Regency Personalities Series-Laura Pulteney 1st Countess of Bath

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Laura Pulteney 1st Countess of Bath
26 December 1766 – 14 July 1808

Laura Pulteney

Born Henrietta Laura Johnstone, she was the only child of the wealthy William Johnstone, later Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet, and his wife, Frances Pulteney, daughter of Daniel Pulteney.

When her mother inherited the estate of her kinsman, Harry Pulteney (who had previously inherited them from William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath) in 1767, her parents took the name Pulteney. They moved to Bath House on Piccadilly, where she spent her childhood.

On her mother’s death in 1782, she inherited the vast Pulteney estates. Initially educated at home, Pulteney completed her education at the convent of Montparnasse in Paris in 1783. There she was visited by her kinswoman, the Countess of Hopetoun, her friend Lady Belmore and the Countess of Dundonald, the latter of whom introduced her to Parisian society.

As a young woman, Pulteney spent time at Sudborough in Northamptonshire (later endowing a school there as well as in Clewer, Berkshire) where her neighbour was Archibald Alison, to whom she agreed to be a godmother to his son, William.

Although Pulteney’s father never sought political office, he did procure a peerage for her and she was created Baroness of Bath, in the County of Somerset, in 1792, aged twenty-six. Despite her mother’s family having previously held the earldom of Bath until its extinction in 1764, a marquessate of Bath had been created for the 3rd Viscount Weymouth in 1789. Some peers attempted to have her peerage cancelled due to the unprecedented use of the same place name in two separate peerages for separate people. This was rejected and she was further elevated as Countess of Bath, in the County of Somerset, in 1803. In 1794, she married her father’s first cousin, Sir James Murray, 7th Baronet who took the additional surname of Pulteney.

When Lady Bath’s father died, his estate was divided between her and his second wife. Lady Bath inherited two thirds including property in England and America. She died just over three years later in 1808, possibly from consumption and was buried in the south cloister of Westminster Abbey. As she had no children, her titles became extinct.

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