Leicester House and Penshurst
The Countess took charge of finishing building works at Leicester House in London and wrote letters detailing her progress and plans to her husband, who was serving as ambassador in France. In September 1636, she wrote that the great chamber, the anteroom and stair were "handsomely fretted after a new way" at a cost of £80 including a new mantlepiece in the great chamber. She had engaged a painter to paint and gild the woodwork and cornices, and the external railing on the roof and a balcony. She had ordered gilt leather for the walls of the stair and the anteroom. She thought the work would exceed their budget. In January 1637, the smith who made the balcony railings and a timber merchant made demands for payment.
In February 1637, she assured the Earl that money allocated for finishing the house would be "employed with my best judgement". The source of the income was the sale of timber on the Penshurst estate to Henry Crickendall. She hoped to buy a good secondhand bed from the Saint-Germain's fair in Paris and have another made up from her own materials. She wanted to get some crimson or blue "watchet" velvet like that on a French bed belonging to Henrietta Maria. She also wanted a dozen small paintings of ladies. Such suites of portraits are sometimes known as "galleries of beauties".
In January 1638, she asked the Earl to get a bed suite made up in France using some yellow silk damask that he had bought, "where it would be better done" than in London. Some of their older unfashionable beds at Penshurst had attracted adverse comment from strangers. A project to make a new bed using the lace from footmen's livery would cost at least £100.
The Countess was regarded as an expert in the furnishings of beds, and while she was in Paris in 1639 was involved in the bespeaking of beds and curtains provided for Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford as Lord Deputy of Ireland. She recommended that Ralph Grynder's workshop in London supply the woodwork of the beds and the matching suites of chairs and stools. Her sister, Lucy, Countess of Carlisle, who had organised the commission for Wentworth's beds, asked for a hungerlin (a short robe) of "silver stuff or flowered stuff", and then a petticoat and bodice of green satin made in the same fashion as that worn by her daughter Dorothy, Lady Spencer, in a portrait recently sent to England.
The Countess of Leicester sent her husband an account of the Penshurst timber sales in December 1638. She had organised repairs at Penshurst, to the suites known as Leicester's Lodging and the King's Lodging. She intended to sack the park keeper, who was negligent and poachers frequented the deer park at Penshurst. Dorothy employed his brother-in-law instead.
