The sitter was the daughter of Theophilus Howard, 2nd Earl of Suffolk and she secretly married, in 1638, George Stewart, 9th Seigneur d'Aubigny, a Scottish nobleman and Royalist Commander in the Civil War. He was a cousin of King Charles I. He was killed in the battle of Edgehill when he was only twenty-four years old. Catherine went on to marry James Levingston, 1st Earl of Newburgh. They were suspected of plotting to rescue King Charles I and fled to the Netherlands where Catherine died in 1650.
The original by Van Dyck, which may have been painted to commemorate her first marriage, is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (1942.9.95) and the preparatory drawing by Bone, dated April 1821, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London (inv. NPG D17227).