Grace Mildmay

Grace, Lady Mildmay (née Sharington or Sherington; ca. 1552–1620) was an English noblewoman, memoirist and medical practitioner. Her autobiography is one of the earliest existing autobiographies of an English woman. In her memoirs, she recalled witnessing visitors to Lacock Abbey who were of questionable moral character.

Her daughter, Mary, inherited from her medical books, more than two thousand loose medical papers and an extensive array of curatives.

The inscription on her monument in St Leonards reads; "Here also lyeth Grace, Lady Mildmay, the only wife of the said Anthony Mildmay, one of the heirs of Sir Henry Sharington, knight of Lacock, in the County of Wiltshire, who lived 50 years married to him, and three years a widow after him; she was most devout, unspotteddly chaste maid, wife, and widow; compassionate in heart, and charitably helpful with physic, clothes, nourishment, orcounsels to any in misery. She was most careful and wise in managing worldly estate so as her life was a blessing to her, and her death she blessed them."