Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick

Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick (8 November 1625 – 12 April 1678) was the seventh daughter of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, and his second wife, Catherine Fenton (only daughter of Sir Geoffrey Fenton and Alice Weston). She was born in 1625 in Youghal, County Cork, and after her mother's death (1628) raised by relatives in Mallow before becoming a maid of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria. In 1641 she married Charles Rich, 4th Earl of Warwick , and they had two children who died young.

Rich is well known for her great love for literature and writing, which included many of the current events in seventeenth-century Ireland as well as her own domestic issues.

Mary was noted from childhood onwards for her exceptional stubbornness and independence; her father, who was probably the most formidable figure in Irish politics in his time, called her "my unruly daughter" and was entirely unable to control her. He arranged a marriage for her with James Hamilton, later 1st Earl of Clanbrassil, but Mary, who was only thirteen, refused to marry Clanbrassil on the grounds of her "incurable aversion" to him, and no threat or argument would change her mind. Her father cut off her allowance, leaving her without any money to buy new clothes, but to no avail. Two years later she made a secret love marriage with Charles Rich, 4th Earl of Warwick, who was then a penniless younger son with no prospects, to whom she had become close when he helped her recover from an attack of measles. Her father, who was clearly fond of her despite their differences, relented sufficiently to provide quite a generous dowry.

Though Mary may have been known as Robert Boyle's "unruly daughter," she still expressed in her writings great respect and gratitude for him. In one of her diary entries she noted that her heart was

gratefully affected for God's good and strange providence in raising my family, by my father, from a mean and low beginning, to be one of the greatest men of fortune in Ireland.

...
Wikipedia