Jane Harley, Countess of Oxford and Countess Mortimer


Jane Elizabeth Harley, Countess of Oxford and Countess Mortimer was an English noblewoman, known as a patron of the Reform movement and a lover of Lord Byron.

Life

She was a daughter of the Reverend James Scott, M.A., Vicar of Itchen Stoke in Hampshire and was brought up in favour of French Revolutionary thought and Reform. In 1794 she married Edward Harley, 5th Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, being styled Countess of Oxford and Countess Mortimer. She was a friend of the Princess of Wales. She frequently took lovers from among the pro-Reform party during her marriage, firstly Francis Burdett and most notably Lord Byron who was 14 years her junior. The affair lasted from 1812, in the aftermath of Byron's affair with Lady Caroline Lamb, until 1813. She and her husband then went abroad but Byron did not, as she had hoped, follow. Her marriage was not a love match and her large number of children were known as the "Harleian Miscellany" due to uncertainties over whether her husband was their father, but the marriage endured. Even in the easy-going world of the Regency aristocracy, her affairs were considered to have put her beyond the pale, and few people were prepared to receive her or call on her. Ironically, given their shared interest in Byron, Caroline Lamb was one of her few friends, although Caroline could not resist caricaturing her in her novel Glenarvon.

Children

Among her children were: