Sir, Nicholas Reeves (letter, May 10 ) writes that in the absence of any alternative candidate for the Chiddingstone Venus we should continue to accept Nell Gwyn as the sitter.

How about the wealthy heiress Elizabeth Trentham who married Bryan Cokayne, 2nd Viscount Cullen? During my research into the Trentham family of Rocester Abbey, Staffordshire, I have come across two references to this Elizabeth Trentham being painted by Lely and, in spite of a detailed search, I have not been able to locate the painting. Could the Chiddingstone Venus be this missing work?

In Strange Pages from Family Papers (1895), T. F. Thiselton Dyer says Elizabeth Trentham “became a prominent beauty of the court of Charles II, and was painted with less than his usual amount of drapery by Sir Peter Lely”.

Elizabeth Trentham was baptised on October 24, 1640, and was the last in the line of the Trentham family. The family wealth which she inherited as sole heiress derived from the time of the dissolution of the monasteries when Richard Trentham, cupbearer to Edward VI and described as a “favourite” of Henry VIII, was granted the lease of Rocester Abbey. She inherited the estate of her great-grandfather, Francis Trentham, of sizeable Staffordshire landholdings and the manorship of Castle Hedingham, the family seat of the earls of Oxford since the time of William the Conqueror.

To give some idea of its value, her uncle and guardian John Bowyer negotiated a prenuptial settlement of £20,000 for his ward’s hand (when she was just 13) with her future father-in-law Charles Cokayne, of Rushton Hall, Northampton. This is equivalent to more than £3 million today.

By the earliest date of the Chiddingstone Venus (1665) Elizabeth Trentham (Lady Cullen) would have been 25 and the mother of three children. Coming into such wealth so young, it is perhaps not surprising that in establishing herself as a Restoration beauty, she developed a reputation for high living and extravagent spending. By the time of her death, in 1713, her wealth had been dissipated and she was living very modestly.

JEREMY CRICK Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs

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