Frances Talbot, Countess of Tyrconnell

Restoration court beauty (died 1731)

Frances Talbot, Countess of Tyrconnell (née Jennings, previously Hamilton; c. 1649 – 1731), also called La Belle Jennings, was a maid of honour to the Duchess of York and, like her sister Sarah, a famous beauty at the Restoration court. She married first George Hamilton and then Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell. She was vicereine in Dublin Castle while Tyrconnell was viceroy (lord deputy) of Ireland for James II. She lived through difficult times after the death of her second husband, who was attainted as a Jacobite, but recovered some of his wealth and died a devout Catholic despite having been raised as a Protestant.

Frances Jennings was about 11 when the Restoration (1660) brought the end of the Commonwealth and put Charles II on the throne. In 1664, aged about 15, Jennings was appointed maid of honour to Anne Hyde, the Duchess of York. Anne was the first wife of the James, Duke of York, the younger brother of the King and future King James II. Frances's beauty earned her the nickname "La Belle Jennings." Macaulay describes her as “beautiful Fanny Jennings, the loveliest coquette in the brilliant Whitehall of the Restoration". She figures in the Mémoires du comte de Grammont (Memoirs for short), written by Anthony Hamilton, younger brother of her future husband George Hamilton, which describes the life at the Restoration court. The three oldest of the six Hamilton brothers, James, George, and Anthony, belonged to the inner circle around the King at Whitehall, as they were fashionable young men and had been in exile with him. An incident in which Jennings disguised herself as an orange seller is told in the Memoirs and also, with less detail, in Pepys's diary. According to the Memoirs, she and her friend Miss Price wanted to consult a fortune teller incognito. They went out disguising themselves as orange sellers. Jennings was courted by the Duke of York, the future James II, who thought his wife's maids of honour to be his property, but she refused to play such a role. She was also courted by Richard Talbot and by George Hamilton, second son of Sir George Hamilton.

Frances remarried in 1681 in Paris, taking as her second husband an old suitor she had previously rejected: Richard Talbot. They had no children. In 1690, after James II's defeat at the Battle of the Boyne, the king fled to their home and was met by Frances. According to later sources, King James remarked, ‘Your countrymen, madam, can run well’ and Lady Tyrconnell replied, ‘Not quite so well as your majesty, for I see that you have won the race’. In August 1690 Lady Tyrconnell fled to France with her daughters and 40,000 gold coins. She became one of the ladies in waiting of Mary of Modena, exiled Queen of England at the Château of Saint Germain en Laye. Her husband stayed in Ireland and died during the Siege of Limerick on 14 August 1691.

In 1691 or 1692, after her husband's death, she was allowed to visit England to petition for the possession of the Irish lands that had been settled upon her as her jointure when she married Tyrconnell and which had been confiscated after his attainder in 1689. It might have been at this visit to London that, out of necessity, she had a dressmaker's stall at the New Exchange in the Strand in Westminster. She dressed in white with her face covered by a white mask and was described as "the white milliner". This episode was dramatised by Douglas Jerrold and performed at Covent Garden in 1841 under the title "The white Milliner: A Comedy in two Acts". Lady Tyrconnell returned to France and was then in 1693 indicted herself of high treason. After Queen Anne had acceded the throne in 1702, she and her stepdaughter, Charlotte Talbot, eventually recovered the lands due to them in 1703 by a private act of parliament (1 Ann. c. 70) — presumably through her sister Sarah's influence with the Queen. Eventually she retired to the Dominican Convent at Channel Row, Dublin, and lived there as a parlour boarder from 1723–1724. She then built a house on North King Street and obtained the permission to establish a Poor Clares convent in it.