Mary, Lady Steele ( Scurlock; November 1678 – 26 December 1718) was the second wife of Sir

Richard Steele Sir Richard Steele ( – 1 September 1729) was an Anglo-Irish writer, playwright and politician best known as the co-founder of the magazine ''The Spectator (1711), The Spectator'' alongside his close friend Joseph Addison. Early life Steel ...

, whom she married in 1707.

Heiress to an estate

She was born in

Carmarthen Carmarthen (, ; , 'Merlin's fort' or possibly 'Sea-town fort') is the county town of Carmarthenshire and a community (Wales), community in Wales, lying on the River Towy north of its estuary in Carmarthen Bay. At the 2021 United Kingdom cen ...

, the only child of Jonathan Scurlock, Sheriff of Carmarthen. She inherited the family's Llangunnor estate, where Steele retired a few years before his death in 1729.

Correspondence

The correspondence between Richard Steele and his wife, whom he nicknamed "Prue" (because of her frugality), is famous. They are believed to have met in 1706, at the funeral of his first wife, Margaret, and married in the following year. Prior to this, in February 1704, Mary had been unsuccessfully sued for breach of promise by a man named Henry Owen, whom she accused of being a fortune-hunter.

Life in London

Following their marriage, they took up residence in London, but Steele's precarious financial position made it difficult for them to keep up the rent and they were forced to move to properties in less fashionable districts or to use houses that belonged to the Scurlock family. Over the period of twelve years until her death, Steele wrote over 400 letters to Prue. However, the marriage was a stormy one, and for much of it, Steele was in London and Mary in Wales.

Death and burial

By the time of her death, she was seriously considering a permanent separation because Steele drank heavily and was constantly in debt. On her death at the age of forty, Mary was buried at

Westminster Abbey Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an Anglican church in the City of Westminster, London, England. Since 1066, it has been the location of the coronations of 40 English and British m ...

; her husband would be buried in Carmarthen.

Heiress

The Scurlock family property passed in due course to the only surviving Steele child (of the Steele's four children), Elizabeth, who married John Trevor, 3rd

Baron Trevor Baron Trevor is a title that has been created three times. It was created first in 1662 in the Peerage of Ireland along with the viscountcy of Dungannon. For information on this creation, which became extinct in 1706, see Viscount Dungannon. Th ...

. She was the only surviving one of their four children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Steele, Mary 1678 births 1718 deaths 17th-century Welsh people 18th-century Welsh people 17th-century Welsh women 18th-century Welsh women 18th-century British letter writers 18th-century British landowners People from Carmarthen Wives of knights Burials at Westminster Abbey 18th-century British women landowners