Royal Marriage Secrets

by John Ashdown-Hill

  April 17th, 1759

  The Marriage of These Parties was this Day duly Solemnised at Kew Chapel, according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England, by myself,

  J. Wilmot

  George P.

  Hannah

  Witness to this marriage –

  W. Pitt.

  Anne Taylor

  The second version reads as follows:

  May 27th, 1759

  This is to certify that the marriage of these parties, George, Prince of Wales to Hannah Lightfoot, was this day duly solemnised this day according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, at their residence at Peckham, by myself,

  J. Wilmot

  George Guelph

  Hannah Lightfoot

  Witnesses to this marriage

  of these parties –

  William Pitt

  Anne Taylor

  The royal signature on the first document was in the correct form for 1759. Moreover, it was subsequently authenticated by two of George III’s sons: the Duke of Clarence (later William IV), and the Duke of Sussex. The royal signature on the second document is in a form which George is never known to have used, and the second marriage certificate definitely appears to be a forgery. The reason for its fabrication may have been that the first certificate omitted Hannah’s surname. However, in 1759 Hannah’s real and legal surname seems to have been not Lightfoot but Axford.15

  The final version of Hannah’s story claimed that Isaac Axford had been bribed by the royal family to take Hannah away from Prince George, but that nevertheless Hannah’s first attachment had been to the prince. Thoms was probably right to dismiss this version of the story out of hand. First, there is no genuine evidence to support it, and second, this revised version of the story – which proclaims Miss Lightfoot as Hannah Regina – clearly runs counter to the real evidence which has now been found to show that Hannah married Isaac in 1753.

  But while a marriage between Hannah Lightfoot and Prince George appears improbable, this does not mean that no relationship ever existed between them. Despite the evidence of George [III]’s morality, he certainly fell in love with Sarah Lennox, and it is conceivable that he also fell in love with Hannah. Whether this love was ever given physical expression it now seems impossible to say, but various nineteenth-century individuals subsequently claimed to be descended from Hannah and George III. Thoms later asserted that at least some of these putative royal descendants must have been lying, because the various families who advanced such claims were apparently unknown to – and unconnected with – one another. In fact, however, this point proves nothing, as we shall shortly see.

  When did Hannah Lightfoot (Axford) die? If her marriage to Isaac Axford was legitimate, logic suggests that she must have died prior to Isaac’s second marriage in 1759. However, it could simply be that Isaac, having somehow ‘lost’ Hannah, simply decided to contract a second marriage without verifying that his first wife was dead. Moreover the situation is further complicated by the fact that Caroline of Brunswick reportedly believed that Hannah’s true marriage had been to Prince George [III]. No evidence has so far been found to support this view, but if it was correct then Isaac Axford’s marriage to Hannah would have been bigamous (on Hannah’s side), so that Isaac would actually have been free to marry Mary Bartlett in 1759 even if Hannah was then still alive.

  Queen Caroline reportedly believed that Hannah died after the birth of George III’s second son, the Duke of York (16 August 1763), but before the birth of his next son, the Duke of Clarence (William IV – 21 August 1765). No precise record of Hannah’s death has in fact been located, and the search is complicated by the fact that we have no idea what surname she might have been using at the time of her death. However, there is some evidence that Hannah died in or just before 1759. In December 1759 Lady Sophia Egerton wrote to her uncle, William Bentinck (later Duke of Portland) that Prince George had ‘kept a beautiful young Quaker for some years, that she is now dead and that one child was the produce of that intrigue’. Hannah is rumoured to have died on 27 May 1759, and to have been buried in Islington churchyard under the name of Rebecca Powell.16 If Hannah did die in 1759, that would explain the date of Isaac Axford’s second marriage.

  Whether or not George [III] contracted a secret marriage with Hannah Lightfoot, there is absolutely no doubt about the fact that both of his younger brothers contracted clandestine marriages with non-royal spouses. There is also no doubt that, whatever the truth of his own amorous history may have been, the king proved extremely intolerant of the marital escapades of his brothers. Subsequently he also showed similar intolerance regarding the love affairs of his sons (as we shall see in the next chapter). But despite George III’s anger, the elder of his two brothers, the Duke of Gloucester, married the illegitimate granddaughter of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, while his younger brother, the Duke of Cumberland, has been accused of contracting two secret marriages.

  We have already noticed that some of the documentation purporting to relate to the story of ‘Queen Hannah’ seems subsequently to have been in the possession of one who claimed to be George III’s niece, ‘Princess Olive of Cumberland, Duchess of Lancaster’. The story of this lady is, if anything, even more extraordinary than that of Hannah Lightfoot, and the truth behind it is harder to ascertain. Since several women called ‘Olive’ figure in the story we shall henceforth refer to ‘Princess Olive’ as Olive (iii).

  Olive (iii) Wilmot (later Mrs Serres) was brought up as their daughter by Robert Wilmot and his wife, Anna Maria Brunton (or Burton). Robert Wilmot was the brother of Dr James Wilmot, the clergyman whose signature appears on the marriage certificate of George [III] and Hannah Lightfoot. However, Olive (iii) later claimed to be the daughter of Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland – the younger brother of King George III. This claim has been treated with scorn by some researchers but it has been taken seriously by others. The most recent investigation, by Miles Macnair, strongly suggests that Olive (iii) really was Cumberland’s daughter. During her lifetime, her claim was certainly taken seriously by significant members of the royal family, most notably the Duke of Kent, son of George III and eventual father of Queen Victoria, who always addressed Olive as his cousin.

  Macnair’s study is thorough, and it is not necessary to repeat all his findings here. Olive (iii) certainly possessed a ‘birth certificate’ attesting Cumberland’s paternity, and this document appears to be authentic. Unfortunately it confused the name of Olive (iii)’s mother, and this confusion seems to have led Olive (iii) into complex fantasy realms which, in the end, undermined the whole credibility of her story. After initial speculation that her real mother might have been Olive (i) Wilmot, sister of Robert Wilmot, and of Dr James Wilmot, Olive (iii) finally surmised that her mother was Olive (ii) Wilmot – the daughter of Dr James Wilmot by ‘Princess Poniatowski’ (the sister of King Stanislas II of Poland). Olive (iii) claimed that Olive (ii) had been the Duke of Cumberland’s alleged true legal wife.

  In fact, Olive (ii) never existed, and Olive (iii)’s real mother was Anne Luttrell (Horton), the Duke of Cumberland’s undoubted wife (despite George III’s disapproval). There is absolutely no doubt that Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland, did contract a non-royal marriage with the widowed Anne Luttrell (Horton). This was in 1771, and it infuriated the king, his brother. Indeed, it was the immediate cause of the Royal Marriages Act, which legislated that descendants of George II (except via those princesses who had married into foreign royal houses) could not contract valid marriages without the explicit permission of the reigning monarch.

  Curiously, Princess Olive (iii) subsequently gave the name ‘Horton’ to one of her own children. The elder of her two daughters was named Lavinia Janetta Horton Serres. This point seems previously to have passed largely unnoticed. However, it strongly suggests that in fact Olive (iii) had at some point been aware of her real mother’s identity. Lavinia Serres was later to become Mrs Ryves, and she and her son pu
rsued a well-publicised but ultimately unsuccessful case for recognition as royalty in the British courts in 1866.

  The fact that Olive (iii) is alleged by Macnair to have had a brother, who was brought up by another branch of the Wilmot family, and whom she did not know, suggests that Thom’s earlier assertion about the alleged descendants of Hannah Lightfoot and George III is worthless, for it suggests that the royal house of Hanover may, in fact, have farmed out its bastard children to various families, with the result that siblings really could grow up in ignorance of each other’s existence. In short, we have a situation in which members of the Hanoverian dynasty in the second half of the eighteenth century unquestionably contracted secret and non-royal marriages. Some of these marriages may have resulted in the birth of children whom George III wished to have brought up as non-royal persons, without any recognised claim to the throne. It appears that Princess Olive of Cumberland may have been one of these children – and a victim of George III’s policy to keep such semi-royal offspring out of the royal family. George III also unquestionably sought to pre-empt future problems of this nature by enacting the Royal Marriage Act, which prohibited heirs to the throne from marrying without the consent of the reigning monarch.

  In this context, a loving, but clandestine, relationship between George III and Hannah Lightfoot is by no means incredible. It is also possible that such a relationship produced a child or children who was or were subsequently fostered or adopted. However, the allegation that George [III] married Hannah seems difficult to reconcile with other aspects of the chronology.

  17

  PRINCESS FITZ

  * * *

  I’d crowns resign to call her mine,

  Sweet lass of Richmond Hill.

  * * *

  There is no sacrifice, my beloved wife,

  yt I will not make for thee.

  George [IV], Prince of Wales, to Maria Smythe (Fitzherbert), 1785

  * * *

  … I hear from everybody that her character is irreproachable, and her manners most aimiable.

  Charles James Fox, MP, 1785

  * * *

  to a most amiable and justly valued female character, whom I conclude to be in all respects, both legally, really, worthily, and happily for this country, Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales.

  J. Horne Tooke, A Letter to a Friend on the Reported Marriage of the Prince of Wales, London 1787, p. 3

  * * *

  One point which emerged very clearly from the last chapter is the fact that in the second half of the eighteenth century princes of the royal house of Hanover began to engage in secret marriages with spouses who were of less than royal birth. Whatever the truth about the alleged marriage of George [III] and ‘Queen Hannah’, or the invented ‘marriage’ of Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, and the mythical Olive (ii) Wilmot, there is no doubt that Cumberland did contract a marriage with Anne Luttrell (Horton). Moreover, if Princess Olive (iii)’s accounts of Cumberland’s earlier marriage to the invented ‘Olive (ii) Wilmot’ had been true, then the Luttrell (Horton) marriage would have been bigamous. As a result of Cumberland’s matrimonial escapade his brother, King George III, brought in the Royal Marriages Act, to enable the sovereign to police future weddings within the royal family. It is against the background of these real and alleged events – and the public speculation which resulted from them – that we must now explore the marriages of George III’s own sons, and most particularly, the alleged bigamy of his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, Prince Regent, and future George IV.

  The marital history of George III’s numerous children, like that of his brothers, once again undermines thoroughly Fiona Macdonald’s contention, that English (or British) royal marriages have followed a consistent pattern of arranged marriages with foreign royalty throughout history.

  The eldest son of George III and Queen Charlotte was the future George IV, Prince of Wales, and Prince Regent during his father’s later illness. He and his marital history comprise the main subject of this chapter. George [IV]’s next brother was Frederick, Duke of York, who in 1791 dutifully married a Prussian princess. However, that marriage was not a success. The couple soon separated, and their union remained childless. Next came William, Duke of Clarence (later King William IV), who first fell in love while he was serving in the navy, with a girl called Sarah Martin (later the authoress of Old Mrs Hubbard and her Dog). Prince William proposed to Sarah but her family would not allow her to accept the proposal. Later, William lived happily for many years with his Anglo-Irish actress mistress, Dorothea Bland (better known under her stage name as Mrs Jordan). By Dorothea, William had no less than ten illegitimate children, from one of whom the present British prime minister, David Cameron, is descended. The relationship was even grudgingly countenanced by William’s father, King George III. Only very late in life did William abandon his mistress for a royal marriage, which, however, produced no living children. After William, George III’s next son was Edward, Duke of Kent, whom we encountered earlier, because he formally recognised ‘Princess Olive’ (iii) as his cousin. Like William, Edward only made a royal marriage very late in life (thereby becoming the father of the future Queen Victoria).

  As for the future King George IV, he was born on 12 August 1762 at St James’s Palace. In his youth he was a very attractive young prince, and his elegance earned him the accolade of ‘the first Gentleman of England’. However, gradually his extravagant lifestyle made him unpopular in the country at large. His relationship with his parents was strained, and his father had great difficulty in persuading him into a suitable royal marriage.

  The most notable impediment to such a royal union was the relationship that developed between the prince and a Catholic widow, Maria Smythe (Fitzherbert). As we shall see, George [IV] repeatedly pressed Maria to marry him, and eventually she consented. Of course, their marriage was officially regarded as illegal in England, because of the recently enacted Royal Marriages Act, which required the sovereign’s consent for marriages within the royal family. Moreover, if the marriage had been publicly acknowledged, it would have debarred George from succeeding to the throne, because of the terms of the Act of Succession of 1701. Consequently, when gossip about the relationship became widespread, Prince George had the marriage officially denied in Parliament. In the light of this action (which infuriated Maria) it is interesting to reconsider the public denials issued by Charles II, just over a hundred years earlier, of his alleged secret marriage to Lucy Walter: for there is no question but that George [IV] had married Maria, so that his public denial was a lie. In the previous chapter we discovered that the existence of a marriage certificate may not constitute absolute proof of the authenticity of a marriage. We now see that public statements by sovereigns and governments are also not absolute proof of the validity or otherwise of an alleged secret royal marriage. We must keep this in mind later, when we consider the case of George V. Certainly George [IV] had an excellent motive for lying about his secret marriage. On the other hand, Charles II, as we saw earlier, had no such motive.

  The lady generally known to posterity as Mrs Fitzherbert was actually born with the surname Smythe, and although she would later be known as Maria, she was baptised Mary Anne. She was born into a family of Catholic gentry at a time when Catholicism in Britain was still subject to persecution, and her religion – together with her fidelity to it – was to prove one of the key factors determining the course of her life.

  Mary Anne Smythe was born on 26 July 1756, reputedly in the Red Room at Tong Castle, Shropshire. She was the first of the seven children of Walter Smythe and Mary Anne Errington, who had been married at Walton in Lancashire on 11 September 1755:1

  As the crow flies, Tong Castle is some seventeen miles north-east of the [Smythe] family seat at Acton Burnell. The young baby was probably baptised at Acton Burnell by Dom Edward Ambrose Elliot. From her mother she got not only her name but her good looks. From her father she inherited her aquiline nose which would become one of her most fam
ous – and most frequently caricatured – features.2

  The fact that Mary was baptised by a Catholic priest rather than in an Anglican parish church means that no written record of the event appears to survive. We saw earlier that Lucy Walter was linked by ties of blood to Anne Boleyn and Eleanor Talbot, and that in popular perception her case was considered to be in some ways analogous with that of Eleanor. It is curious, therefore, to find that Mary or Maria Smythe also has a distant family connection with Eleanor, via the Catholic Turville family.3 It is possible that she may also have a distant connection with the Boleyns, and with Henry VIII’s reputed bastard son, Lord Hunsdon.4 One episode in Mary (Maria’s) career, when she frequented the court of the house of Orange in the Netherlands, also reminds us of Lucy Walter’s similar connection with the same court more than a century earlier.

  From the age of 12, Maria was educated at an English convent in Paris. The young Catholic girl probably narrowly missed meeting the common-law wife and daughter of the younger Stuart Pretender, who, as we have already seen, had been residing at another Paris convent until about two years before Maria’s arrival in the French capital. However, by the time Maria reached Paris the Countess of Albestroff and her daughter, Charlotte, had moved to Meaux-en-Brie.