Later items in The Public Advertiser and Town and Country Magazine reported her place of birth as Greenwich, London, and her parentage as variously a market porter and an herb-vendor or a shoemaker turned Methodist lay preacher, but biographer I. M. Davis gives such accounts little credence.
Many years later, George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, recalled how he and a group of young friends, including Charles James Fox, had taken a visiting French nobleman to a bawdy-house.
[9] Elizabeth Armistead's standing as mistress to high nobility attracted the interest of General Richard Smith, a man of humble origins who had amassed a fortune while in command of the East India Company's army of Bengal.
Though the scandal magazines predicted their liaison might become a lasting one, Armistead elected to return to Lord George Cavendish, who provided her with her second annuity.
[12] Even as she supported herself with a string of wealthy lovers, Elizabeth Armistead maintained close friendships with the young politicians of the Whig party.
When Richard Fitzpatrick was ordered to America with his regiment, she wrote letters to him enclosed in those of his friend Charles James Fox.
Mrs Robinson tried to rekindle the interest of her royal lover which the partisan newspapers of the day whipped up into a "severe contest" between the old mistress and the new.
Whatever cachet the title of royal mistress may have brought her, she soon discovered the Prince had neither the inclination nor the funds to support her in the style she had long maintained.
After several months, she set off on an extended Continental Tour as a means of breaking off the affair without giving offence to the future king.
Shortly before going abroad, Mrs Armistead acquired the lease of a small country house in Surrey called St Ann's Hill.
The place belonged to the estate of the Duke of Marlborough and probably came to her attention though his brother Lord Robert Spencer who was one of her Whig friends and a rumoured lover.
[2] She returned to England to find the Whigs finally in power under Lord Rockingham and her friend Charles Fox in office as Foreign Secretary.
After the death of Rockingham forced Fox to resign, he was rumoured to have had an affair with Mary Robinson before beginning one with his long-time friend Elizabeth Armistead.
They also appear to have practically adopted young Robert St John, the grandson of Mrs Armistead's first keeper, Lord Bolingbroke.
When Fox returned to office as Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of All the Talents, his wife managed the expected social obligations with aplomb that may have confounded her critics.
"If we had not known it before," wrote his nephew Lord Holland, "his last hours would have convinced us that the ruling passion of his heart was affection and tenderness for her."
Though devastated by the death of her "angel", Mrs Fox returned to St Ann's Hill and continued the quiet, domestic life she had led with him.
Mrs Fox took a kind interest in the welfare of villagers from nearby Chertsey, subscribing to various charities and supporting a small school for the children of the parish.
Her late husband's namesake great-nephew Colonel Charles Richard Fox was chief mourner together with his brother-in-law, Lord Lilford.
[2] "The ceremony was intended to be private," reported the Windsor and Eton Express, "but persons of all classes were anxious to show their respect for one who has been so long and justly beloved, and who by her urbanity, kindness, and excessive benevolence, has acquired the esteem of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of her own residence, St Ann's Hill.