Lady Maria Frances Bulkeley
(1811-1889)

Volume 1, page 15, sitting number 63. 

[Identified only as ‘Mrs Bulkeley’ in the Silvy daybooks, the database of the National Portrait Gallery identifies the sitter more fully as ‘Maria Frances Bulkeley (née Stanley-Massey-Stanley).’ This identification is presumably based on a second visit she made to the studio, when she was identified in the daybooks as ‘Lady Bulkeley.’]

Born in or about 1811 at Hooton in Cheshire, Maria Frances Stanley-Massey-Stanley was the daughter of Sir Thomas Stanley-Massey-Stanley and his wife Mary née Haggerston. 

On 30 August 1832 at Carnarthann in Wales she became the second wife of Sir Richard Bulkeley Williams-Bulkeley. 

‘Married, on Thursday, August 2, at St George’s, Hanover-square, the ceremony having been first performed according to the rites of the Church of Rome, Sir Richard Bulkeley Williams Bulkeley, of Baron Hill, in the County of Anglesey, Bart., M.P., to Maria Frances, the only daughter of Sir Thomas Stanley Massey Stanley, of Hooton, in the County of Chester, Bart., and grand-daughter of Lady Haggerston, of Haggerston Castle, Northumberland’ (Morning Chronicle, 3 August 1832). 

Their marriage produced four sons. 

Sir Richard died on 28 August 1875 at Baron Hill in the County of Anglesey; he left an estate valued at £40,000. The Index of Willis and Administrations describes his widow as Lady Maria Frances Williams-Bulkeley ‘of Paddington Cottage near Neston in the County of Chester.’

Lady Bulkeley died on 4 March 1889 at Pelling Place, Windsor, Berkshire. She left an estate valued at £10,367.