Dorothy Spencer, Countess of Sunderland
Dorothy Spencer, Countess of Sunderland (5 October 1617 – 5 February 1684) was the wife of Henry Spencer, 1st Earl of Sunderland and the daughter of Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester.
In about 1635, she rejected a proposal of marriage from the poet Edmund Waller, who addressed verses to her under the name of "Sacharissa". In 1639, she married Henry Spencer, and he was created 1st Earl of Sunderland in 1643, in recognition of his service to the king in the English Civil War. He was killed at the First Battle of Newbury shortly afterwards, leaving Dorothy with two children, and pregnant with a third, who died in infancy. Their children were:
- Lady Dorothy Spencer
- Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland
- Lady Penelope Spencer (c. 1644–1645), died in infancy
The widowed countess lived at Brington, Northamptonshire, but eventually returned to live with her parents at Penshurst Place in Kent. In 1652 she remarried, to Robert Smith or Smythe.
[edit] Bibliography
- Sacharissa; some account of Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland, her family and friends, 1617-1684 by Julia Mary Cartwright Ady (1926)
