Hester Davenport

Hester Davenport (23 March 1642 – 16 November 1717) was a leading actress with the Duke's Company under the management of Sir William Davenant.

Among the earliest English actresses, she was best known as "that faire & famous Comoedian call'd Roxalana," as diarist John Evelyn put it after seeing her on 9 January 1661/2.

"[5] June 1661 saw her in what was to become her most famous role and one which was to be associated with her for years to come: Roxalana, in a revival of Davenant's The Siege of Rhodes, originally written in 1656, but rewritten to take advantage of the talents of the young actresses now in his Company.

[6][7][8] The diarist Samuel Pepys, who had been pleased to see beautiful and talented women like Davenport playing the female roles previously given to young men,[9] was lamenting the loss of 'Roxalana' by 18 February 1662.

In 18 February 1662 Pepys recorded in his Diary that Roxalana was no longer performing on the stage,[10] the supposition being that she was by then living with Aubrey de Vere, 20th Earl of Oxford (1627–1703).

The small wedding "took place in the dining room of a chandler’s shop in a somewhat insalubrious street in the vicinity of what is now London's Northumberland Avenue."

A man in the garb of a clergyman officiated, and "Davenport wore a white satin gown decorated with silver ribbons.

The couple's son Audrey de Vere was born on 17 April 1664 and baptized at St Paul's church in Covent Garden on 15 May.

'[12] On 4 January 1665, Samuel Pepys paid a visit to the chaotic home of the couple and recorded in his Diary that 'his Lordshipp was in bed at past 10 a-clock: and Lord help us, so rude a dirty family I never saw in my life.

On 4 June 1708, her son Aubury de Vere was buried at the Church of St Andrew in Holborn as 'Earl of Oxford, from Grays Inn.'