Louisa Manners Tollemache, 7th Countess of Dysart (2 July 1745 – 22 September 1840) was a peer in the Scottish peerage in a flourishing family. Her father held considerable estates in England largely due to the two marriages of Elizabeth Maitland, Duchess of Lauderdale, earlier Tollemache, née Elizabeth Murray. Her elder brothers left no surviving issue on their deaths which enabled her to enjoy and help to pass on to her descendants the key family settlement properties: Helmingham Hall and Ham House in England.
Family and early life
She was one of the daughters of Lionel Tollemache, 4th Earl of Dysart, the second of three who survived to adulthood. She and her younger sister, Jane, were educated at Mrs Holt's School for Girls in South Audley Street, Mayfair.
Marriage and issue
The Lady Louisa married John Manners in 1765, the couple having eloped to Scotland from Ham House and Manners having thrown the key to the garden door back over the wall to prevent her from returning. At her father's request the marriage was repeated at St James's Church, Piccadilly. The marriage occurred 11 years into the 20 years of service for which Manners, fifteen years her senior, is mainly remembered, as MP for Newark, Nottinghamshire for 18 years; in the midst of decades of return of the Manners family as co-incumbents for then two-member parliamentary constituency. Her husband succeeded his father in 1772, inheriting Hanby Hall in Lincolnshire and the Buckminster estate in Leicestershire.
The couple lived most of their 27-year-marriage, ended by his death in 1792, at Ham House, spending time at the other senior Tollemache family home of Helmingham Hall in Suffolk.