Royal Affairs: A Lusty Romp through the Extramarital Adventures that Rocked the British Monarchy

by Leslie Carroll

  On August 17, 1820, the first day of her trial, Caroline rode in triumph to the House of Lords, dressed in a modest black sarcenet gown. Two of her former lovers were among the 258 peers charged with judging her conduct.

  The streets became seas of white handkerchiefs, brandished by women enthusiastically showing their support of Her Majesty.

  Acrimonious grandstanding characterized the first humid days. It was so uncomfortably hot that Caroline, her dress ungainly bunched up all around her and spilling over the sides of her chair, fell asleep in her unintentional cocoon, prompting Lord Henry Holland’s couplet: Her conduct at present no censure affords.

  She sins not with courtiers, but sleeps with the Lords.

  A salaciously entertaining parade of witnesses for the prosecution provided a circus that lasted two weeks. Several of them had braved beatings from “Queenite” mobs when they reached Dover.

  Testimony from former servants, reiterating what they had told the Milan Commission, blew the wax out of the peers’ ears. Pergami was seen in the middle of the night tip-toeing through the corridors, candle aloft; Caroline was observed sitting on Pergami’s lap as they kissed, or sitting next to him on a bed. Hotel maids swore they had removed two chamber pots from the queen’s boudoir and stained sheets from her bed. They had also observed Pergami’s slippers peeking out from beneath it. Pergami had also been spotted with his hand on Caroline’s thigh or caressing her bare breast.

  Teodoro Majocchi recalled the queen and her purported lover sharing a tent pitched on the deck of the polacca during the Mediterranean voyage. And the captain of that vessel testified that he saw Caroline go below to take her bath (a bath!), accompanied only by Pergami (whom other witnesses said routinely helped her dress). The captain had also seen Caroline messing up Pergami’s bed (presumably to make it look slept in).

  Pergami soon became the pet of the satirists’ pens. Punning wittily on titles of royal preferment, one wag wrote: The Grand Master of St. Caroline

  Has found promotion’s path.

  He is made both Night Companion

  And Commander of the Bath.

  Louise Demont, a Swiss femme de chambre formerly in Caroline’s employ, testified that on some occasions, having just left Caroline undressed, she saw Pergami making his way to the queen’s bedroom. “I have also seen Pergami in the Princess’s room when she was at her toilette when she had no skirts on. Pergami turned round and said, ‘Oh! How pretty you are. I like you much better so.’ ”

  A former courier and equerry, Giuseppe Sacchi, really woke up the lords. He testified that in the course of his duties to ride beside Caroline’s coach, late one evening his horse passed the carriage (at what pace, one wonders), and he glimpsed Caroline and Pergami, slumbering side by side. “Her Royal Highness had her hand upon the private part of Mr. Pergami and Pergami held his own upon that of Her Royal Highness. . . . Once Pergami had his breeches loosened and the Princess’s hand was upon that part.”

  At the end of the sixteenth day of testimony, the prosecution rested its case.

  But now it was the defense’s turn. Caroline’s ambitious lawyer, Henry Brougham, had abandoned the king and returned to her camp after recognizing that anyone who represented the queen would make a national name for himself. Once he accepted the case, he was anything but halfhearted in his vigorous defense. So slender that he was almost swallowed by his black robe and horsehair wig, he systematically demolished the testimony of the prosecution’s witnesses—establishing that Demont and Sacchi had been dismissed for stealing gold coins from Caroline’s strongbox, and that many of the witnesses had been paid by the government for their testimony and appearance at the trial.

  “Was it not a curious thing that these people, all of them poor, should be brought over to England to live in luxury and idleness and should be in receipt of great rewards?”

  Brougham also keenly illuminated the inconsistencies contained in the witnesses’ testimony, characterizing the prosecution’s case as the “tittle-tattle of coffee-houses and alehouses, the gossip of bargemen on canals and . . . cast-off servants,” denouncing the Milan Commission as “that great receipt of perjury—that storehouse of false swearing and all iniquity.”

  The trial sold a lot of newspapers; everyone eagerly awaited the latest sordid revelation—even though they were sometimes a little too sordid. Ladies began keeping the papers out of reach of their maids, but soon their overly protective husbands were hiding the daily news from them. People and the press talked of little but the queen’s trial. It was as if nothing else was happening in England, let alone in the rest of the world.

  Aware of this phenomenon, Caroline, who had learned how to manipulate public opinion, copied the press on a letter she sent to her husband. Probably ghostwritten by Brougham because Caroline’s use of English had never become sophisticated, the queen wrote, “From the very threshold of your Majesty’s mansion the mother of your child was pursued by spies, conspirators, and traitors . . . You have pursued me with hatred and scorn, and with all the means of destruction. You wrested me from my child . . . you sent me sorrowing through the world, and even in my sorrows pursued me with unrelenting persecution.”

  Cue the violins. From eyewitness reports given by people who liked Caroline, she had never done less than gaily gallivanted through the world. But even if no one credited her fiction, they believed her husband to be just as ill behaved and licentious, if not worse.

  Lord Ellenborough spoke for his fellow peers when he conceded that “the queen was the last woman any one would wish his own wife to resemble,” yet he voted against the bill. The opinion of many of the lords reflected that of John Bull. In the words of Henry Brougham, “all men, both in and out of Parliament . . . admit everything to be true which is alleged against the Queen, yet, after the treatment she had received since she first came to England, her husband had no right to the relief prayed by him or the punishment sought against her.”

  As the case approached its conclusion there were daily displays of support for Caroline. Calling themselves the Queen’s Guards, thousands of citizens, armored and marching in lockstep, proclaimed, “The Queen’s Guard are Men of Metal!”

  Thomas Creevey, a contemporary, recorded the events, estimating crowds of ten thousand people assembled in Piccadilly. “I should like any one to tell me what is to come next if this organized army loses its temper,” he observed.

  The prosecution presumably had the same reaction. After closing arguments were made, the bill received three readings, where the charges were restated and the matter then put to a vote. Following the first reading on November 6, 1820, a protracted debate resulted in 123 members who voted “Content” (Aye) and 95 who voted “Not Content” (Nay).

  Caroline’s conviction was no longer the slam dunk the king had been assured of. The government withdrew the Bill of Pains and Penalties four days later after the third reading when, at 108 to 99, only nine votes separated the ayes from the nays. George’s brothers, the equally adulterous dukes of York and Clarence, were most vociferously (and hypocritically) “Content,” shouting out their approval of the bill. But the crown uncomfortably conceded that if the outcome was this close in the Lords, the bill would never pass in the Commons, where the king’s numerous extramarital infidelities, as well as the Mrs. Fitzherbert issue, would surely sink his case. Fear of mob violence was another reason the government withdrew the bill.

  The Lords had decided to punish the king for his hypocrisy rather than condemn the queen for her adultery.

  Toward the end of her young life, Princess Charlotte had observed, “My mother was bad, but she would not have become as bad as she was if my father had not been infinitely worse.”

  George was so shocked by the withdrawal of the bill that he considered abdicating and leaving permanently for Hanover, which he would continue to rule as the duchy’s Elector.

  Caroline was too exhausted to rejoice. Lady Charlotte Campbell observed that the queen “appeared worn-out in mind and
body. The desolateness of her private existence seemed to make her very sorrowful: she appeared to feel the loss of her daughter more than at any previous moment, and she wept incessantly.”

  The outcome of Caroline’s trial was the obverse of poor Anne Boleyn’s: the innocent Anne had been convicted by a cadre of powerful enemies, while the undoubtedly guilty Caroline was acquitted by a consortium of powerful friends.

  So the matter was laid to rest. And a popular satirical verse made the rounds of coffeehouses: Most gracious Queen we thee implore

  To go away and sin no more,

  Or, if that effort be too great,

  To go away at any rate.

  For the next three days, the major cities in Britain were illuminated in celebration. After that, everyone was ready to move on—when a thirteenth-hour witness crawled out of the woodwork. Iacinto Greco, Caroline’s former Sicilian cook, came forward a few days after the trial, claiming that, on opening a door after dinner one evening, he discovered “the Princess on the sofa at the further end of the saloon—Pergami was standing between her legs which were in his arms—his breeches were down, and his back towards the door—at which I was. I saw the Princess’s thighs quite naked—Pergami was moving backwards and forwards and in the very act with the Princess.” Pergami turned his head, noticed Greco, and the cook was fired the next day.

  Asked why the devil he hadn’t stepped forward during the trial, Greco explained that his wife had told him the English would cut off his head. In any event, his information came too late. The books were closed.

  George then took every precaution to prevent Caroline from being rightfully crowned alongside him. He hired beefy prize-fighters, captained by the champion pugilist Gentleman Jackson, to guard the doors to Westminster Abbey, the palace, and the hall on Coronation Day, July 19, 1821. The queen arrived, dressed to the nines, and demanded entry, but was humiliatingly turned away.

  That evening, the uncrowned queen hosted a dinner party and tried to mask her distress with a forced gaiety. When her uproarious laughter suddenly turned to copious weeping, the guests realized how bitterly wounded she was. One described “tears of anguish so acute that she seemed to dread the usual approach of rest.”

  Within days of the coronation, Caroline suffered an obstruction and inflammation of the bowels. And at ten twenty-five p.m. on August 8, 1821, she died. This Queen of England who never reigned, and was the only monarch in British history to have been subjected to a Bill of Pains and Penalties, was just fifty-three years old. At her request, she was buried in Brunswick.

  George IV was aboard the royal yacht when he received the news, retiring to his cabin for the remainder of the day. The court was ordered to go into mourning for all of three weeks. The nation was not required to officially mourn their queen at all.

  Bartolomeo Pergami, who never saw Caroline again after she returned to England in 1820, died in 1842 after a fall from his horse.

  George IV survived his wife by nine years, dying in 1830. As eccentric and often disliked as Caroline had been, his popularity was even lower. For all his aesthetic sensibilities, throughout his life George IV was a hypochondriac, a moral hypocrite, an emotional bully, a glutton, a drunkard, and a womanizer.

  After he died on June 26, 1830, as the result of a burst blood vessel in his abdomen, the Times of London editorialized (on July 16) that “There was never an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased king.”

  FREDERICK, DUKE OF YORK

  1763-1827 and Mary Anne Clarke 1776-1852

  MARY ANNE CLARKE WAS A REAL-LIFE FOLK HEROINE, a child of the London gutters whose beauty captivated a prince and whose business acumen landed them both in court.

  She was born in the colorful location of Ball and Pin Alley, White’s Alley, near Chancery Lane, and was raised by a compositor named Farquhar who was either her father or her stepfather.

  Mary Anne eloped at the age of fifteen with Joseph Clarke, the son of a builder. She bore him two daughters, although their marriage was not legalized until 1794. She had greater aspirations, however.

  George III’s sons were notorious for their womanizing, and it never much mattered to any of them whether the petticoats they raised were made of woolen stuff or of silk. Mary Anne quite evidently fit into the former category when she captivated the king’s second son, the randy Prince of Wales’s younger brother, Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, sometime around 1803.

  Thirteen years Mary Anne’s senior, the rakish duke promised her an annual income of £12,000 (nearly $1.7 million in today’s economy) to be dispensed in monthly installments. Unfortunately, the king and queen kept the purse strings tight when it came to dispensing their sons’ allowances, which meant that Frederick’s payments to Mary Anne amounted to only a fraction of what he had promised her.

  This was bad news for Mary Anne, who had already set herself up handsomely in a fine town house in Gloucester Place staffed by a raft of servants, including three male cooks. She dressed like a duchess, kept a stable of ten horses, and entertained lavishly, dining on plate once owned by the duc de Berri. Many of her purchases were acquired on credit, thanks to the generosity of ambitious merchants who were eager to gain the custom of a duke’s mistress.

  Frederick, who had married a daughter of the King of Prussia in 1791 and separated from her soon afterward, was Commander in Chief of the armed forces. The duke was also a bishop, which enabled him to confer preferments in the Church.

  Having grown rather accustomed to her ostentatious lifestyle, the enterprising Mary Anne decided she would rather parlay her benefactor’s position into an income than get tossed out onto the street (or into prison) for debt. She spread the word underground that, for a consideration, she would use her influence with her royal lover to gain a man a military commission or promotion. Mary Anne would pin the list of her clients’ names to the bed curtains at Gloucester Place as a little reminder to her paramour, or add it to the duke’s own lists, relying on his usual practice of never reading what he was signing.

  In 1806, when their affair ended, Mary Anne sought a financial settlement from the duke. When Frederick would not meet her terms, she threatened to publish an account of their love affair, including the details of her little business on the side.

  Surprisingly, things dragged on for another three years without the public getting wind of either the sexual liaison or the promotions scandal. It was only when her former lover took up with another woman, Mrs. Carr, that Mary Anne sought revenge. She became involved with two men, Major Dillion and Colonel Gwyllym Lloyd Wardle, MP for Okehampton.

  Wardle was making a career for himself rooting out corruption in army contracts involving Frederick, Duke of York. Naturally, Mary Anne’s name surfaced, and in 1809, Wardle brought the scheme to the attention of Parliament.

  On February 1, Parliament opened an inquest into any wrongdoing committed by the duke and his former mistress. Eight charges were brought against Frederick for improper use of his military patronage, but it was Mary Anne Clarke who charmed the parliamentarians and captured the public’s giddy attention.

  The luscious brunette appeared for the hearings dressed in a revealing gown with a plunging décolleté and flirted shamelessly with the ministers. “I cannot tell you because it was indelicate,” she replied to several questions regarding her private life. During her testimony, her answers were so saucy that one of her inquisitors offered her a bribe of three hundred guineas to join him for “supper.”

  On March 18, 1809, Frederick resigned his office as Commander in Chief in order to avoid further damage to his reputation.

  Following his resignation, Frederick was mutilated in effigy by angry mobs in Suffolk and York, protesting his immoral lifestyle; and for a time, the familiar “heads or tails” call in a coin toss was replaced with “dukes or darlings.”

  Astonishingly, although Mary Anne was blatantly guilty, on December 10, 1809, she was acquitted. All charges were dismissed against the duke as well. His dea
lings with Mrs. Clarke had been accounted careless, but it could not be proved that Frederick had actually known of any wrongdoing—even though he had clearly profited by the sale of commissions.

  As is often the case in tales of corruption, the scourge is as tainted as the target. The following year, Wardle’s star sank into the sea when Francis Wright, an upholsterer, sued him for nonpayment of a bill for furnishings purchased for Mary Anne’s establishment. During the trial it was revealed that Wardle and Mary Anne had enjoyed a relationship prior to the 1809 parliamentary investigation, and it did not sit well with the jury that the two of them had negotiated over the duke’s involvement in the commissions scandal. In open court Mary Anne claimed that Wardle had bought her testimony in the 1809 inquest by promising to furnish her home.

  Mary Anne published The Rival Princes, her account of the entire sordid affair. In the book, she accused Wardle of being in league with one of Frederick’s younger brothers, the Duke of Kent, who had offered her £10,000 (a shade over $1 million today) to ruin her royal lover’s reputation. The volume included several of her love letters to and from Frederick.

  Also that year, in exchange for the suppression of her tell-all memoirs, Mary Anne Clarke’s representative, Sir Edward Taylor, negotiated a settlement with the Duke of York for £7,000 (almost $738,000 today) and a pension of £400 a year (slightly more than $42,000). All but one copy of her confessional was destroyed. The remaining edition was placed in a lockbox in Drummond’s Bank.

  Parliament voted to reinstate the duke as Commander in Chief in 1811, and Frederick proved himself a capable administrator. Chastened, perhaps, by his embarrassingly public shaming, he helped introduce a system where men were promoted on merit rather than by nepotism, and founded military academies to provide better training for the armed forces.

  Frederick suffered an attack of dropsy in 1826, and never got to be king, dying on January 5, 1827, at the age of sixty-three, three years before his elder brother, George IV, expired. His estranged wife, who preferred animals to people, had died in 1820 on her estate, Oatlands House, in Surrey, surrounded by her exotic menagerie.