Royal Marriage Secrets

by John Ashdown-Hill

  ‘Charles III’ could perhaps have contracted a marriage with Clementina Walkinshaw simply by living with her openly in this way, and by giving out to their neighbours that they were husband and wife, by the names and titles they both used. However, for this claim to be valid they would have needed to live together in Scotland, not in the Low Countries or in Switzerland. But in reality, as a result of significant new legislation in Britain itself, ‘Charles III’s’ relationship with Clementina largely took place abroad, and in exile.

  This new British legislation comprised the Act of Settlement, which, from the beginning of the eighteenth century, excluded any possibility of a marriage between an accepted member of the English royal family and a Catholic. Under the terms of the new law, if such a marriage took place it would automatically exclude the royal person who contracted it from ever inheriting the Crown. The Act of Settlement produced an immediate and enormous effect. Not only were all surviving legitimate descendants of Charles I excluded from the throne, but so also were a number of the senior heirs of Charles I’s sister, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia. The Electress Sophia of Hanover and her son, the future George I – who were eventually recognised as the heirs of Queen Anne as a result of this new law – were very far indeed from being the next in line to the throne simply by right of blood.

  Subsequently the eighteenth century witnessed further legislation which impinged on marriage in general and upon royal marriages in particular. First, the Marriage Act in England introduced further rules about how and by whom marriages could be conducted; rules which made it much more difficult than it had previously been to contract a secret marriage. Later the mad and unattractive George III introduced the Royal Marriages Act, which prohibited any British descendant of George II from marrying without the explicit approval of the reigning sovereign. Why was the last of these laws introduced? And did these new laws in combination succeed in ruling out completely the clandestine royal marriage? We shall discover this in the next section.

  Four

  The Act Of Settlement, The Marriage Act And The Royal Marriages Act

  16

  QUEEN HANNAH

  AND PRINCESS OLIVE

  * * *

  I am happy at being able to say that I never was personally engaged in such a transaction.

  George III, writing about the extra-marital affairs of his eldest son1

  * * *

  Following the Act of Settlement of 1701, which, as we have already seen, regulated the English (and British) succession to the throne, a second significant law was enacted in 1753. This was the Marriage Act, which – irrespective of their religious beliefs – obliged all English people except Jews and Quakers to marry in Anglican churches, and to have their marriages formally registered by an Anglican clergyman acting on behalf of the State. Some twenty years later, in 1772, a third new Act of Parliament followed, which impinged specifically upon royal marriages. This was a draconian piece of legislation which has controlled the choice of British royal marriage partners from the reign of George III up until the twenty-first century. In the present chapter we shall explore the background which led to this third piece of legislation.

  The Royal Marriages Act of 1772 was the culmination of several interconnected events involving sons of Frederick Prince of Wales and his wife Augusta (whom we met in the last chapter). The first episode comprises the story of George [III]’s reported love for a beautiful Quaker called Hannah Lightfoot, which we shall examine in detail in this chapter. The second story was the secret marriage of George III’s younger brother, William, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh (1743–1805) to Maria Walpole, dowager Countess of Waldegrave. This marriage was privately contracted in 1766, and it only became more widely known five years later. Maria was not really acceptable as a royal spouse, because, despite her title and her Walpole ancestry, she was a widow, and also of illegitimate birth. Nevertheless, because no legislation existed to debar the Duke of Gloucester from marrying her in 1766, Maria automatically became a princess and a royal duchess once the marriage was made public, despite the fact that her brother-in-law the king refused to receive her. Our third incident is the secret marriage of George III’s youngest brother, Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland (1745–90). It was this last event which led directly to the enactment of new legislation governing marriages of members of the royal family – legislation which is still in force at the time of writing. For although it was recently earmarked for repeal, this plan seems now to have been shelved by the current government.

  Our understanding of the complex cases of George III and his brothers has evolved over the years, but in the first and third cases the whole truth still remains unclear. The first of these three stories received very little publicity during the lifetimes of its key figures. In this respect it recalls somewhat the relationship of Edward IV and Eleanor Talbot. However, contrary to the outcome in the case of Edward IV and Eleanor Talbot (where the evidence, when finally made public, apparently convinced the royal council, and later Parliament), the subsequent legal assessment of the case of George III and Hannah Lightfoot, together with the Duke of Cumberland’s alleged fathering of Olive Wilmot (Serres), merely seemed to expose flaws in the supporting evidence as presented in court. Thus one nineteenth-century historian, reviewing the situation, resoundingly concluded that the whole story of George [III]’s royal love affair with a Quakeress was a myth, while the royal status claimed by the descendants of ‘Princess Olive’ Wilmot was rejected in court.

  Subsequently, however, historical research has revisited these cases. As a result, it is now clear that, even if some of the evidence produced in the nineteenth-century was fabricated, the story of George [III]’s royal romance cannot be entirely dismissed. Research has proved that Hannah Lightfoot and her Quaker family were real people – a point which had previously been questioned. Moreover, evidence has emerged to show that contemporary rumours existed in the 1760s and 1770s, linking George [III] with a beautiful Quakeress. As for Princess Olive, although she unwisely filled gaps in her story with fanciful inventions which ultimately undermined her case, recent investigations suggest that she really was a daughter of the Duke of Cumberland.

  George [III], the eldest son of Frederick, Prince of Wales and his wife, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, was born at Norfolk House in London on 4 June 1738 (the first sovereign of the new Hanoverian dynasty born in England). In 1751 his father died suddenly, at which point Prince George became the heir to the throne of his grandfather, George II. The boy was brought up under the influence of his mother, who maintained a strict moral code.

  In 1758, when Prince George was 20 years old, the 13-year-old Lady Sarah Lennox appeared at his grandfather’s court, and reportedly infatuated the heir to the throne. Sarah was a daughter of Charles Lennox, second Duke of Richmond, Lennox and Aubigny. Her father was the grandson of Charles II by his mistress, Louise de Kerouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. For the next two years Sarah’s family cherished hopes that she might become the next Queen of England, but Lord Bute, friend and advisor of the dowager Princess of Wales, counselled against this match which, had it taken place, would have brought a new dose of Stuart blood into the veins of the house of Hanover. In the event, it was not until the twentieth century that Lennox descendants would finally marry into the reigning dynasty. (The first Duke of Lennox was an ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales, of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and of Sarah, Duchess of York.) Nevertheless, it is interesting to find that such a marriage for an heir to the British throne was contemplated in the eighteenth century. Like Lord Bute, however, King George II opposed the idea of a marriage between his grandson and Sarah Lennox. The king sought instead to betroth the young prince to Sophie Caroline Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. However, the prince and his mother resisted this suggestion, and plans for the prince’s marriage remained unresolved.

  Thus, George III was ostensibly still single when he succeeded to his grandfather’s throne in October 1760. In the following year, in the Chapel Royal of
St James’s Palace, he married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz – having met his bride for the first time on their wedding day. Despite this, the royal marriage proved generally successful. George III was apparently faithful to his consort. No royal mistress was ever in evidence and, despite earlier gossip, it was not until after George III’s death, in 1820, that serious discussion arose of another relationship in his life.

  In April 1821 a letter by a correspondent calling him- (or her-) self simply ‘B.’ was published in the Monthly Magazine. The letter referred to ‘the attachment of the late King to a beautiful Quakeress of the name of Wheeler’.2 Three months later a much fuller account of the story, which corrected some of the points made in the first version, was published in the same journal, in the form of a letter by a writer from Warminster in Wiltshire. This second writer asserted that the name:

  of the fair Quaker who once engaged the affections of Prince George … was not WHEELER, but HANNAH LIGHTFOOT. She lived with her father and mother at the corner of St James’ Market, who kept a shop there (I believe a linendrapers). The Prince had often noticed her in his way from Leicester House to St. James’, and was struck with her person. Miss Chudleigh, late Duchess of Kingston, became his agent.3

  Warminsteriensis, as the writer of the second letter called him- (or her-) self, went on to explain that the royal family, alarmed at the young prince’s growing affections for the ‘fair Quakeress’ had bribed a young man called Isaac Axford to marry Hannah. Isaac Axford was reported to have been a ‘shopman to Barton the grocer on Ludgate Hill’.4 Subsequently a third correspondent asserted that the marriage between Isaac and Hannah had taken place in 1754.5

  William Thoms, the librarian at the House of Lords in the 1860s, who investigated these published accounts, was extremely sceptical of every aspect of Hannah’s story. Indeed, he doubted Hannah’s very existence, claiming that even the name of George [III]’s alleged ‘fair Quaker’ girlfriend was in doubt. He also claimed that there were also conflicting accounts of where her family came from, when and where she attracted the attention of Prince George and when precisely she married.

  In many respects Thoms greatly overstated his case. It is true that various versions of Hannah’s name were reported in the published nineteenth-century correspondence about her, but there appears to be an explanation for that, as we shall learn shortly. Thoms also suggested that there were conflicting reports regarding the date of Hannah’s marriage to Isaac Axford, but this was incorrect. The published nineteenth-century accounts of Hannah’s marriage to Isaac consistently referred to 1754. There were also references to a marriage of Hannah in 1759, but these related, not to her marriage with Isaac, but to her alleged union with Prince George [III].

  Thoms’ scepticism notwithstanding, modern research has verified that Hannah Lightfoot and Isaac Axford did indeed both exist. Moreover, they were indisputably married to each other on 11 December 1753 – just a month or two earlier than the nineteenth-century Monthly Magazine correspondence later suggested.6 The couple’s marriage was celebrated at a Nonconformist chapel. In the marriage register Hannah is listed as a parishioner of St James, Westminster, while Isaac was from St Martin’s parish, Ludgate: details which are entirely consistent with the geographical locations reported for this couple by Warminsteriensis in 1821.

  The account published by Warminsteriensis and other early nineteenth-century writers is complicated, and in some respects contradictory. We shall need to return to one further important aspect of the story presently. For the moment, however, we should note that Warminsteriensis stated in July 1821 that after their marriage, Isaac lost his wife to Prince George [III]. ‘Many years after Hannah was taken away, her husband, believing her dead, was married again to a Miss Bartlett of Keevel (N. Wilts)’.7 Once again confirmation exists. The marriage of Isaac Axford to his cousin, Mary Bartlett, was celebrated at Erlestoke, Wiltshire in 1759.8 Moreover, the record of this second marriage also supplies the additional information that Isaac had been born in 1731.

  Assuming that Hannah was probably of a similar age, this information allows us to seek to verify her own date of birth. It transpires that Hannah Lightfoot, daughter of Mathew and Mary Lightfoot of Stepney, Barking and Ratcliff, was baptised on 12 October 1730. Moreover the Nonconformist marriage of her father, Matthew Lightfoot (son of Matthew and Ruth Lightfoot), to Mary Wheeler had taken place in Westminster in August 1728.

  The fact that the maiden name of Hannah’s mother was Wheeler takes us back to the initial report of Hannah’s relationship with George III, published in April 1821. It offers a plausible explanation of why the writer ‘B.’ should have mistakenly suggested that Hannah’s own surname was Wheeler. It also indicates that ‘B.’ was genuinely familiar with Hannah’s family background. We must remember that the 1821 accounts were penned more than sixty years after the events to which they referred. Under these circumstances the mistaken substitution of Hannah’s mother’s maiden surname for ‘Lightfoot’, and the error which attributed Hannah’s Axford marriage – which actually took place in December 1753 – to the year 1754, can both be easily understood.

  So Hannah Lightfoot did exist, and she was indeed the daughter of a Quaker family. Hannah’s family lived in Westminster, and in 1753 Hannah married Isaac Axford. Moreover, rumours of Hannah’s relationship with George [III] seem to have been current in the 1760s, and hints of this relationship first appeared in print in 1770–71.9 Moreover, alleged portraits of Hannah seem to have been commissioned from Sir Joshua Reynolds by the future George III in July 1757.10 They show a girl with a round face, dark hair and blue eyes. The writers of 1821 described Hannah as short in stature, beautiful, and ‘rather disposed to embonpoint’.11

  What became of Hannah after her marriage to Isaac Axford is difficult to ascertain. Since Isaac married a second wife in 1759, it is obvious that he had somehow lost Hannah in the intervening six years. No record of her death has been found under the surname ‘Axford’, but it is possible that she used some other name after leaving Isaac.

  The first accounts of the love affair between Hannah and George [III], published in 1821, merely claimed that Hannah deserted Isaac Axford to become the prince’s mistress. Warminsteriensis, for example, stated that after living with Isaac for only a short time Hannah had left her husband in order to become the mistress of George [III], by whom she had a child or children. A daughter, later married to a cavalry officer in the service of the East India Company (Bengal Presidency), is alleged. Other writers later spoke of sons of Hannah and her royal partner, and the prince was said to have maintained Hannah in an establishment at either Lambeth or Knightsbridge.12 Incidentally, the alleged secrecy surrounding the identity of these royal bastards is a new feature in English history, not encountered prior to the eighteenth century. However, from the eighteenth century up to the last (twentieth) century such secrecy seems to have been the norm.

  A significant new twist was added to the story in 1824, and it was ascribed to Caroline of Brunswick, then nominally Queen of England, and the estranged German consort of George III’s eldest son, George IV. Caroline is a lady whom we shall meet again later in the context of another disputed royal marriage. Queen Caroline was said to have stated that she believed her own ‘husband’ to have been married to Maria Smythe (Mrs Fitzherbert – see below). She was also reported to have thought that ‘previous to his marriage with Queen Charlotte’, 13 her father-in-law and uncle, King George III, had married Hannah Lightfoot. On this basis Hannah Lightfoot, rather than Charlotte of Mecklenburg, might have been George III’s true wife. Like Elizabeth Woodville in the 1470s, Queen Charlotte is rumoured to have been anxious about the legitimacy of her own marriage with the king. ‘It has been suggested that these matters preyed on her mind to such an extent that when she got hold of yet another whisper that Hannah had really died in early 1765, she persuaded George that they should go through a remarriage ceremony as soon as possible.’14

  Subsequent versions of Hannah’s st
ory claimed that documentary evidence existed of a clandestine marriage in 1759 between Hannah and the prince. Since this was six years after Hannah’s marriage to Isaac Axford, even if such a royal marriage took place, it would presumably have been of questionable validity. There is no evidence of a divorce between Hannah and Isaac, and Isaac was still living in 1759.

  The documentary evidence of Hannah’s alleged royal marriage was in the hands of a lady who is the second leading character in our investigation: ‘Princess Olive of Cumberland, Duchess of Lancaster’. We shall return to the complex story of ‘Princess Olive’ presently. But the documents which she held purported to record that the marriage between George [III] and Hannah was celebrated by an Anglican clergyman and Oxford don, Dr James Wilmot, who, according to various versions of Princess Olive’s story, was either her uncle or her grand-father. Two different versions of Hannah’s marriage certificate were subsequently published. The first reads: