Others
In addition to Jonson, Bedford supported other significant poets of her era, including Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, George Chapman, and John Donne. She might be the "Idea" of Drayton's pastoral Idea: The Shepherd's Garland (1593) and of his sonnet sequence Idea's Mirror (1594). Drayton dedicated his Mortimeriados (1594) to her, as Daniel did his Vision of the Twelve Goddesses (1604). Bedford patronised a range of lesser Writers of her era, including the translator John Florio, who credited her help in his translation of the essays of Montaigne. She "received more dedications than any other woman associated with the drama" in her era.
Lucy Harington married Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford, on 12 December 1594, when she was thirteen years old and he was twenty-two. The 3rd Earl of Bedford got himself into serious trouble in 1601 when he rode with the Earl of Essex in Essex's rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. The Bedford fortunes revived when the reign of James I began in 1603: the Countess audaciously skipped the late queen's funeral and rode hard to the Scottish border, where she was the first to greet the new king's wife .
The Countess became a Lady of the Bedchamber and confidant of Queen Anne; she performed in several of the masques staged at Court in the early 17th century, including The Masque of Blackness, Hymenaei, The Masque of Beauty, The Masque of Queens, and The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. In one instance, she functioned as something similar to a theatrical producer: she instigated and organised the 1617 Court performance of Robert White's masque Cupid's Banishment, which was acted by students from the first English girls' school, the Ladies Hall in Deptford.
Prominent as she was, both Bedford and her husband had serious financial problems throughout their lives. Lady Bedford reportedly had debts of £50,000 in 1619, apart from the Earl's massive indebtedness.
Lucy, Countess of Bedford died in the same month as her husband, May 1627. None of their children survived infancy.
Lucy Russell is the subject of The Noble Assassin (2011), a historical novel by Christie Dickason.
A few scholars have identified the Earl and Countess of Bedford as the allegorised couple in Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle, who left "no posterity" (line 59) — yet since the poem was published in 1601, when the Countess was only twenty years old, the identification has struck others as unlikely.
