Elizabeth Eliot Cocks (1739 - 1771)
Elizabeth was the seventh child and fifth daughter of Richard Eliot and Harriot Craggs, known to family and friends as "Betsey".
According to her mother's entry in the family Bible, Elizabeth was born at Molenick on 3 May 1739, at twelve o'clock at night, and baptised in St. Germans later the same day. Her childhood at Port Eliot seems to have been a happy one. She went on walks outside, picnics with her mother and was inoculated for smallpox with her siblings*. In March of 1748, her father wrote that "Betsey surprised us this morning by dancing a minuet in all its forms. Her ability had been long kept a profound secret from us, by her master and self."
Betsey's father only lived another six months after the writing of the letter, "a consumption" carrying him away in November 1748. One year later, her mother married Captain John Hamilton, a very close friend of Betsey's parents and someone Betsey had known and loved all of her young life. It was recorded that, in the summer of 1751, Betsey went to London with her mother and stepfather, continuing on from there to finish "the remainder of the Holydays" with her grandmother, Mrs. Booth. Shortly after her older brother, Edward, married in 1756, Betsey and her younger brother went to stay at Port Eliot for an extended visit. All this visiting implies that Betsy did not permanently reside, after her father's death, at Port Eliot. (In fact, even after her marriage, there is no record of a permanent residence for Elizabeth and her husband, so tracking her movement and activities is difficult at best.)
Betsey's stepfather drowned in December 1755, when she was just sixteen years old, leaving her mother to bear their second child alone (seven months after its father's death). The Hamiltons had been residing in the county of Essex for the past four years, but Harriot received the news of her husband's death and gave birth to the baby in London, so it is probable that Betsy was still travelling around quite a bit with her mother. When it came time for Betsey's marriage, her twice-widowed mother settled £500 on her daughter as a dowry, and, on 8 Aug 1759, Miss Elizabeth Eliot arrived at St. George's in Hanover Square to wed Mr. Charles Cocks, then M.P. for Rygate. Charles and Elizabeth had three sons and three daughters, the oldest of whom was born at Ince Castle in Cornwall, the home of Elizabeth's older sister, Harriot. In January of 1767, Elizabeth gave birth to twin sons (and buried the eldest) in Marseilles, France, so the family obviously spent some time in Europe.
To the sorrow of her family, Elizabeth succumbed to "a lingering illness" on the first day of January in 1771, her youngest child only 1-1/2 years old. Elizabeth passed away while staying at Brookman's Manor in Bell Bar (Hertsfordshire), her husband's hereditary home in North Mymms. Instead of taking her body back for burial in the Cocks family vault at Eastnor, she was quietly buried in the Chancel at St. Mary's Church in North Mymms. Five years later, Elizabeth's older sister, Mrs. Harriot Neale, was also buried beside Elizabeth (by request). Some nine years after Mother and Aunt were laid to rest, Elizabeth's 23-year-old daughter, Mary Judith, was buried next to her mother at North Mymms.
While there were no additional family burials at North Mymms, there is a large memorial tablet inside the Church, above which are three small urns, each bearing an individual inscription:
Near to each other within this Chancel lie buried the remains of Mrs Elizabeth COCKS, Mrs Harriet NEAL and the Honorable Mary Judith COCKS. The two former were daughters of Richard ELIOT Esq., sisters of Edward Lord ELIOT. They both experienced sufferings which they bore with fortitude and resignation and through the whole of their lives their conduct was such as rendered them deservedly loved by their relations and friends and respected by the world. Mary Judith COCKS was the eldest daughter of Charles, Lord SOMMERS, by his first wife Elizabeth above mentioned. She had lively parts, a good understanding and the best of dispositions and died of a violent and sudden disorder in the bloom of youth. Universally esteemed and lamented.
E.C. obit. Jan. 1 1771 aet. 31
M.J.C. obit Sept. 6 1785 aet. 23
H.N. obit Jan. 22 1776 aet. 45
Betsey was painted by Reynolds twice during her childhood, once in 1746 as part of the Eliot Family group painting, and once more (at about the same time) in a single portrait, showing her as a young girl in a fancy dress and turban. The costume in the latter portrait has been analyzed and commented on by Reynolds researchers for the last 150 years, being the rather unusual attire for a chid of her age that it was. It is my opinion that these early Reynolds portraits were not commissioned or paid for but were simply gifts between friends. The reason for Betsey's costume may have been something as simple as Reynolds portraying a little seven-year-old girl in her favorite fancy-dress costume.
*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.
