Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (formerly
Elizabeth Hervey, later
Lady Elizabeth Foster) (
1759 -
March 30, 1824), is best known as the close friend of
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, who supplanted the Duchess in her husband's affections and later married him.
Lady Elizabeth was the daughter of
Frederick Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol, and was familiarly known as "Bess". In
1776, she married John Thomas Foster. When her father acceded to the earldom of Bristol until
1779, she became "Lady Elizabeth." The Fosters had two children, and lived (after 1779) with her parents at
Ickworth House, the ancestral Bristol home. The marriage was not a success, and the couple separated within five years, after Foster had a relationship with a servant. He retained custody of their sons, Augustus and Frederick. In
1782, Bess met the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire in
Bath, and quickly became Georgiana's closest friend.
From this time, she lived in a
ménage a trois with Georgiana and her husband,
William, the 5th Duke of Devonshire, for about twenty-five years. She bore two children by the Duke: a son, Augustus (later
Augustus Clifford, 1st Baronet), and a daughter, Caroline St. Jules, who were raised at
Devonshire House with the Duke's legitimate children by Georgiana. Lady Elizabeth finally married the Duke in
1809, three years after the death of his first wife, during which time she had continued to live in his household.
Bess is also said to have had affairs with several other men, including
Ercole Cardinal Consalvi, John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset, Count Axel von Fersen, Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, and
Valentine Richard Quin, 1st Earl of Dunraven. There is some evidence that Quin fathered an illegitimate son by her, who became the noted physician,
Frederick Hervey Foster Quin.
Bess also had literary pretensions, and was a friend of the French author
Madame de Staël, with whom she corresponded from about
1804. 
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