Harriet Arbuthnot - Early Life

Early Life

Harriet Arbuthnot was born Harriet Fane, the daughter of the Hon. Henry Fane, second son of Thomas Fane, 8th Earl of Westmorland. As a young man, Henry Fane had been described as "very idle and careless and spending much time in the country". However, he found time to be the Member of Parliament for Lyme and in 1772 was appointed Keeper of the King's Private Roads. In 1778, he married Arbuthnot's mother, Anne Batson, an heiress, the daughter of Edward Buckley Batson. The couple had 14 children: nine sons and five daughters.

The young Harriet spent much of her childhood at the family home at Fulbeck Hall in Lincolnshire, sited high on the limestone hills above Grantham. The house, which had been given to Henry Fane by his father, was a not over-large modern mansion at the time of Arbuthnot's childhood. It was rebuilt following a fire in 1733, and further extended and modernised in 1784 by Henry Fane. At Fulbeck Harriet and her 13 siblings enjoyed a comfortable and reasonably affluent rural childhood.

Harriet Fane's father died when she was nine years old, but the family fortunes improved considerably in 1810 when her mother inherited the Avon Tyrrell estate in Hampshire and the Upwood Estate in Dorset. This yielded the widowed Mrs Fane an income of £6,000 per annum (£340,000 per year as of 2013), a large income by the standards of the day. With 14 children and a position in society to maintain, however, the money was fully utilised.