Lot Essay
The sitter in this portrait is thought to be the young wife of Sir Jonathan Trelawny, 3rd Baronet (1650-1721), who was Bishop of Bristol, Bishop of Exeter and Bishop of Winchester. He was one of the famous seven bishops committed to the Tower of London by King James II. Bishop Trelawny was immortalised in the Cornish ballad, The Song of the Western Men. In 1684 he married the fourteen-year-old Rebecca, daughter of Thomas Hele of Babcombe, Devon, with whom he had a large family.