Marchioness of Londonderry – A set of twelve George IV sterling silver dinner plates, London 1828 by Benjamin Smith III

Each of shaped circular form with a gadrooned edge, each engraved to the edge with contemporaneous initials FAVL in flourished cursive script surmounted by a marchioness’s coronet. Each engraved 7 to the reverse. Each fully marked to the reverse, one lacking maker's mark. (12)

Diameter – 25.5 cm / 10 inches

Weight – 7508 grams / 241.4 ozt

The initials are for Frances Anne Vane, 3^rd Marchioness of Londonderry (1800 - 1865) who married on 3^rd April 1819 as his second wife Charles William Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry (1778-1854), who was previously Charles William Stewart, 1st Baron Stewart until 1822 when Charles succeeded his half-brother as 3rd Marquess of Londonderry.

She the daughter of Sir Henry Vane-Tempest, 2nd Bt. (1771-1813) and Anne Katherine Mac Donnell, suo jure 2^nd Countess of Antrim (1778-1834). He the son and heir of Reverend Sir Henry Vane, 1st Baronet (1728-1794) and his wife, Frances Tempest (d.1796) daughter of John Tempest, Sr. (1710-1776).

At her father's death in 1813, Frances Anne inherited extensive lands in northeast England as well as some property in County Antrim, Ireland. As much of her English land was in the Durham Coalfield, she had income from coal mining. In his last will and testament, her father had stipulated that she must retain the surname Vane and that whoever married her would have to adopt her surname in lieu of his own. She developed an extensive coal mining operation that included coal mines, a railway, and docks at Seaham. She built Garron Tower north of Carnlough, County Antrim, as a summer residence for herself. Through her daughter, Lady Frances Vane (1822-1899), wife of John Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough (1822-1883), she is the great-grandmother of Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1865).

At the Coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, Benjamin Disraeli wrote of Frances Anne that she ‘looked like an Empress’ and ‘blazed among the peeresses’. It has been written of Frances Anne that she was, while her husband was alive, “if not typical of her class, then at least an exaggerated caricature of it: autocratic, extravagant, and proud, she was Jane Austen's Lady Catherine de Bourgh made flesh” (K.D. Reynolds, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Her magnificent state portrait for the coronation of William IV, showcasing many of the now famous Londonderry Jewels, of 1831 by Alexandre-Jean Dubois-Drahonet (1791-1834) is on loan to the V&A (LOAN:PDP ANON.1-2014)

The presence of her own initials as opposed to those of her husband is a very rare example of a woman showcasing her own important and prominence upon her plate, as a noble woman by birth and one of the wealthiest heiresses in the land she had great cause to do so. The most well-known woman to engrave her initials in such a manner in place of her husband was the sensationalised Harriet Beauclerk, née Mellon, 9th Duchess of St. Albans (1777-1837). A list of that plate can be found in the preceding lot.

This form of initials is recorded University of Toronto British Armorial Bindings collection.