The Lady In Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale Of Sex, Scandal, And Divorce

by Hallie Rubenhold

  According to a letter written by Hesse to Richard Clarke, the ‘Scoundrel Paramour’ began paying visits to those he believed responsible. He first sought out Dr Fenton, the physician who had last tended Jane. ‘He asked several impertinent questions for half an hour, suspecting our conduct’ and the baronet’s ‘management’, Hesse wrote. Deeply offended by Bisset’s suggestions, the doctor responded that ‘whoever he was, or whatever his designs might be, his questions and innuendoes were of such a nature as should silence his further speaking’. Dissatisfied with the answers he had received, Jane’s father, ‘soon after turned upon his heel and decamped, still suspecting the child perchance might not have had fair play’. Hesse reported that Godfrey had also been subject to an inquisition and that he anticipated similar treatment ‘in his turn’. The frail civil servant, who claimed to know nothing about the matter, trembled with dismay at these accusations. ‘My nerves are at this time dancing like the jacks of a harpsichord,’ he complained. ‘I leave you to judge the Effect on one of the most tender and cautious of all human nature.’

  As his accusations were never turned into a formal complaint, what precisely Bisset was able to learn from his inquisition is uncertain. Whether Sir Richard’s hand was behind Jane’s unexpected demise will probably never be known. In a time of exceptionally high infant mortality, the child’s death would be easy to dismiss as yet another sad but ordinary occurrence. In the wake of the event, Worsley attempted to separate himself as much as possible from the incident, devolving responsibility for the posthumous care of the body to the weary John Hesse. The baronet had plainly expressed a wish to both him and Richard Clarke that Jane should not be interred in the family vault at Godshill. ‘You may assure him,’ wrote Hesse, ‘that I will act in every respect agreeable to his letter concerning the Burial of the Little Infant.’ Where Worsley ordered the child to be laid to rest remains a mystery. In addition to being absent from the register at Godshill, her name fails to appear in any of the burial records for London’s parish churches.

  Prior to the trial, during a period of great antagonism between the two parties, the one concern upon which they could agree was to submerge Jane’s death in complete secrecy. Such was the depth of its concealment that neither Worsley nor Bisset’s attorneys knew of it. Two weeks after the event, on the day of the criminal conversation trial Sir Richard’s legal representatives were still proclaiming in good faith that the baronet and his wife ‘have two children, a son and a daughter …’ Only a handful of individuals knew otherwise.

  While this tragedy was playing in the background, James Farrer was handing over the fruits of his investigative efforts to a formidable team of litigators. The assembly of four barristers was to be headed by none other than James Wallace, the Attorney-General himself. Among those due to assist him was Thomas Erskine, the future Lord Chancellor and a lawyer whose name would one day become synonymous with the era’s most high profile criminal conversation trials. Erskine had an electrifying courtroom manner which was known to captivate juries. In later years his performances became renowned for their tearful expostulations and swooning fits, although, as junior counsel for the plaintiff, his role in Worsley v. Bisset was a less active one. A more senior figure in the proceedings would be John ‘Honest Jack’ Lee, whose legal aptitude would earn him the position of Attorney-General after the departure of James Wallace. Finally, John Dunning, Baron Ashburton, a man who within a year would be made Solicitor-General, completed Worsley’s indomitable collection of legal minds. There could hardly be a more accomplished team. The weaponry of Wallace’s forensic skill combined with Dunning and Lee’s oratorical capabilities promised to blast Worsley’s compelling case to victory.

  The baronet certainly required potent advocates to wage his battle by proxy; due to the emotive nature of crim. con. proceedings, the defendant, plaintiff and the plaintiff ’s wife were all prohibited from giving evidence. It was believed that their passions and biases would make them unreliable on the stand. However, though silent and nervous, Sir Richard and George Bisset would both be present. Lady Worsley would not be. She was not permitted so much as a word in her own defence. As the law regarded her as property, her voice was rendered superfluous to proceedings. No one asked a horse how it felt to be stolen or enquired of a statue why it was broken. In the following century, Caroline Norton, whose husband became embroiled in a criminal conversation suit with Lord Melbourne remarked with frustration that ‘a woman is made a helpless wretch by these laws of men, or she would be allowed a defence, a counsel, in such an hour … To go for nothing in a trial which decides one’s fate for life is very hard.’ Undoubtedly, her comments reflected the feelings of many women who, stripped of a voice, were forced to become observers of their own lives.

  By contemporary standards, much about the criminal conversation trial and the mode in which it was conducted would fall far short of fair legal practice. Certainly, the composition of the jury and its decision-making behaviour would be among its more questionable aspects. While ordinary juries tended to be comprised of a range of semi-respectable men from the literate middling ranks, crim. con. juries were considered special. The sensitive nature of the proceedings and the money at stake required an assortment of men who more readily understood the implications and value of property, wealth and status. This must be a jury composed not of shoemakers and schoolmasters, but of ‘gentlemen of fortune’: twelve men selected from the ranks of ‘freeholders of substance, knights and urban gentry’. Over the years, many of these jurors gained considerable experience hearing similar cases and became known for the somewhat casual attitude they adopted when deliberating. Crim. con. juries rarely examined or debated the evidence for long. On some occasions they did not even deem it necessary to retire in private before formulating their judgments. Perched in their jury box, they might exchange looks or nods and a few mean sentences before delivering a verdict. Results were usually produced within a few minutes. It was highly unusual if deliberation lasted as long as a half hour. In less time than it would take for a gentleman to button his waistcoat, tie his cravat and wind his watch, a collection of his peers could divest him of all of these belongings, as well as his fortune and his honour.

  Sir Richard anticipated with relish the day he could witness his jury do just this to George Bisset.

  13

  ‘Worse-than-sly’

  Thursday the 21st of February 1782 was not a remarkable day for the majority of the population. The newspapers had little to report. The Duke of Cumberland would give ‘a grand supper and ball’ for the Prince of Wales that evening. ‘A new comic opera’, Vertumnus and Pomona, was scheduled to open at the Covent Garden theatre. Ordinary people ate their breakfasts, wrote letters, counted their pennies. Sir Richard Worsley and Maurice George Bisset rose from their beds as London’s horses and criers stirred outside their windows. Joseph Connolly arranged his master’s hair and helped him into his coat. Sir Richard’s valet brushed his clothes and cleaned his shoes. Both would be eager to look their best, although neither would be giving evidence. When they passed beneath the arched entrance to the Court of the King’s Bench, they would stride on to centre stage. Their previously private dispute was about to become a very public drama.

  There was nothing discreet about the arena in which Worsley v. Bisset would be heard. In the late eighteenth century, the Court of the King’s Bench did not even have four walls. It sat in the south-east corner of the cavernous Westminster Hall, divided by a partition from the traffic which passed in and out of the adjacent parliament chamber. Until recently, the stalls of booksellers, haberdashers and milliners had also occupied the space. Although the merchants’ bazaar had been cleared away, Londoners continued to regard the Hall as a venue for colourful spectacles and the amusement provided by the Court of the King’s Bench did not disappoint.

  To the general public who had recently developed a taste for following salacious criminal conversation trials, the performances staged here were moral parables whic
h relayed their tales by way of a titillating narrative. Like the era’s best-selling novels and most popular plays its plots revolved on the theme of ‘virtue in peril’ or temptation and resistance. However, these stories were even more gripping than Samuel Richardson’s sagas of masters in pursuit of their servants or middle-class girls tricked into brothels; this was real life. These were stories of human weakness, of revenge and passion which frequently featured known protagonists from the privileged classes. Where entertainment value was concerned, the crim. con. trials at the Court of the King’s Bench could rival the productions of Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Better still, there was no admission charge. The courtroom was open to anyone with curiosity and on the 21st of February Worsley v. Bisset played to a packed house.

  What drew the assortment of bodies into the makeshift room was not just the excitement of viewing a ‘reality-drama’ but also the promise of scandal. Georgians were fascinated with the behaviour and possessions of their neighbours and friends and greatly covetous of the lives of their social betters. In the race to emulate those with more money and refined taste they became addicted to gossip or any intelligence of how the other half lived. In the early 1780s London had nine daily newspapers and a further ten bi- or triweekly publications. The success of at least two of these, the Morning Post and its sister paper the Morning Herald, could be attributed to their reportage of scandal and the activities of the fashionable ton. Grub Street publishers also reaped a small fortune from printing longer pieces of gossip-journalism about the exploits of high society or noted actresses and courtesans. Anything that bore the name of one recently in the spotlight was certain to sell, whether satirical poems, exposés or the transcripts of criminal conversation trials. The public’s thirst for such material was seemingly unquenchable.

  As Lady Worsley’s elopement had already cornered attention in the newspapers, the legal contest between her lover and her husband was hotly anticipated. Anxious to view the next instalment of their favourite running drama, Londoners poured into the courtroom. Mixed in with the throng was a scattering of hacks whose presence would ensure that by the next morning the public were fully apprised of the trial’s outcome. With their pencils poised, they waited to record every squirm and nervous tic, every double entendre or burst of laughter. Joining their ranks was at least one professional law reporter who earned his wage by taking shorthand notes of the proceedings and peddling his transcripts to Grub Street publishers.

  Where the popular press ventured, there also tended to stray many of the women whose escapades helped to sell their publications, namely the capital’s upmarket prostitutes. While they undoubtedly harboured a natural interest in the stories of other fallen females, it was good publicity to make an appearance in so public an arena. As long as they made themselves visible there was no danger that the notorious reputations on which they traded would be overshadowed by someone else’s scandal. Just as they had hoped, a journalist writing for the Morning Herald spotted them in the gallery. Surveying a room peopled by ‘the strangest assembly that ever met within the pale of justice’, from ‘antiquated maidens to simpering misses’, the writer noticed ‘a large detachment of the cyprian corps headed by Betsy M-y with “Diamond Eyes” in the rear’. Also ‘present on the occasion’ was ‘the recluse’, Lady Ligonier, whose own love affair had been the cause of an earlier criminal conversation trial. More than any of the ‘sisterhood’ in attendance, he speculated, ‘her ladyship’ was there out of ‘a most sympathetic concern’. She had positioned herself discreetly among the mass of spectators, which also included a contingent of well-wishers, family members and servants of both parties.

  Sir Richard took his seat in an inconspicuous part of the court, probably behind one of the muslin curtains hung at either end of the room to shield the important players from impertinent stares. Apart from his friends and his legal counsel, no one was aware of his presence or of any disquiet he might have displayed. Although Worsley may have harboured some concern that details of his private arrangements might surface in the course of the trial he would also have felt supremely confident of his assured triumph. His wealth had always purchased him the best of everything, and today he had little doubt that it would buy him the justice to which he was entitled. From his seat the baronet could look out at James Farrer’s reassuring presence or examine his extravagant menagerie of barristers, each one an expensive acquisition, draped in their billowing black robes, their heads crowned by rolls of false white curls. This case, expertly assembled and about to be executed by the finest legal minds, would sway the jury with little difficulty. Worsley would also study the jurors’ box with calm assurance. The well-attired panel of gentleman who politely hung their hats on the pegs behind them were men of dignity and reason like him. This corner of Westminster Hall with its Gothic surrounds and stone figures of medieval monarchs was a temple to the maintenance of the established order.

  At the opposite end of the courtroom, behind another curtain sat George Bisset who, like the baronet, was also able to review his troop of attorneys. Although Bisset was a wealthy man, when it came to choosing his legal team his purse had not been half as deep as Worsley’s. As a trained barrister himself, Bisset may have been satisfied that three counsel were as good as Worsley’s four, though his collection was not so celebrated as his opponent’s. Edward Bearcroft, who was later made Chief Justice of Chester was well regarded at the King’s Bench, as was Samuel Pechell, one of the Masters of the High Court of Chancery. They were assisted by Henry Howorth, considered ‘one of the First Crown lawyers in practice’. As anyone present might have observed, the legal giants sitting on Sir Richard’s side cast a long shadow across Bisset’s modest protectors. This was unlikely to be a match fought by equals. Yet the defendant was determined to counter Sir Richard’s claims. He had, some months earlier pleaded not guilty to the charge that he,

  … on the 19th day of November, 1781, and on diverse other days and times, between that day and the 24th of the same month, at Westminster, in the county of Middlesex, with force of arms, made an assault on Seymour, the Wife of the Plaintiff, and then and there debauched, deflowered, lay with, and carnally knew her, the said Seymour, to the Plaintiff’s damage of £20,000.

  Although the phrasing of the accusation suggested that Lady Worsley played no role in her own undoing, the charge of adultery was an indisputable fact. Nevertheless, Bisset and his counsel came to court ready to do battle. Whether this was an unnerving attempt to bluff Worsley, a desire to demonstrate courage in the face of adversity, or a genuine threat to the plaintiff’s case, was to be seen.

  The stage had been set and the actors prepared, but the drama could only begin once the Right Honourable Judge, William Murray, the Earl of Mansfield entered the courtroom and assumed his seat. No one person in that arena commanded more esteem than Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, a man whose radical judgments had driven an enraged mob to set his London house alight during the upheaval of the Gordon Riots two years earlier. A reformer and proponent of the abolition of slavery, Mansfield tested the constraints of the arcane English legal code and contributed to the evolution of modern commercial law. The low hum of chatter emanating from the spectators’ gallery and from the members of the bar below them was silenced by the bellowed announcement of His Lordship’s arrival. The court rose to their feet as he appeared, a mid-sized figure arrayed in the plumage of his office. Hidden beneath a long wig which swung to his shoulders, and the sombre robes of the judiciary, was an incongruously gentle face, whose mouth, when at rest, settled into a natural smile. Mansfield mounted the bench, from which he could preside over the courtroom and monitor the expressions of each anxious witness.

  Like a narrator unfurling the first page of a story, Attorney-General James Wallace took to the floor and began to lay down the facts of the plaintiff’s case. He described the principal characters and their circumstances, making certain to note the pedigree and ‘worth’ of the individuals involved. There were no heart-wrenching embell
ishments to his presentation, simply the facts: that Lady Worsley, the daughter of Sir John Fleming was worth ‘£70,000 or upwards’ to Sir Richard, that their marriage had taken place on the 15th of September 1775 and that they had ‘two children, a son and a daughter, the first, born within a year or two after their marriage; and the latter, in August last’. Having established the essentials of his case Wallace’s account took a turn of direction. In order to achieve a successful outcome for the plaintiff, it was crucial that the jury be familiarised with details of Worsley and Bisset’s friendship; that this was no passing acquaintance but a firmly rooted bond. However, the story he chose to recount bore little resemblance to the truth.

  Bearing in mind the history of their relationship–that they had met in the course of fixing an election, that they had lived together in Maidstone and that Bisset had fathered a child by the plaintiff’s wife–both parties felt it in their best interests to adjust the information they divulged. Gentlemen were under no obligation to tell all and certainly were not in the habit of incriminating themselves. As the legal system was devised to represent their interests it was also generally willing to indulge their desire to keep secrets. Consequently, the tale Sir Richard had fed to his representatives omitted a number of details and fiddled important dates, many of which were later revealed in private during his separation hearings. However, on that day the Attorney-General was content to relate to the jury the story as he knew it, that, ‘the Defendant was an Officer in the Hampshire militia, of which the Plaintiff is Colonel and that he had only been acquainted with him from the end of February, or the beginning of March, 1781’. He implied that the two had no previous dealings or meetings with one another until that time when ‘their acquaintance commenced in consequence of a burgage tenure Mr Bisset was possessed of in the Isle of Wight … which Sir Richard for parliamentary convenience, wanted to purchase’. At about this time–the end of February or the beginning of March (and well after the general election had taken place)–the two men had entered into a correspondence on this subject and eventually agreed to meet; ‘their first personal interview’ with one another being facilitated ‘by means of Mr Clarke, the receiver of Sir Richard’s rents …’ It followed that ‘soon after their acquaintance, Sir Richard gave him the commission in his regiment’. This information primed the canvas on which Wallace then began to daub some colour. He instructed the jury that ‘the greatest intimacy subsisted between them’ and that ‘the Plaintiff had a house at Maidstone, in Kent where the Defendant used to visit whilst in camp at Coxheath. When the camp broke up, they came to Lewes, where Sir Richard had a house, and Mr Bisset took lodgings; and the first attachment subsisted between them, till the unhappy event took place …’