Jewellery, Watches and Objects of Vertu

A 17th century enamelled portrait miniature, depicting Lady Frances Haversham, her auburn hair in fashionable ringlets, wearing a choker necklace and attired in lace-edged décolleté crimson gown, within green enamelled mount with white foliate enamelled borders, applied with pierced gold work and rose-cut diamond highlights, painted on vellum, later mounted into a 19th century gold locket-back pendant, the reverse engraved ‘Frances Lady Haversham born 1646’ beneath a baron’s coronet, length including suspensory fitting 43mm, diameter 33mm. £1,200-£1,500

Born 1646, Lady Frances Annesley was the daughter of 1st Earl Of Anglesey and Lady Elizabeth Altham, Countess of Anglesey. Her first marriage was to Francis Wyndham but when widowed in 1688, she married Sir John Thompson, 1st Baron Haversham (1648-1710), an English politician, with whom she had at least eleven children. Thompson was the first surviving son of Maurice Thompson of St Andrew, Eastcheap, City of London and Haversham, who at one time is said to have obtained a monopoly of the Virginia tobacco trade. Sir John was created a Baronet of Haversham in the County of Buckingham in 1673, and later returned to Parliament where he held a seat for Gatton until 1696, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Haversham. Between 1699 and 1701, he was Lord of the Admiralty. Lady Frances Haversham died in March 1705. Her son Maurice succeeded as 2nd Baron Haversham after his father’s death in November 1710. He entered the House of Lords, between 1717 and 1718 he was a Treasurer of Excise. He married twice, with at least two daughters from his first marriage, but having no sons, after his death in April 1745, his titles died with him.