Anne Eliot Bonfoy (1729 - 1816)

Anne was the first daughter and second child of Richard Eliot and Harriot Craggs.

During her childhood, Anne Eliot seems to have had no shortage of pet names among her family, whose letters refer to her as "Nancy", "Nan" and "Nanny". Thanks to a magnificent portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, however, people all over the world know her as "Mrs. Bonfoy".

Anne Eliot was born at Port Eliot on 17 Nov 1729, at half past eight in the morning, and was baptised at St. German's a month later. Little is known of her childhood in Cornwall. As she grew in grace and beauty, she played whist, danced the minuet and even battled smallpox*.

A funny incident occurred in early 1748, when the British Foreign Minister in Switzerland approached Richard Eliot (through his son, Edward, who was studying in Bern at the time) about paying his addresses to one of the older Eliot girls. Edward forwarded John Burnaby's request to his father, saying that Burnaby was willing to come to England for a few months in order to meet Anne and Harriot in person. Edward warned Burnaby that he did not think his parents would care to have either daughter living in Europe but went on to forward the request to Port Eliot, with his own letter stating that he felt Burnaby was too old for his sisters (being about forty-five years of age). Edward even admitted that Harriot would probably have suited Burnaby – had the gentleman been twenty years younger! Richard immediately answered Burnaby's letter and sent a missive to his son, stating that he was "at as great a loss how to answer it as you were in what manner to write it, whether in a grave or merry style. The subject is certainly very serious, but some circumstances that attend it are odd and drole enough. I laugh'd most heartily on reading them, but Mamma was not at all affected in the same manner . . . It is most certain that neither of your sisters will go abroad to be married to a man they never saw. Good husbands, I hope, are not so scarce in England as to force to such a step." Mr. Burnaby, undeterred by Richard's answer, wrote again, shortly after Richard Eliot's death in November of the same year, to ask if Edward or his mother would mind if he paid addresses to one of the sisters. We can assume that he was refused once again.

Anne was introduced to Captain Hugh Bonfoy, a "man of strict honour, just, generous, and as good natured a creature as ever was born" (according to her stepfather, Captain John Hamilton), and they were married at Godalming, in Surrey, on 29 Nov 1751. The following year, Anne gave birth to her first and only child, a daughter named Anne (later Countess of Ely).

In 1754, 25-year-old Mrs. Hugh Bonfoy paid Sir Joshua Reynolds to set her likeness to canvas. Reynolds must have realized immediately that the painting was as extraordinary as the sitter was beautiful, for he commissioned it to be engraved and distributed to the public within the year. One of the most recognized and well-known of Reynolds' work, the portrait has hung at Port Eliot since 1821.

Between her husband's career in the Navy and her daughter's marriage to the Earl of Ely, Anne Bonfoy appears to have spent quite a lot of her adult life in Ireland. Her husband, Hugh Bonfoy, died in Dublin in 1762. The 32-year-old widow did not remarry, choosing to live the rest of her full and busy life with her daughter. Anne's character, according to one of her daughter's friends, "aimed at 'bel esprit', and was sometimes a little affected, but Lady Ely totally the reverse."

Anne (Eliot) Bonfoy passed away on the 13th of April, in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred Sixteen, at her daughter's house in London.† Her will is a veritable treasure trove of sentimental items being given as tokens of remembrance to her beloved relations and friends. It ends with the reassuring sentiment that her family would meet her once again: "I die an unworthy member of the Church of England, in an humble hope of a happy resurrection through the merits of my beloved Redeemer."

Mrs. Bonfoy may be rather forgotten as an individual, but her image lives on in the Reynolds portrait. Even as recently as 1992, Anne Bonfoy was featured in a special-edition Royal Doulton figurine collection based on "Reynolds Ladies". The figurine was released as a limited edition of 5,000 pieces (see photos in column at right), one of which can be found at Port Eliot.

*April of 1748 found Edward, the eldest Eliot son, away on his continental tour and the rest of the family in their London home on Jermyn Street. In a letter to Edward, Richard conveys the news that four of the children had recently been inoculated with a live smallpox vaccine. "Your Momma received last night your kind epistles, just as she sat down to play a rubber at whist with Mr. Hamilton, Nancy, and Harriot, for the first time after their recovery of the smallpox." He went on to explain that Jack and Kitty had also been inoculated, in what a favorable manner they'd had the distemper, how it turned on the seventh day, and how their beauties remained.

†Researching the death of Mrs. Anne Bonfoy proved to be surprisingly difficult. When I began to work on her, no one knew exactly when she had died. It was agreed that it was in April, but the year ranged from 1810 to 1821. At first, the only thing that I could find was a death notice printed in "The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register", for the period of January to June 1816, stating that Mrs. Bonfoy had died at her daughter's house in Grosvenor-street. This narrowed the year down to 1816 and the location to London, but the actual date continued to elude me. Sometimes the best thing that you can do when researching something like this is to throw yourself into old-fashioned browsing. Knowing that she died in London, within a particular six months' time, I started working (page by page) through any online London burial records that I could find. After much browsing and disappointment, perseverance paid off, and the date was right there on my screen. She had been buried on 20 Apr 1816 in the Parish of St. George's Hanover Square. More research showed that she would have been in the Bayswater Road burial ground, which had been razed and removed by the city in the 1960s. Usually, that signals the end of any hope of trying to find information that would have been on tombstones or memorials. Thankfully, however, a "register of inscriptions on coffins in vaults" had actually been taken before the graves were removed and put on microfilm (which is currently held by the Westminster Archives Centre). Thanks to a very helpful archivist, we now know that Mrs. Bonfoy had been buried in New Vault E, Coffin No. 16. Her coffin inscription read:

Mrs Anne Bonfoy
Died 13 April 1816
Aged 87 Years.