an English novelist and duchess. She is best known as Lady Elizabeth Foster, the close friend of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire. Elizabeth supplanted the Duchess, gaining the affections of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, and later marrying him. Known as Bess, she was born Elizabeth Christiana Hervey in a small house in Horringer, St Edmundsbury, Suffolk. Her father, Frederick Hervey, later became the fourth Earl of Bristol.
