Frances (Woodis) Borlase, later Frances Grenfell

British, 1769 - 1851

BiographyFrances Woodis was born on February 12, 1769, the elder of two daughters of Samuel Woodis of Penzance, County Cornwall, and his wife Constantia Langford (d. 1812), widow of Samuel Pellew (1712-65). On July 6, 1784, at the age of fifteen, she married the surgeon Walter Borlase (c.1762-1809) of Penzance. They had two surviving children, Constantia Langford (1785-1850) and Frances Eliza (c.1792-1849). Their marriage was evidently troubled and Frances Borlase began a romantic liaison with her husband's cousin William Grenfell (1765-1844), second son among eight children of Mary (Tremenheere) (1734-1826) and Pascoe Grenfell (1729-1810) of Marazion, near Penzance, commissary to the States of Holland. On March 29, 1793 she gave birth to Grenfell's daughter, Frances Grant Grenfell, in Knightsbridge. She and Grenfell later had two sons: William (1794-1857), and Pascoe George Norman (1798-1830), who appears in this painting with his mother. It is likely that she had separated from her husband by the mid 1790s and was living with Grenfell in Salisbury Street, Westminster. On July 14, 1809, shortly after the death of her husband, the widowed Frances Borlase married William Grenfell in St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster. Their youngest son (known to the family as George) evidently had a close relationship with his father and joined his firm (a copper and mining concern) in 1820. He never married and died, aged thirty-two, in 1830. Disagreements between his parents caused their marriage to disintegrate and on March 30, 1833 they drew up an agreement for the separate maintenance of Frances Grenfell (and her unmarried daughter Constantia Langford Borlase) in case the couple should decide to live apart, which they did. William Grenfell owned extensive property in Marazion, near Penzance, County Cornwall, and for some years lived at Top Tieb cottage with a female companion. He died there in November 1844, aged seventy-nine. Frances Grenfell died on March 21, 1851 at her house in Upper Gloucester Place, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in a grave shared with her daughter Constantia, who predeceased her in February 1850

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