Philadelphia Hancock-Austen, Eliza Hancock, Eliza de Feuillide

(22 December 1761 - April 1813), Eliza de Feuillide after her first marriage, to a French nobleman in 1781, and later Eliza Austen after her second marriage in 1797, was the cousin of novelist Jane Austen.

Fourteen years older than her sister Jane, Eliza was the daughter of George Austen’s sister Philadelphia, who had gone to India to marry Tysoe Saul Hancock in 1753.

 

With her glamorous personality, Eliza Hancock is believed to have been inspirational for a number of Austen's works.

She was born in India, and is often believed to be the natural child of her godfather Warren Hastings,
later to be the first Governor-General of Bengal.

Warren Hastings

 

She came to England with her parents, in 1765. In 1779 she settled in France and two years later she married a French Army Captain, Jean-François Capot de Feuillide, a (possibly self styled) French count ("Comte"). Eliza thus became Comtesse de Feuillide. She came back to England with her mother in 1790, after the French Revolution had started. Her husband was arrested for conspiracy and guillotined in 1794.

Henry Austen, brother of Jane, then courted Eliza, and married her in December 1797; they had no children. Eliza's only son, Hastings (named after Warren Hastings), died in 1801.

Eliza died in April 1813, with Jane Austen at her bedside. Eliza Hancock and Austen had been quite close ever since Eliza arrived in England.