Duchess of Chandos Anna Eliza Brydges formerly Elletson (née Gamon)

Anna Eliza Gamon was born in 1737, the daughter of Richard Gamon and Elizabeth Grace. Her brother was Richard Grace-Gamon, of Minchenden, MP.

Her first marriage was to Roger Hope Elletson in 1770, when he died in 1775 the couple had no children. He left Anna Eliza his estate - Hope - in Jamaica. She managed it as an absentee and her estate correspondence can be viewed at the National Library of Jamaica.

Her second marriage was to James Brydges, 3rd Duke of Chandos PC (27 December 1731 – 29 September 1789) in 1777. Their children were Anne Elizabeth Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, Duchess of Buckingham and Chandos; Lady Anne Elizabeth Nugent-Temple-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville and Georgianna Charlotte Brydges. King George III and Queen Caroline served as sponsors at Georgianna's baptism.

In 1789 Anna Eliza was once again widowed following an incident in which she pulled a chair out from under the Duke. The accident resulted in a period in which she suffered from mental health problems. In 1791 the Duchess was decreed by the court to be a lunatic. Her daughters were placed under the care of guardians. Her daughter also Anna Eliza was set to inherit a considerable fortune and at age sixteen she was married to twenty-one year old Richard Grenville, later the Duke of Buckingham.

Anna Eliza's mental health problems caused difficulties with respect to her will and her daughter's inheritance. The case was drawn out and complicated - it became known as 'the Chandos inheritance.'

Anna lived until 1813, and retained her property until her death when she passed it to her daughter.

Linda L. Sturtz, 'The “Dimduke” and the Duchess of Chandos: Gender and Power in Jamaican Plantation Management—A Case Study or, A Different Story of “A Man [and his wife] from a Place Called Hope." Available: http://cai.sg.inter.edu/revista-ciscla/volume29/sturtz.pdf

J. V. Beckett, The Rise and Fall of the Grenvilles: Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos, 1710 to 1921 (Manchester University Press, 1994), pp.127-130 'The Chandos Inheritance'.

Hannah Young, 'Gender and absentee slave-ownership in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Britain' (unpublished PhD thesis, University College London, forthcoming).