Mary Fairfax was the only daughter and heiress of Thomas Fairfax, 1st Lord Fairfax of Cameron. She was originally to marry the Earl of Chesterfield, but the engagement was broken off and she married George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, on 15 September 1657 at Bolton Percy in Yorkshire. She died on 20 October 1704, seventeen years after her husband, and is buried with him in Westminster Abbey.

The house in the background has not yet been identified, although it is similar in style to the wing Nicholas Stone built in 1638 at Kirby, Northamptonshire: it is not Nun Appleton, the home of the Fairfax family in Yorkshire.