The future Countess of Huntingdon was born into an aristocratic Leicestershire family in 1707; her marriage to the Earl of Huntingdon in 1728 was a love match that produced seven children. She underwent an evangelical conversion in 1739, and thereafter came into contact with the Moravian Brethren, and leaders of the Revival including the Wesleys and George Whitefield. Gradually she assumed a position of influence within the Revival, as well as using her position to further evangelical religion within fashionable society. Her husband’s death in 1746 left her the care of a young family, but also enabled her to extend her religious activity, for example, by promoting harmony within the Revival in the face of internal divisions, and expanding her links with Anglican Evangelicals. From the early 1760s she began to open her own chapels and to build up a band of clerical helpers to serve at them.
Keywords: Calvinism, John Fletcher, Cradock Glascott, Howel Harris, Moravians, John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield