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Copyright
Helen Forder
2005
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(1771 - 1839)
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Elizabeth Brown Greenly was born
at Titley Court, Herefordshire,
on the 27th November, 1771, the only child of William Greenly and his wife
Elizabeth (née Brown). They had a town house in Abergavenny and property
near Cwmdu, Breconshire, as well as the estate in Herefordshire. William
Greenly was said to have been 'an excellent scholar and antiquary, and
a man of great goodness of heart and simple manners'.
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Elizabeth, usually known as
Eliza, was said to be 'a person of so much real merit, & of such
superior & general cultivation of mind, that her superiority to the
contemporary and surrounding society was too self-evident not to excite
astonishment' ... She was an ardent supporter of the Welsh causes of
the day and was one of the first to support Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams
1747 - 1826) beginning her patronage in 1806, and continuing for the rest
of his life. Lady Llanofer's mother (Georgina Mary Ann Waddington, née
Port) was the same age as Eliza and the two were close friends. A frequent
visitor to Llanofer, Eliza no doubt encouraged the interest of young
Augusta Waddington (later Lady Llanofer) in these matters.
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She had a good voice and on
her visits to the Waddington family she would entertain them with her singing
- usually the old Welsh folk songs of which she was very fond. According to
Frances (Lady Llanofer's sister, who later became Baroness Bunsen) Eliza's
voice 'was not of superior quality, but her taste was refined, &
she had an admirable collection of songs'. Perhaps it was this
introduction to the old tunes while she was young that made Augusta
Waddington so enthusiastic about Welsh music throughout her life.
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Eliza was good natured and
attractive and 'considered clever, of a religious nature and inclined
to literary pursuits'. She had a number of suitors but, according to
Baroness Bunsen, any man who might have been a suitable husband for Eliza,
and acceptable to her, was 'frightened off from prosecution of his
suit, by the ever-increasing demands made upon him as conditions of consent
to marriage, by the Mother & Grandmother' ... The Grandmother,
Mary Brown, was head of the family, 'adding whalebone to Mrs. Greenly's
buckram, in all family concerns', as Baroness Bunsen remarked in her Reminiscences
written in 1874.
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The man Eliza eventually
married, in 1811, was Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, a man more than ten years
her senior, and an erratic seafarer who suffered from gout. He took the
name Greenly on marrying Eliza, heiress to a considerable fortune. Eliza
was said to have 'some eccentric habits (such as getting up in the
middle of the night to write sermons)' and maybe this contributed
to his less than satisfactory behaviour towards her following their
marriage. Her behaviour appears to have been without fault, but after the
first year of marriage he went to visit friends and stayed away for seven
years!
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Admiral Sir
Isaac Coffin
(1759 - 1839)
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He communicated with her
only rarely, and on the few occasions he did return, it appears that he was
very disagreeable. Eliza once wrote, 'One moment he makes me love him,
at another his unfeeling letters and actions completely repel me'. Sir
Isaac's relatives and friends sympathised with the long-suffering Lady
Coffin Greenly.
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Eventually Sir Isaac dropped
the name Greenly, and Lady Greenly stopped using the name Coffin.
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