Mary, Countess of Liverpool

Liverpool's second wife

June 24, 1777 – October 18, 1846

Mary Chester (1777-1846) was the daughter of Charles Chester, himself the younger son of a Baronet, so from Liverpool’s ancestral gentry background rather than the inner-circle aristocracy of his first wife and his adult companions. She was a close friend of Louisa and married Liverpool on September 24, 1822, 15 months after Louisa’s death. Louisa’s sister, Lady Erne, described her as “a person of more than ordinary merit.”

They had only six years of married life together, with Liverpool an invalid for the last 22 months, although they managed a European holiday together in August 1825 to France, the Hague and Amsterdam.

After Liverpool’s death, Mary bought Norbiton Hall, a modest country house near Kingston, where she lived with Liverpool’s cousin Robert Henry Jenkinson until her death in 1846, aged 69.

© 2024 Martin Hutchinson