Duchess of St Albans – An important George III sterling silver kettle on burner stand, London 1812 by John and Edward Edwards (reg. 10th June 1811)

The removable kettle of domed oval form with a gadrooned rim, the removable lid of gently formed form surmounted by a detachable oval finial. A strap handle with wicker covering, the tap stamped PATENT with a scrolling moving spigot with a turned ivory finial. The stand with four cabriole legs terminating in four paw feet with inner structure supporting a removable twin burner. The kettle, lid, stand burner base and cover engraved with script initials HStA below a ducal coronet, similarly each element apart from the burner cover also engraved with later initials AGBC in flourished cursive script. Fully marked underneath, part-marked to lid, stand and burner.

Height – 38.5 cm / 15 inches

Weight – 2195 grams / 70.57 ozt

The ducal initials are for Harriet Beauclerk, nee Mellon, 9th Duchess of St. Albans (1777-1837)

The second set of initials are for Lady Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts (1814-1906)

Harriet Beauclerk, nee Mellon, Duchess of St. Albans (1777-1837) famous as a child actress, born into a traveling theatre troupe. She married firstly Thomas Coutts (1735-1822) the founder of the Royal Bank Coutts & Co. They were married secretly on January 18th 1815 following the death of his first wife under much opposition from Coutt’s three daughters; the Countess of Guilford, the Marchioness of Bute and Lady Burdett. They remarried on April 12th 1815 as the first ceremony was illegal. Upon his death in 1822 inheriting his whole fortune and share in the bank she became senior partner in Coutt’s & Co, taking an active role in decisions made in the business. The Morning Post recorded that “some time previous to his death he settled upon Mrs C the sum of £600,000 with the house in Stratton Street, all the plate, linen & c.- the service of plate is said to be the most valuable in any of the country- together with the house in Highgate, and all its appurtances...the whole makes her the richest widow in the United Kingdom.”

She married her second husband William Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk,9th Duke of St. Albans on the 16th June 1827. In a letter to Sir Walter Scott, in reply to his congratulations on this marriage, Harriet wrote: “What a strange eventful life has mine been, from a poor little player child, with just food and clothes to cover me, dependent on a very precarious profession, without talent or a friend in the world – first the wife of the best, the most perfect being thatever breathed...and now the wife of a Duke! You must write my life...my true history written by the author of Waverley.”

She died on 6 August 1837 at her home in London, and was buried in the parish church at Redbourne, Lincolnshire, the St Albans family seat. She left her husband an allowance of £10,000 a year for his lifetime, along with the use of two properties in London. The bulk of her estate, worth around £1.8m, was left to Angela Burdett (1814 – 1906), the youngest of Thomas’s grandchildren. However, the terms of Harriot’s will were written to exclude Angela from partnership in the bank. Angela was barred from touching the capital sum, but was given complete and independent control of the income from it. She was also required to take the additional surname of Coutts. Lastly, in the event of her marrying a foreigner, the fortune would pass to another member of the family. This last condition was Harriot’s response to the earlier marriage of one of Thomas’s grandsons to a member of the Bonaparte family; she could not countenance the prospect of the bank passing into French hands. Through all these conditions, Harriot did her utmost to protect the bank’s future, safeguarding the Coutts inheritance, even from beyond the grave.

Lady Angela Burdett-Coutts thus became one of the wealthiest women in England and in 1871, in recognition of her philanthropic work, Queen Victoria created her suo jure Baroness Burdett-Coutts of Highgate and Brookfield in the County of Middlesex, she was also the first woman to receive the Freedom of the City of London in 1872. Her lifelong companion and former governess Hannah Brown, to whom she was devoted, died in 1878. Lady Burdett-Coutts wrote to a friend that she was utterly crushed by the loss of "my poor darling, the companion and sunshine of my life for 52 years". On the 12th of February when she was 67, she shocked polite society by marrying her 29-year-old secretary, the American-born William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett, who became MP for Westminster on 12 February 1881. Her new husband changed his surname to Burdett-Coutts. Because of her husband's American birth, the clause in her stepgrandmother's (the 9th Duchess of St Albans) will forbidding her heir to marry a foreign national was invoked and Burdett-Coutts forfeited three-fifths of her income to her sister.

The majority of the Duchess of St Albans' silver was stored in a vaults in Coutts until 1914. There upon some 35,000 ounces of silver formed part of the Coutts Heirloom sale, 14th May 1914, and various sales until 1920. All elements of the service bare Harriet’s monogram and ducal coronet in prominent position rather than the Beauclerk crest, testimony perhaps to her position and strength of character of rising to some of the highest ranks in British society at the time.

A bowl of 1812 by the same makers, with Harriet’s ducal cypher was sold Christie’s New York, 21 Oct 2003, Lot 354 ($8,365 incl. premium)

The presence of Lady Burdett Coutts initials on this kettle which is not found on the majority of the St Albans service infers that this kettle was reserved for use by the Baroness rather than placed into storage in Coutt’s bank.