Frances Greville

Frances Greville née Macartney (c 1724 – 1789) was an Irish poet and celebrity in Georgian England. She was born in Longford, Ireland in the mid-1720s; one of four daughters of James Macartney and Catherine (née Coote), daughter of the eminent judge Thomas Coote and niece of Richard Coote, 1st Earl of Bellomont. By the early 1740s, she was in London, accompanying Sarah Lennox, Duchess of Richmond. Horace Walpole's poem The Beauties (1746) mentions her as "Fanny" among the most prominent women at court. Frances married Fulke Greville of Wilbury House (Wiltshire) in 1748 after an elopement. Greville was a gambler and a dandy, but that he loved his wife is witnessed by her presence (under the character of "Flora" in his Maxims, Characters, and Reflections (1756)). Frances is believed to have contributed to the volume herself.