Elizabeth Rawdon, Countess of Moira

Elizabeth Rawdon, Countess of Moira, 16th Baroness Botreaux, 15th Baroness Hungerford, 13th Baroness de Moleyns, 13th Baroness Hastings (de Hastings) and 12th Baroness Hastings (de Hungerford) (23 March 1731 – 11 April 1808) was a literary patron and antiquarian.

Born Lady Elizabeth Hastings at Donington Park, Leicestershire, she was the eldest surviving daughter of Theophilus Hastings, 9th Earl of Huntingdon (1696–1746) and his wife, Selina (1707–1791), the founder of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. She was educated at home. On 26 February 1752, she became the third wife of her third cousin once removed, Sir John Rawdon, Bt (1720–1793), who was created Earl of Moira in 1762. In 1760, shortly after preaching at Moira, John Wesley wrote to her, berating her for her loss of faith and in later life, she openly professed a hatred of religion.

Lady Moira's sharp intelligence was tempered by intermittent bouts of depression and a sometimes strained relationship with her husband, who was described by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as "something of a and a common butt". While she could seek emotional refuge in the upbringing of her six sons and five daughters, she also interested herself in Dublin's literary circles and the intellectual clique surrounding Bishop Thomas Percy at Dromore from 1782 to 1810. In the 1780s, she befriended the young Maria Edgeworth and later edited extracts of Edgeworth's work. She was used by Maria three times as a model for the characters of Mrs Hungerford in "Patronage" (1812), Lady Oranmore in "The Absentee" (1813), and the Countess of Annaly in "Ormond" (1817). Lady Moira was also a personal friend of Charlotte Brooke, author of "Reliques of Irish Poetry" (1816), and aided her in compiling and translating sections of the work. She gave her patronage to Thomas Dermody, best known for his "Poems Moral and Descriptive" (1800), which was dedicated to the countess, who had financed his early education. Within her social circle, she was also a combatant on behalf of Mary Wollstonecraft, following attacks on "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792) by Dr Thomas O'Beirne, Bishop of Meath, as Lady Mountcashell, the wife of Lady Moira's step-grandson and a former pupil of Wollstonecraft, perceived the criticisms to be a slight on her own family. Lady Moira also provided John Thomas Romney Robinson, who penned "Juvenile Poems" (1807), with support and encouragement.

As an antiquarian, Lady Moira was instrumental in encouraging her husband to become one of the founder members of the Royal Irish Academy and she became the first woman to be published in "Archaeologia" in 1783, when she submitted a discourse concerning the remains of a human skeleton discovered on the Rawdon estate.

Although Lady Moira generally expressed an antipathy to politics, she was an intimate of Henry Flood, the noted Irish patriot. In 1770, she hosted a fancy dress ball to encourage the Irish linen industry. This was financed by the Irish government and attended by 600 of the country's nobility and gentry. Shortly after this, a news sheet against the Augmentation Bill was announced on the Dublin streets as "Lady Moira's answer to Dr Lucas", thus publicly identifying her with the patriot opposition. In 1772, she expressed public concern at the plight of the Hearts of Steel, an agrarian movement based in counties Down and Antrim, formed to protest against high levies of county cess.

In 1789, she inherited the baronies of Botreaux, Hungerford, de Moleyns, Hastings (de Hastings) and Hastings (de Hungerford) from her childless brother, Francis, as well as the co-heirships of the baronies of Strange de Knokyn and Stanley.

In 1798, she wrote to Lords Camden and Castlereagh, protesting against the government's methods of suppressing the United Irishmen. Her papers contain the material she compiled to supplement the speech condemning the excesses of the army in Ireland, made by her son, Francis in the Irish House of Lords on 19 February 1798. Lady Moira died, aged 77, on 11 April 1808, at Moira House and was buried at Moira.

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