              Copyright
Helen Forder
2005
|
(1771 - 1839) |
| Elizabeth
Brown Greenly was born at Titley Court, Herefordshire, on the 27th November, 1771, the
only child of William Greenly and his wife
Elizabeth (née Brown). They had a town house in
Abergavenny and property near Cwmdu, Breconshire,
as well as the estate in Herefordshire. William
Greenly was said to have been 'an excellent
scholar and antiquary, and a man of great
goodness of heart and simple manners'. |
| Elizabeth,
usually known as Eliza, was said to be 'a
person of so much real merit, & of such
superior & general cultivation of mind, that
her superiority to the contemporary and
surrounding society was too self-evident not to
excite astonishment' ... She was an ardent
supporter of the Welsh causes of the day and was
one of the first to support Iolo Morganwg (Edward
Williams 1747 - 1826) beginning her patronage in
1806, and continuing for the rest of his life.
Lady Llanofer's mother (Georgina Mary Ann
Waddington, née Port) was the same age as Eliza
and the two were close friends. A frequent
visitor to Llanofer, Eliza no doubt encouraged
the interest of young Augusta Waddington (later
Lady Llanofer) in these matters. |
| She had a
good voice and on her visits to the Waddington
family she would entertain them with her singing
- usually the old Welsh folk songs of which she
was very fond. According to Frances (Lady
Llanofer's sister, who later became Baroness
Bunsen) Eliza's voice 'was not of superior
quality, but her taste was refined, & she had
an admirable collection of songs'. Perhaps
it was this introduction to the old tunes while
she was young that made Augusta Waddington so
enthusiastic about Welsh music throughout her
life. |
| Eliza was
good natured and attractive and 'considered
clever, of a religious nature and inclined to
literary pursuits'. She
had a number of suitors but, according to
Baroness Bunsen, any man who might have been a
suitable husband for Eliza, and acceptable to
her, was 'frightened off from prosecution of
his suit, by the ever-increasing demands made
upon him as conditions of consent to marriage, by
the Mother & Grandmother' ... The
Grandmother, Mary Brown, was head of the family, 'adding
whalebone to Mrs. Greenly's buckram, in all
family concerns', as Baroness Bunsen
remarked in her Reminiscences written in
1874. |
| The man
Eliza eventually married, in 1811, was Admiral
Sir Isaac Coffin, a man more than ten years her
senior, and an erratic seafarer who suffered from
gout. He took the name Greenly on marrying Eliza,
heiress to a considerable fortune. Eliza was said
to have 'some eccentric habits (such
as getting up in the middle of the night to write
sermons)' and maybe this contibuted to his
less than satisfactory behaviour towards her
following their marriage. Her behaviour appears
to have been without fault, but after the first
year of marriage he went to visit friends and
stayed away for seven years! |
Admiral
Sir Isaac Coffin
(1759 - 1839) |
| He
communicated with her only rarely, and on the few
occasions he did return, it appears that he was
very disagreeable. Eliza once wrote, 'One
moment he makes me love him, at another his
unfeeling letters and actions completely repel
me'. Sir Isaac's relatives and friends
sympathised with the long-suffering Lady Coffin
Greenly. |
| Eventually
Sir Isaac dropped the name Greenly, and Lady
Greenly stopped using the name Coffin. |
| 1 2
3
next |
|
