Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Coventry, Maria
COVENTRY, MARIA, Countess of (1733–1760), elder daughter of John Gunning of Castle Coote, co. Roscommon, and Bridget, daughter of the sixth viscount Mayo, was born in 1733. She and her sister Elizabeth, both famed for their beauty, were so poor, that they thought of going on the stage, and when they were presented to Lord Harrington, the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, borrowed clothes from Mrs. Woffington, the actress. On their appearance in London in the summer of 1751, when Maria was in her eighteenth year, and Elizabeth about a year younger, they were at once pronounced to be 'the handsomest women alive.' Singly, Horace Walpole says, they were surpassed by others, but it was extraordinary that two sisters should be so beautiful in face and figure. Crowds followed them whenever they appeared in public, and they were generally called 'The Beauties.' Of the two, Maria was the more lovely. They were both lacking in sense and knowledge of the world. It is said that one day when they were going over Hampton Court, the housekeeper, wishing to show the company the room containing Kneller's pictures, or the Hampton Court beauties, cried, 'This way, ladies, for the beauties,' and that on this the sisters flew into a passion, and said that they were come to see the palace, and not to be shown as a sight. On 5 March 1762, less than three weeks after her sister had married the Duke of Hamilton, Maria married George William, sixth earl of Coventry. In the summer she went to France, but the Parisians laughed at her silliness, her want of breeding, and her ignorance of French, and would scarcely allow that she was beautiful. Her tour was not altogether a happy one, for her husband appears to have been jealous and petulant, and they had several squabbles. On her return she was universally considered the most beautiful woman of the court. She flirted considerably, especially with Viscount Bolingbroke. The old king took a great deal of notice of her, and was much amused when one day, with characteristic foolishness, she told him that she longed to see a coronation. People were never tired of running after her, and one Sunday evening in June 1759 she was mobbed in Hyde Park. The king ordered that, to prevent this for the future, she should have a guard, and on the next Sunday she made herself ridiculous by walking in the park from 8 till 10 p.m. with two sergeants of the guards in front with their halberds, and twelve soldiers following her. In the course of the winter she was attacked by consumption, but recovered sufficiently to be present at the trial of Lord Ferrers in the following April. She lingered through the summer, and died on 1 Oct. 1760. It was said that her health was injured by the use of white lead, to which she, in common with other ladies of fashion, was greatly addicted. Throughout her last illness her personal appearance was, as ever, her chief care. After she took to her bed she would have no light in her room except the lamp of a tea-kettle, and would never allow the curtains of her bed to be undrawn lest others should see the ravages disease had made. Mason wrote an elegy on her. She had five children: George William, afterwards seventh earl of Coventry, and four daughters. Her brother. General Gunning, was the husband of Susannah Minifie, the novelist.
Lady Coventry's portrait was five times engraved in mezzotint, after paintings by Francis Cotes, Read, Hamilton, and Liotard (Bromley Cat. of engraved Portraits, p. 305), An etching by B. Wilson is dated 1751.
[Horace Walpole's Letters (Cunningham), ii. 259, 265, iii. 233, 358; Memoirs of George III, iii. 190; Mahon's Chesterfield, iv. 10, 45; Jesse's George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, i. 162-71; Collins's Peerage of England, iv. 170.]