Margaret Cocks, later Margaret Smith

Margaret Cocks was born May 23, 1773, the second daughter of Joseph Cocks of London (1732-1775), a barrister-at-law, and his wife Margaret, daughter of John Thorniloe. Her father died before her second birthday and she and her elder sister became co-heiresses to his estate. Contemporary reports estimated her fortune at £100,000. Margaret Cocks was evidently raised by one or more of her father's numerous siblings, the eldest being Charles Cocks (1725-1806) of Castleditch (now Eastnor Castle) who was created 1st Lord Somers, Baron of Evesham, in 1784. By the late 1790s she was living with her unmarried aunt, Elizabeth Cocks. She remained close to her sister Mary following the latter's marriage to William Russell, and in 1789 sat to Joshua Reynolds for a double portrait of herself and her young niece, Mary (Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood). In 1798 at the age of twenty-five, Margaret Cocks became the second wife of Joseph Smith (1757-1822) of Shortgrove, County Essex, who was sixteen years her senior. Smith was the secretary and intimate friend of the Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and held numerous public offices. When in London the couple lived in Hereford Street, and their country residence was Shortgrove Hall, a seventeenth-century house with 700 acres near Newport, Essex, purchased by Joseph Smith from the Wyndham family. They had five sons and one daughter, and many grandchildren. Joseph Smith died on April 15, 1812, leaving the London house and its contents to his wife, and Shortgrove in trust to his eldest son, William Charles Smith. Margaret Smith subsequently moved to Devonshire Place and died there on June 29, 1847. She was buried at Newport Church, where she had arranged for a family vault in 1822.