the Countess audaciously skipped the late queen's funeral and rode hard to the Scottish border, where she was the first to greet the incoming queen.

The Countess became a Lady of the Bedchamber and confidant of Queen Anne; she performed in several of the masques staged at Court in the early 17th century, including The Masque of Blackness, Hymenaei, The Masque of Beauty, The Masque of Queens, and The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. In one instance, she functioned as something similar to a theatrical producer: she instigated and organised the 1617 Court performance of Robert White's masque Cupid's Banishment, which was acted by students from the first English girls' school, the Ladies Hall in Deptford.

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