Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford (née Harington; 1581–1627) was a major aristocratic patron of the arts and literature in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, the primary non-royal performer in contemporary court masques, a letter-writer, and a poet.

Lucy Harington married Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford, on 12 December 1594, when she was thirteen years old and he was twenty-two, at St Dunstan's on Stepney Green.

[8] The Countess of Bedford audaciously skipped the late queen's funeral and rode hard to the Scottish border, ahead of a party of gentlewomen appointed by the Privy Council,[9] and got an audience in Scotland with the new king's wife Anne of Denmark.

[15][16] The French ambassador the Marquis de Rosny identified the Countess of Bedford as an influential courtier, and gave her a gold watch set with diamonds.

In February 1617 the masque by Ben Jonson presented by Lord Hay to the French ambassador Baron de Tour, the Lovers Made Men, was staged by the Countess of Bedford.

[20] A drawing for her costume as Penthesilea in the Masque of Queens by Inigo Jones survives in the collection at Chatsworth House.

By his own admission, Jonson portrayed her as Ethra in his lost pastoral, The May Lord — though he may also have depicted her as Lady Haughty, president of the Collegiates in Epicene (1609).

When Jonson was imprisoned in 1605 for his role in the Eastward Ho scandal, he wrote a letter to an unknown lady, who is thought by some scholars to have been the Countess of Bedford.

[22] Others In addition to Jonson, Bedford supported other significant poets of her era, including Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, George Chapman, and John Donne.

[28] She described her building and improvements at Moor Park in a letter to a friend; "my works att the More, whear I have been a patcher this sommer and I am still adding some trifles of pleasure to that place I am so much love with, as I were so fond of any man I were in hard case.

[32] At this time, the artists Nicholas Hilliard, Daniël Mijtens and Rowland Lockey made copies or replicas of old portraits.

[34] As one of the most influential women at James's court, she was also involved in a range of political issues; in the later part of the reign she was among the most prominent supporters of Elizabeth of Bohemia, who had been brought up in her father's household at Coombe Abbey.

Their wedding in July 1605 was held at Bedford House in the Strand, and was part of a move to Anglicize the Scottish aristocracy.

[36][citation needed] She was apparently absent from the queen's company for a part of 1605 and 1606, around the time Anne of Denmark had her last daughter Sophia, and had perhaps been sent away in disfavour.

"[40] In August 1616 she was with the court at Woodstock Palace, the only countess present, when George Villiers was created Viscount Buckingham.

[44] She wrote to her friend Lady Cornwallis that Roxburghe's absence in Scotland "makes me perfectly hate the court".

[48] Lady Bedford reportedly had debts of £50,000 in 1619, apart from the Earl's massive indebtedness, and despite a royal grant of duties from sea coal, made plans to sell lands inherited from her father and brother, including Coombe Abbey.