Catherine Foote (c.1758-1808) was the daughter of Francis Hender Foote (1755-1798), a clergyman. Her mother Catherine Mann was the sister of Sir Horace Mann, British envoy in Florence and correspondent of Horace Walpole. She married Colonel John Ross of Cromarty, and after his death, in 1777 she became the second wife of Sir Robert Herries (1730-1815), a wealthy merchant and MP for Dumfries from 1780-1784. She lived in St James’s Street in London and hosted her own salon; Montagu Pennington stated that “her weekly parties for conversation were well known, and respectably attended”.