English School, circa 1595-1605

In the 1921 sale this portrait was identified as of Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Nottingham (for whom see lot 309). However, in his 1966 article 'The Forgotten Age of English Paintings' on the Elizabethan and Jacobean portraits at Cowdray Park and Parham Roy Strong suggested that there may have been some 'mislabelling' of the four full-length portraits in the 1921 sale, speculating of this and the two other full-lengths that he thought by the same hand (lots 310 and 312) that they might be of the Countess of Nottingham's three daughters.

The eldest of the Countess of Nottingham's daughters Elizabeth Howard married Robert Southwell, and later the Earl of Carrick, and was one of Queen Elizabeth's Maids of Honour. Their younger daughter Frances Howard (d. circa 1628), married firstly Henry Fitzgerld, 12th Earl of Kildare, and secondly in 1600, after the latter's death and her return from Ireland to England, Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham (1564-1618), and was much favoured by Queen Elizabeth I. At Queen Elizabeth I's death she was one of two countesses appointed to lead a delegation sent to meet Queen Anne of Denmark and she served Anne of Denmark for a while as Princess Elizabeth's governess. Her second husband however, was involved in the Gunpowder Plot to assassinate King James I for which he was sent to the Tower of London, and forfeited his titles and estates, although his wife remained at Cobham Hall for her life, where she was visited by the King in 1622 The Earl and Countess of Nottingham's third daughter Margaret, married Sir Richard Leveson of Trentham, in Staffordshire.

Lady Elizabeth Howard was one of Queen Elizabeth I's goddaughters and also one of the Queen's Maids of Honour by 1579 and the identification of this portrait as of her would appear to be supported by the dress in which the subject of the portrait is shown which is of a type associated with the Queen's Maids of Honour. The cherries are symbolic of innocence.