Mrs. Elizabeth Barry; celebrated actress, lover of a few, of a supposedly dubious immoral mercenary reputation, mother to a least one, successful business woman, the list goes on… However, it will be seen that at her untimely death in 1713 her close friends were people from many walks of life. And it is interesting to note that among her possessions, at the time of her death, there was a portrait of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, her ardent lover for a time and natural father of her daughter Elizabeth, ‘little Barry’. That one piece of evidence surely belies her supposed indifference to the man, before and after his death in 1680, and proves to some extent that her fondness for Rochester endured for many years after their short affair begun in the early 1670s. Her friendship with Mallet Wilmot, Lady Lisburne, one of Rochester’s daughters, is also very evident in a letter to her from Mrs. Barry. By kind permission an image of this rare letter is included in this work.