Lady Elizabeth "Betty" Germain (1680 – 16 December 1769)[1] was a wealthy English aristocrat and courtier, a philanthropist and collector of antiquities, who corresponded with literary and political figures.

In 1738, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough wrote of her that "notwithstanding the great pride of the Berkeley family she married an innkeeper's son," and maliciously adds in explanation that "she was very ugly, without a portion, and in her youth had an unlucky accident with one of her father's servants.

Though almost persuaded in later years to marry Lord Sidney Beauclerk, a handsome and worthless fortune-hunter, she remained a widow for more than fifty years, and fulfilled her husband's wishes by leaving the estate of Drayton, with £20,000 in money and half the residue of her wealth, to the politician Lord George Sackville, the Duke's second son, who in turn assumed the name of Germain.

The Duke of Dorset showed the letter to the king, George II who ordered that Lady Betty was to have the protection of a file of musketeers.

[4] Lady Betty passed most of her widowhood in her own apartments at Knole, near Sevenoaks in west Kent, the seat of her friends the Duke and Duchess of Dorset, or at her London town house in St. James's Square where she entertained politicians regardless of party or faction.

After her death, he continued to devote considerable attention to the estate, including his formal Dutch gardens, which Lady Betty maintained as they had been in his lifetime.

Her elder sister married Thomas Chamber of Ilanworth, Middlesex, and had two daughters, who, as their parents died young, were brought up entirely under Lady Betty's guardianship.

These gems were described in two folio volumes entitled Gemmarum antiquarum delectus quse in dactyliothecis Ducis Marlburiensis conservantur, 1781–90; the engravings were chiefly by Bartolozzi, and the Latin text by Jacob Bryant and William Cole (1753–1806).