Dorothy Montagu, Countess of Sandwich

Mary was the sister of soldier-statesman James, 1st Earl Stanhope (1673–1721), and was one of the six original Maids of Honour to Queen Anne, appointed 4 June 1702.

On 14 March 1741, shortly before her 24th birthday, she married at St James's John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich.

In a letter to Horace Walpole dated 23 December 1742, the British Resident in Florence, Horace Mann, who had been her brother's charge d'affairs when he held the post, describes the birth of her first son, who died soon after: 'your friend Lady Sandwich has got a son; if one may believe the belly she wore it is a brave one.'

In a letter dated 10 January 1747 Mann tells Walpole: 'I don't believe I am a favourite with my Lady, though I really deserve to be one on many accounts, and for being very essentially instrumental in getting her her Lord.'

In June 1755 her friend and cousin by marriage, Elizabeth Montagu, wrote: I suppose you know that Lady Sandwich has at last left her kind Lord.