Woburn Abbey

The 4th Duke's Bedroom

The family moved from this wing to the south wing towards the end of the eighteenth century but this room was used by the 4th Duke (d.1771), as his bedroom and the preceding room as his dressing-room. The tapestries originally hung in the family parlour (now the public entrance) and were seen there in 1751 by Horace Walpole on his tour of England. They would have appeared very old-fashioned as they were woven for the 5th Earl at the Mortlake factory between 1661 and 1664; the shield mark of the factory can be seen on the borders and the family coat of arms has been incorporated at the top of each tapestry. They are based on cartoons, the Acts of the Apostles, painted by Raphael in 1515 for Pope Urban X, who had commissioned a set of tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, (further paintings on religious themes can be found in The Parlour). The original cartoons are owned by the Crown and are on permanent loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Victoria and Albert actually stayed at Woburn in what is now Queen Victoria's Bedroom over the entrance is a portrait of Diana Spencer the beautiful and favourite granddaughter of the famous and redoubtable Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, whose portrait is also shown. Diana married in 1731 Lord John Russell, later 4th Duke, but died tragically of consumption in 1735.

The 4th Duke's daughter Caroline, by his second marriage to Gertrude, married back into he Churchill family and became the 4th Duchess of Marlborough, an ancestor of Sir Winston Churchill. In the portrait of Sarah she is shown holding the key which symbolised her position as Mistress of the Robes to Queen Anne. Sarah visited the Abbey during the time of Wriothesley, the 3rd Duke, who had married another granddaughter, Anne Egerton, and as an old and ailing grandmother was taken round in a wheelchair. She enjoyed the visit, found the Duke very civil and obliging, but was not greatly impressed with the house.

In this room is a marble group by Laurent Delvaux (1696-1778), a Belgian sculptor, of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. The story is taken from Ovid: Hermaphroditus is seen struggling against the embrace of the water nymph; as he rejects her, she prays to the gods that their bodies be united forever - her wish was granted.