Catherine Evans
Perdita, entry for Elizabeth Richardson; Richard Griffin Baron Braybrooke, The Private Correspondence of Jane Lady Cornwallis; 1613-1644 (London, 1842); The History of Parliament (http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/member/cornwa…)
Elizabeth was the daughter of the author Elizabeth Richardson, and her first husband Sir John Ashburnham, who died in debtor's jail in the Fleet in 1620. As one of Richardson's four surviving daughters, Elizabeth was a dedicatee of her manuscript of prayers, "A Ladies Legacie to her Daughters" (East Sussex Record Office MS ASH 3501). She was a favourite of Queen Henrietta Maria, a Maid of Honour and Woman of the Bedchamber. At the court, she met Sir Frederick Cornwallis (1611-1662). The match was much supported by the King and his consort, who attended their wedding in 1630 and promised to settle £3,000 upon the pair when they married. Sir Frederick's mother, Jane Lady Cornwallis (nee Meautys) disapproved of the match, potentially because she was not informed of it until after the wedding had occurred, but the King and Queen wrote letters to reconcile the pair. One of Lady Corwallis' biographers describe Frederick as "of a thoughtless easy disposition, which led him into constant scrapes; he passed his life in offending his mother and asking her pardon, and no sooner was it obtained than he relapsed into his former extravagancies". However, in Lloyd's memoirs he is described as a "man of so cheerful a spirit that no sorrow came next his heart, and of so resolved a mind that no fear came into his thoughts". Cornwallis was MP for Eye, Suffolk, in both the Short and Long Parliaments. In 1642 he crossed to Holland and was disabled from sitting as a MP as he had been involved in recruiting mercenaries for the King. He accompanied the Prince of Wales into the west country and was in Exeter at the surrender. He was fined a year's income, but as most of the Cornwallis estate was in jointure to his mother or mortgaged to her, he was ‘obliged by the violence of his creditors to withdraw himself into parts beyond the seas’. They would have three sons and one daughter. Only one son survived to majority, Charles Cornwallis, 2nd Baron Cornwalis of Eye, b. 19 April 1632, d. 13 April 1673.