Elsinore, on 12 Dec. 1672. His titles reverted to Charles II, who allowed the duchess a small ‘bounty’ of 150l. per annum. Not wishing to remain at Cobham Hall in Kent, she sold her life-interest therein to Henry, lord O'Brien (as trustee for Donatus, his son by Katherine Stuart), for 3,800l. She appears to have continued for many years at court. She attended Queen Mary of Modena at her accouchement in 1688, and signed the certificate before the council; and she was at the coronation of Anne. She died in the Roman catholic communion on 15 Oct. 1702, and was buried in Westminster Abbey in the Duke of Richmond's vault in Henry VII's chapel on 22 Oct. (Chester, Reg. p. 250). Her effigy in wax, modelled by Antoine Benoist, may still be seen in the abbey, dressed in the robesworn by the duchess at Anne's coronation (cf. Wheatley and Cunningham, London, iii. 478). From her savings and her dower she purchased the estate of Lethington, valued at 50,000l., and bequeathed it on her death to her impoverished nephew, Alexander, earl of Blantyre (d. 1704), with a request that the estate might be named ‘Lennox love to Blantyre.’ Lord Blantyre's seat is still called Lennoxlove (cf. Groome, Gazetteer of Scotland, iv. 496; Luttrell, v. 225). She also bequeathed annuities to some poor gentlewomen friends with the burden of maintaining some of her cats; hence Pope's satiric allusion in his fourth ‘Moral Essay:’ ‘Die and endow a college, or a cat.’ The duchess's fine collection of original drawings by Da Vinci, Raphael, and other masters, together with miniatures and engravings, was sold by auction at Whitehall at the close of 1702 (London Gazette, 17 Nov.)
However vacuous ‘La Belle Stuart’ appeared to be in youth, she developed in later life a fair measure of Scottish discretion. Her letters to her husband (in Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 21947–8) give evidence of good sense and affection. She maintained her high rank with credit, and was kind to her retainers. Nat Lee, in dedicating to her his ‘Theodosius’ (produced at Dorset Garden in 1680), speaks warmly of personal attentions to himself.
‘La Belle Stuart’ figures in numerous medals, notably as Britannia seated at the foot of a rock with the legend ‘Favente Deo’ in ‘The Peace of Breda’ medal (1667), by John Roettiers [q. v.] (cf. Pepys, ed. Wheatley, vi. 96), and in a similar guise in the ‘Naval Victories’ medal (1667), with the legend, ‘Quatuor maria vindico,’ whence Andrew Marvell's allusion to ‘female Stewart there rules the four seas’ (Last Instructions to a Painter, p. 714). A special medal was struck in her honour in 1667 with Britannia on the reverse. Both medals and dies are in the British Museum, where is also a further portrait in relief upon a thin plate of gold. Waller, in his epigram ‘upon the golden medal,’ has the line, ‘Virtue a stronger guard than brass,’ in reference to Miss Stewart's triumph over Barbara Villiers, duchess of Cleveland [q. v.] The halfpenny designed by John Roettiers, bearing the figure of Britannia on the reverse, first appeared in 1672, and there is no doubt that the Duchess of Richmond was in the artist's mind when he made the design (cf. Montagu, Copper Coinage of England, 1893, pp. 38–9; cf. Forneron, Louise de Keroualle).
Of the numerous portraits, the best are the Lely portrait at Windsor (engraved by Thomas Watson, and also by S. Freeman in 1827 for Mrs. Jameson's ‘Beauties’); another by Lely, as Pallas, in the Duke of Richmond's collection (engraved by J. Thomson); as a man, by Johnson, at Kensington Palace (engraved by R. Robinson), and another as Pallas, by Gascar (see Smith, Mezzotinto Portraits, passim).
[Miss Stewart may almost be considered the heroine of Hamilton's Memoirs of Grammont, the animated pages of which are largely occupied by her escapades at court; but all his stories need corroboration. Good, though rather stern, characterisations are given in Mrs. Jameson's Beauties of the Court of Charles II, in Jesse's Court of England under the Stuarts, iv. 128–41, and in Strickland's Queens, v. 585 sq. The amount of responsibility due to the elopement for Clarendon's fall is carefully apportioned by Professor Masson (Milton, vi. 272). See also Archæologia Cantiana, vols. xi. xii.; Baillon's Henriette-Anne d'Angleterre; Lady Cust's Stuarts of Aubigny; Hatton Correspondence; Dalrymple's Appendix; Medallic Illustrations of Brit. Hist. 1885, i. 536–43; Pope's Works, ed. Elwin, iii. 138; Waller's Poems, ed. Drury, pp. 193, 338; Dangeau's Journal; Walpole's Anecdotes, ii. 184.]
STUART, GILBERT (1742–1786), historian and reviewer, born at Edinburgh in 1742, was the only surviving son of George Stuart, professor of the Latin language and Roman antiquities in Edinburgh University, who died at Fisher Row, near Musselburgh, on 18 June 1793, aged 78 (Gent. Mag. 1793, ii. 672). Gilbert was educated at the grammar school and university of Edinburgh in classics and philosophy, and then studied jurisprudence at the university, but never followed the profession of the law. Even at an early period in his life he worked by fits and starts, and was easily drawn into dissipation.
