Six letters from Mary Mildmay Fane, Countess of Westmorland, to her daughter Grace, Countess of Home (died 1633), survive in the Moray papers, probably kept as keepsakes by her sister-in-law, Margaret Home, Countess of Moray (died 1683).

The Countess of Westmorland wrote to Grace on 9 January 1626 describing Christmas at Apethorpe in Northamptonshire. The family had put on a masque, a private Christmas panto in the hall or long gallery, for guests including the Earl of Rutland. She offered to send Grace the “booke”, the script:

“… I will performe your directions, & make you [Grace] a dainty pendant, I have sent to Mr [Drew] Louet about it; now we have ended this Feastivall time, wheare you have been often wished and your health & your lords often remembered, my lo: of Rutland came hither on Twelf day to see our maske which was a very fine on & excellent well performed, you shall have a booke of it when I can meete with a messenger that will carry it, S^r Sidney & his la: ended christmas with us, & they both comend ther humble sirvises unto you, with many more the longe to writ; S^r Robert Gourdon kept not his promis with you for he cam not hither, …”¹

One Apethorpe masque book survives at the Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, attributed to Grace’s sister Rachel Fane, later Countess of Bath. With a green embroidered silk cover, the manuscript includes the May Masque, the Wishing Chair Entertainment, a Christmas Prologue, and other undated fragments.²

1. Moray papers, NRAS 217, Box 5:304: The text of the six letters is here. ↩︎
2. Alison Findlay, Playing Spaces in Early Modern Women’s Drama (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 96-103: Erin Julian, ‘”Of no consequence”? Rachel Fane’s Manuscripts and Archival Erasure’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 42:2 (Summer 2024), pp. 135-162: Marion O’Connor, “Entertainments and Poems by Lady Rachel Fane”, Malone Collections, 17 (2016), pp. 151–196: Sackville MS. U269/F38/3. ↩︎