A Right Royal Scandal

Two Marriages That Changed History

Joanne Major, Sarah Murden

• Éditeur: Pen & Sword History
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781473863446
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: Early Modern History

From the authors of An Infamous Mistress: "The tale of two juicy 19th-century scandals, both concerning the aristocratic Cavendish-Bentinck family" ( Cheshire Life ). Almost two books in one, A Right Royal Scandal recounts the fascinating history of the irregular love matches contracted by two successive generations of the Cavendish-Bentinck family, ancestors of the British royal family. The first part of this intriguing book looks at the scandal that erupted in Regency London, just months after the Battle of Waterloo, when the widowed Lord Charles Bentinck eloped with the Duke of Wellington's married niece. Over two decades later and while at Oxford University, Lord Charles' eldest son fell in love with a beautiful Romany girl, and secretly married her. When his alliance was discovered, he was cast adrift by his family—with devastating consequences. A love story as well as a brilliantly researched historical biography, this is a continuation of Joanne Major and Sarah Murden's first biography, An Infamous Mistress, about the eighteenth-century courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott, whose daughter was the first wife of Lord Charles Bentinck. The book ends by showing how, if not for a young gypsy and her tragic life, the British monarchy would look very different today. "An easy read of a subject that keeps you engrossed from start to finish. This book is brilliant for those who enjoy the scandals of historical television, with the added authenticity of historical fact." — History of Royals "The plots may seem to come straight out of the world of Regency Romance but they are all true, and carefully annotated and verified by Major and Murden." —Naomi Clifford, author of The Murder of Mary Ashford

Chapter One

Lord Charles Bentinck and the
Prince Regent

Lord Charles Bentinck was of illustrious parentage. Born in the autumn of 1780, he was the third son of William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland.1 His mother was Lady Dorothy Cavendish, the only daughter of William, 4th Duke of Devonshire and both Charles’ father and maternal grandfather served their country as prime minister representing the Whig Party. He was nephew by marriage to the infamous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire who had married his uncle, the 5th Duke of Devonshire, in 1774, six years before Lord Charles’ birth.

All the sons of the Duke of Portland were given William as a first name, something of a tradition in the family, but only one son used it. Lord Charles’ full name was therefore William Charles Augustus Cavendish-Bentinck but he preferred to simply use Bentinck as his surname rather than the doublebarrelled alternative favoured by his wider family. His siblings were William Henry, the heir to the dukedom who later added his wife’s surname of Scott into his own making his triple-barrelled; another William Henry (confusingly the two eldest brothers were given the same Christian names); Frederick, the youngest child (just a year separated him and his brother Charles); and two sisters, Lady Charlotte (who married Captain Charles Greville) and Lady Mary. The four boys all finished their education at Westminster public school with the younger ones then entering the army as junior officers. Charles enlisted with the Coldstream Guards as an ensign at the age of 16.

Although he served with the army for many years across several regiments, Lord Charles was much more at home in a ballroom than on a battlefield, particularly noted as a fine and graceful dance partner. Along with his younger brother Frederick, he was a regular visitor to the house of the notorious Regency courtesan Harriette Wilson (although Harriette much preferred the younger brother to the elder, describing Fred Bentinck as her ‘constant and steady admirer’). Lady Anne’s mother Hyacinthe Gabrielle, Marchioness Wellesley, was later to describe Charles as a ‘wretched roué, a man of no principle’, although he was an inconstant visitor to Harriette’s side, unlike his brother.2 In the mid-1820s when Harriette wrote her Memoirs she blackmailed the men destined to be named within the pages, offering them the chance to buy themselves out and, perchance, save their reputation. The Duke of Wellington, another of Harriette’s admirers, reputedly and famously told her to ‘publish and be damned!’ and she even attempted to blackmail the Prince Regent.3 Whether or not Lord Charles and Frederick Bentinck were two of those who received such letters is not known, and perhaps Harriette wisely knew that the perpetually financially embarrassed brothers did not have the means to buy themselves out even if they wished to. At any rate, they knew they would appear in its pages and were content to let things stay as they were, with Charles shrugging off the whole debacle by saying:

We are in for it . . . my brother Frederick and I are in the book, up to our necks; but we shall only make bad worse by contending against it; for it is not only true, every word of it, but is excellently written and very amusing.

Harriette recounted Lord Charles Bentinck’s sexual relationship with a young woman named Ann Rawlinson, a prostitute who was introduced to her line of business by a Mrs Porter of Berkeley Street (a brothel-keeper who, according to Harriette, filled the ‘high situation of prime procuress to his Grace of Wellington’). Ann Rawlinson had been seduced by a Colonel Eden and, after falling pregnant, had been left adrift in the world with a child to support. She was ‘rather pretty, with a little néz, retroussé [she had a nose that turned up at the tip in an attractive manner], and black eyes’, and lodged above an umbrella shop in Knightsbridge. Harriette heard of her and introduced her to Lord Charles who took Ann into his keeping; he was generous enough to fit up her rooms with new carpets and decorations and eventually fell in love with her. Little Ann, as Harriette called her, forgot about her poverty and, thanks to her lover’s purse, began to paint her face with rouge and to dress in the latest fashions. Lord Charles’ patronage of her continued until Lord Burghersh (General John Fane, the future 11th Earl of Westmorland) visited Ann to let her know that a friend of his, an Italian nobleman recently arrived in England, required a ‘temporary mistress’ for the duration of his visit. It was only for a few days and the position promised to pay well, so little Ann accepted. As it turned out, the Italian gentleman was unable to perform in the bedroom, blaming his deficiency on the weather and lamenting that ‘dis contree is great deal mush too cold’ but Ann kept the money he had given her anyway. After this, Lord Charles’ ardour cooled too and he turned his attentions to a lady of higher status, with drastic consequences for all involved.4

One episode in Harriette’s Memoirs that took place shortly after Charles had eloped with Lady Abdy depicted his brother Frederick at Harriette’s London house. The hapless young man was admiring himself in a new pair of leather breeches in her looking-glass when the Regency fashion dandy Beau Brummell was announced. Harriette called him over:

‘Lord Frederick wants your opinion on his new leather breeches.’

‘Come here, Fred Bentinck!’ said Brummell. ‘But there is only one man on earth who can make leather breeches!’

‘Mine were made by a man in the Haymarket,’ Bentinck observed, looking down at them with much pride; for he very seldom sported anything new.

‘My dear fellow, take them off directly!’ said Brummell.

‘I beg I may hear of no such thing,’ said [Harriette], hastily – ‘else, where would he go to, I wonder without his small-clothes?’

‘You will drive me out of the house, Harriette,’ said Fred Bentinck; and then put himself into attitudes, looking anxiously and very innocently, from George Brummell to his leather breeches, and from his leather breeches to the looking-glass.

‘They only came home this morning,’ proceeded Fred, ‘and I thought they were rather neat.’

‘Bad knees, my good fellow! bad knees!’ said Brummell, shrugging up his shoulders.

Frederick Bentinck was a visitor to Brummell’s London town house, 4 Chesterfield Street, where Brummell held court in the front dressing room to a throng of young men about town, all in attendance to devotedly watch the dandy as he dressed. Perhaps Lord Charles Bentinck attended too with his younger brother? Even the Prince Regent himself was then in thrall to the splendid Beau Brummell, although they would later famously fall out (when the prince publicly and humiliatingly ignored him, Brummell pointedly turned to his friend Lord Alvanley and loudly asked him, ‘Alvanley, who’s your fat friend?’).

Charles Bentinck was one of the innermost circle surrounding the prince, the future King George IV, serving in the capacity of equerry to his royal friend (then the Prince of Wales), a role that had somewhat been placed in jeopardy when Charles married the beautiful, haughty and possibly blueblooded Miss Georgiana Seymour in 1808, shortly before being shipped off to the battlefields of the Peninsular War in northern Spain with his regiment. His life, both public and private, was already intricately bound up with the Prince of Wales and his marriage to Miss Seymour made him personally related to his royal employer.

For Georgiana Seymour had two men who stood as a father to her and even today it is unclear which man, if either, was her true parent. Her mother was the well-born but infamous eighteenth-century courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott, who had enjoyed the protection of a British earl, a French duke and the Prince of Wales himself. Born illegitimately, Georgiana’s father was reputed to be the prince, for Grace and her royal lover had dallied together in a short-lived but well-documented romance for a few months in 1781 and Georgiana was born nine months later. Grace had gained her notoriety and reputation as a courtesan following her starring role in her own Crim. Con. case and divorce from her husband, the society doctor John Eliot. He was many years her senior and much shorter in stature than his tall and elegant young wife and had discovered Grace in a most compromising situation in a London bagnio (high-class brothel) with the reprobate but handsome Viscount Valentia. Following her divorce Grace had, for many years, been the mistress of George James, 4th Earl (and later 1st Marquess) of Cholmondeley and she had hoped he would make her his countess, but once she realized it was never going to happen she took herself off to Paris and into the arms of Louis Philippe Joseph, the Duke of Orléans.5 She then left her French duke to return to England and the charms of an English prince, judging him to be the better catch and she was perhaps correct in that assumption as the child born of the union gave her a permanent hold on the man who would become king and gained her an annuity from the royal purse.

However, the fickle Prince of Wales had moved on and with France and Louis Philippe once again beckoning to her, Grace left the infant daughter born of her regal union in the care of Cholmondeley, ever her most trusted friend and the prince’s loyal servant and boon companion. Whatever public opinion might have been about the playboy earl, at his core he was an honourable and kind gentleman and he established a nursery for his newlyacquired ward. Little Georgiana was well looked after; she became part of his family, to all intents and purposes his own daughter and brought up alongside the earl’s hotchpotch progeny, both legitimate and otherwise. If the prince was not Georgiana’s father, then Lord Cholmondeley stood next in line in popular opinion. The earl was too financially astute to wed a penniless divorcée like Grace, despite his love for her, and so he eventually married a suitable and wealthy heiress who proved to be a remarkably dependable woman, mother not only to their children together but also to the ones his nursery had come ready stocked with upon their marriage. In time the couple were elevated in the peerage to a marquessate in reward for their steadfast loyalty and service to the British crown.6

After Grace, the Prince of Wales became enamoured of a Catholic widow named Mrs Maria Fitzherbert but the lady proved to be not such an easy conquest as Grace. She withstood his charms until he made a morganatic marriage to her, one that was unsanctioned by his father, King George III, and therefore not legal. Having married Mrs Fitzherbert primarily to bed her, once the object was achieved he soon tired of her and set his sights on the plump and middle-aged Countess of Jersey. A grandmother over the age of 40, Lady Jersey nevertheless captivated him and she ruled the prince’s heart for some time thereafter.

It was Lady Jersey’s idea that he should marry (ignoring his marriage to Mrs Fitzherbert which was, in fact, not a legal marriage at all) as the prince needed a boost to his income and his father was pressing him to produce an heir. Lady Jersey wanted no rival though, and she selected a German princess who she was sure would be an anathema to the fastidious prince. Lady Anne Abdy’s father Richard Colley Wellesley, Earl of Mornington, was privy to the gossip surrounding the rupture of the union between the prince and Mrs Fitzherbert as well as the imminent marriage. He wrote from Brighton to his friend Lord William Grenville:

I heard last night from no less an authority than Tom the Third [Thomas Coke, MP and future Earl of Leicester] that the Treaty of Separation and Provision is on foot (if not already concluded) between His Royal Highness and the late Princess Fitz [Mrs Fitzherbert]. I think you ought to marry His Royal Highness to some frau immediately; I am told he is very well disposed to take such a wife, as it may be His Majesty’s pleasure to provide for him.7

Caroline of Brunswick, Lady Jersey’s choice, was pretty enough and highspirited too but the prince found her repugnant, complaining of her size (although Caroline thought him overweight!), her pungent aroma and her dress sense.8 Lady Jersey was appointed, at her own instigation, as Caroline’s lady-in-waiting and made the poor princess’s life a misery. Caroline was, however, adored by the British public, even more so when she quickly fell pregnant and just nine months after the marriage produced a fine and healthy daughter who was named Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales. The prince claimed he had been intimate with his wife on only three occasions and quickly separated from her, cruelly trying to prevent Caroline from seeing much of her infant daughter. Ten years later, the ‘Delicate Investigation’ examined scurrilous claims made by Lady Douglas against Caroline. She was exonerated of the claims but despite the investigation being held in secret, gossip leaked out.

By 1814 Caroline had taken enough abuse from her husband and she left England to live in Italy. The Earl and Countess of Cholmondeley were on good terms with Caroline, Princess of Wales (Lady Cholmondeley was one of her ladies before she travelled abroad), and they therefore walked a delicate tightrope between the two warring royal spouses. The novelist Jane Austen voiced her opinion on the affair:

I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a Woman, and because I hate her husband . . . I am resolved at least to think that she would have been respectable, if the Prince had behaved tolerably to her at first.9

Despite her Machiavellian wiles, Lady Jersey’s reign over the prince’s heart and household came to an abrupt end when he moved on from her to another matronly grandmother, the Marchioness of Hertford. The British public began to make clear their feelings regarding the prince’s profligacy and his attitude towards his wife, and he was publicly satirized and mocked, both for his appearance and his behaviour.

Georgiana Seymour, the prince’s privately if not publicly acknowledged daughter, had been on good terms with Lady Jersey and great friends with her daughter-in-law, Sarah Sophia née Fane. During Lady Jersey’s tenure as the prince’s mistress this could only have been of benefit in terms of enhancing the prince’s benevolence towards her but by the time of Georgiana’s marriage to Lord Charles Bentinck, Lady Jersey’s reign was over and no help could be expected from that quarter.10

Blessed with stunning looks to complement her illustrious if scandalous ancestry, the union between Charles and Georgiana had been a love match, albeit one that had not initially been sanctioned by either family (the prince appeared rather aghast at the marriage and the wedding venue was hastily changed from Cholmondeley Castle at Malpas in Chester to the county town of Chester instead, suggesting that the Cholmondeleys were not fully on board either). Charles might have had the right background and connections but he had little in the way of fortune, and the same could also be said of Miss Seymour.

Once the pair were married though, there was little the two families could do other than make...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Prologue
• 1. Lord Charles Bentinck and the Prince Regent
• 2. The Wellesleys and the Duke of Wellington
• 3. Unfortunate Marriages and Alliances
• 4. Elopement in High Life
• 5. Criminal Conversation and Doctors’ Commons
• 6. The Birth of the Next Generation
• 7. Trials and Tribulations
• 8. Belgian Revolution
• 9. The Summertown Gypsy
• 10. Passed from Pillar to Post
• 11. Love amid the Dreaming Spires
• 12. Ducal Discoveries
• 13. The Love Story ends in Tragedy
• 14. A New Beginning
• 15. Victorian Values and Sensibilities
• 16. Royal Descent
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Bookplate