The Lady Luxborough | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Lady Luxborough by Maria Verelst | |
| Born | Henrietta St John 15 July 1699 |
| Died | 26 March 1756 (aged 56) |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 |
| Father | Henry, Viscount St John |
Henrietta Knight, Baroness Luxborough (née St John; 15 July 1699 — 26 March 1756),[1] was an English poet and letter writer, now mainly remembered as a gardener. She married the rising politician Robert Knight in 1727, but he banished her to his estate at Barrells Hall in 1736 as punishment for a romantic indiscretion. Horace Walpole's correspondence suggests she was caught by her husband in flagrante delicto with her doctor, whilst other sources add a further lover in the form of a young cleric named John Dalton (1709–1763).
As Henrietta, Lady Luxborough (from 1745), she was one of the first to establish a ferme ornée and is credited by the OED with at least the first recorded use, if not the invention, of the word "shrubbery". She was a prominent member of the Warwickshire Coterie,[2] a group of poet friends including the gardener and poet William Shenstone, who had developed his own ferme ornée at The Leasowes in Halesowen, Shropshire. She remained married to her husband, but died before his final elevations in the peerage to a viscountcy and then 1st Earl of Catherlough.
- ^ Journal of the Ex Libris Society, Vol. II, 1893, p. 39.
- ^ Brown 2006.