Webster Wedderburn, Frances

NOBLEMAN (GREAT BRITAIN)
BORN 23 May 1793 - DIED 22 Jan 1837, London: 15 Hertford Street
BIRTH NAME Annesley, Frances Caroline
GRAVE LOCATION London: South Audley Street Chapel (burying grounds (now disappeared))

Frances Annesley was the prettiest of the two blonde daughters of Arthur Annesley, first Earl of Mountnorris and Sarah Cavendish. She married Lord Byron's friend James Wedderburn Webster. She flirted in 1813 with Byron when he was staying under their roof. When they were finally alone together at two in the morning in his home she burst into tears and he 'spared her'. His poem "When we two parted" is about her and her alleged relationship with the Duke of Wellington in Brussels in 1815. He wrote this after he had heard that she wanted to go after Wellington. The newspapers wrote that Lady Frances and the Duke saw each other and he even seems to have writte to her from the battlefield of Waterloo, but there is no hard evidence they were lovers.

Frances and James had five children: Lucy Sarah Anne (2 Mar 1812 - 24 Apr 1864), Charles Byron (28 Aug 1815, Paris - Oct 1817, Nantes), Charles Francis (1 Jul 1820 - 28 Feb 1886), Augustus George Henry Desiré (Nov 1821, Boulogne - 1845, Jamaica) and George Gordon Gerald (12 Dec 1827 - 20 Aug 1875).

Her sister Catherine married Lord John Somerset. She also had a brother, George, who wrote about his travels to India and Egypt.

Family
• Husband: Webster Wedderburn, James (1810-1837, London: St. Marylebone, Westminster)

Related persons
• had a relationship with Byron, George Noel Gordon
• was the lover of Davies, Scrope Berdmore
• had a relationship with Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of

Sources
• Douglass, Paul, Lady Caroline Lamb, Palgrave, New York, 2004


Webster Wedderburn, James

Published: 01 Jan 2006
Last update: 20 May 2018