A Right Royal Scandal: Two Marriages That Changed History

A Right

Royal Scandal

A Right

Royal Scandal

Two Marriages That

Changed History

Joanne Major

&

Sarah Murden

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

PEN & SWORD HISTORY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright © Joanne Major and Sarah Murden, 2016

ISBN 978-1-47386-342-2

eISBN 978-1-47386-344-6

Mobi ISBN 978-1-47386-343-9

The right of Joanne Major and Sarah Murden to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Social History, Transport, True Crime, and Claymore Press, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Wharncliffe.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact

PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED

47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England

E-mail: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk

Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

Dedication

To Emma

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

List of Plates

Two miniatures of Anne Wellesley, Lady Charles Bentinck.

(Private collection)

Hyacinthe Gabrielle, Countess of Mornington, with her sons Richard and Henry; print of an engraving by Colnaghi, London, 1809 after the 1798 portrait by Hoppner.

(Authors’ collection)

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, writing the Waterloo despatch; engraving by Frederick Bromley, 1840.

(Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon collection)

Richard Colley Wellesley, Marquess Wellesley; engraving by Samuel Cousins after Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1842.

(Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, New York Public Library Digital Collections)

Miniature of Lord Charles Bentinck and his first wife Georgiana Augusta Frederica Seymour; English school, early nineteenth century.

(Private collection)

Greenwich Hospital from the Observatory with a Distant View of London; Thomas Hofland, 1824.

(Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon collection)

Doctors’ Commons in London by Thomas Rowlandson).

(The Microcosm of London, 1808–1810)

The House of Lords by Thomas Rowlandson.

(The Microcosm of London, 1808–1810)

The church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, exterior and interior.

(Exterior: Rudolph Ackermann, Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics, 1815, Vol. XIII. Interior: The Microcosm of London, 1808–1810)

Portrait of George IV, after Sir Thomas Lawrence; painted on the top of a George III black papier mâché oval box, c.1840.

(Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon collection)

Portrait of Princess Charlotte of Wales and Saxe-Coburg, c.1817, by George Daw.

(Gift of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, 1936, Te Papa (1936-0012-92))

Prince Leopold, Queen Victoria’s uncle, husband of Princess Charlotte, after Sir George Hayter, 1816.

(Yale Center for British Art, gift of Mr and Mrs Leon Korn)

Coronation procession of His Majesty King George IV, 19th July, 1821, by William Heath.

(Library of Congress)

Lord Charles Bentinck in his coronation dress as Treasurer of the Royal Household, depicted in The Coronation of His Most Sacred Majesty King George the Fourth solemnized in the Collegiate Church, the Treasurer of his Majesty’s Household.

(SPL Rare Books)

Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner: the Residence of his Grace the Duke of Wellington, from Metropolitan Improvements . . . From original drawings by T.H. Shepherd, etc., 1830.

Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, London by Thomas Rowlandson.

(The Microcosm of London, 1808–1810)

Belgian insurgents at the Parc de Bruxelles, portrait by Jean-Louis Van Hemelryck, 1830–31.

(Rijksmuseum)

Hôtel Bellevue on the Place Royale, Brussels after the battle in 1830, Jacques Sturm, 1830–31.

(Rijksmuseum)

An Extensive View of the Oxford Races, by Charles Turner, c.1820.

(Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon collection)

The Country Squire and the Gipsies, mezzotint by H. Quilley after C. Hancock, 1836.

(The Wellcome Library)

Panoramic view of Front Quadrangle, Merton College, Oxford University, with the main entrance to the college (left), the arcades of access to St Albans Quadrangle (centre) and the entrance to the College Hall (right).

(Photograph # Decan/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)

The coronation of Queen Victoria, engraving by Charles E. Wagstaff after Edmund Thomas Parris.

(Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon collection)

A View of St George’s, Hanover Square in London.

(Rudolph Ackermann, Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics, November 1812)

Fashion plate from the Paris Élégant/Journal de Modes, object number RP-P-2009-1510.

(Rijksmuseum)

The marriage of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, engraving by Charles E. Wagstaff after Sir George Hayter, 1844.

(Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon collection)

Flitwick Manor, Bedfordshire, engraving from A Visitation of the Seats and Arms of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain.

(John Bernard Burke Esq., Vol. I, 1852)

Charley’s sister, Emily Bentinck.

(Sketch Book of Hyacinth Littleton, D1178/19/4, Staffordshire Record Office)

Hyacinthe, Lady Hatherton, when Mrs Littleton.

(Sketch Book of Hyacinth Littleton, D1178/19/4, Staffordshire Record Office)

Miniature of Reverend Henry Wellesley.

(Image reproduced by permission of Francis and Perry Farmar)

Foulislea, Ampthill, Bedfordshire.

(The Architectural Review, Vol. 1, July–December 1921)

The Duke of Wellington presenting a birthday casket to his godson Prince Arthur (later Duke of Connaught) in the presence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, by F.X. Winterhalter after Samuel Cousins, 1851.

(The Wellcome Library)

The christening of HRH Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, 1926.

(George Grantham Bain collection, the Library of Congress via Flickr)

The Coronation of George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

(Authors’ collection)

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank family and friends who have, once again, tolerated us spending hours in front of our computers and disappearing off to archives over the past few years, often to the exclusion of everything and everyone else; this book is the reason for it.

To the wonderful Cheryl Stonebridge who worked with us in the early stages of this research and went on countless ‘gypsy hunting expeditions’ with us. We always said someone should write a book about it – well here it is!

We would like to acknowledge our very great debt to the late Hugh Farmar. He was a descendant of the Wellesley family and had access to their letters when they were still held within the family and published his excellent book A Regency Elopement in 1969 (it is now sadly out of print). A very special thank you must go to his sons, Francis and Perry Farmar, for allowing us to quote freely from A Regency Elopement and to breathe new life into their father’s research. Also for allowing us to use the miniature of the Reverend Henry Wellesley, reproduced in A Regency Elopement and owned by the Farmar family.

Many years ago now, we were in contact with the late Andrew Underwood, historian of Ampthill in Bedfordshire, who was kind enough to share his research into Sinetta Bentinck with us. We hope that he would be happy to finally see Sinnetta’s story in print.

Also, our thanks to SPL Rare books who very kindly gave us permission to include the image of Lord Charles Bentinck in his coronation robes from The Coronation of His Most Sacred Majesty King George the Fourth solemnized in the Collegiate Church.

Once again, we extend our grateful thanks to our lovely and dedicated copy-editor Pamela and last, but not least, to the fantastic team at Pen & Sword Books for their continued patience with all our requests.

Joanne Major and Sarah Murden, 2016

Introduction

‘Have you heard the story of the gypsy girl who married the queen’s ancestor?’ This was a question asked innocently enough almost a decade ago now, but one that started us on the path which ultimately led to this book. We are genealogists with a shared interest in English gypsy families and the story of Sinnetta Lambourne captivated us; we knew it had to be told.

In this book we document two marriages contracted by the well-connected Cavendish-Bentinck family, which were scandalous in their day, not in themselves but in society’s attitude towards them, and they helped to shape the British royal family as we now know it. The Regency haut ton in London were shocked when the Duke of Wellington’s niece eloped, just weeks after his victory at the Battle of Waterloo. The ensuing gossip and Criminal Conversation case set tongues wagging the length and breadth of the country and the subsequent hasty marriage did little more than gloss over the top of the scandal.

The second marriage was a true love match, only scandalous to the ducal Cavendish-Bentinck family because it broke society’s rules and crossed class boundaries, the bride being the daughter of a Romany gypsy and a lowly Oxfordshire horse-dealer. It was a marriage that was kept secret for many years for fear of the family’s and society’s reactions to it, and one that ultimately led to heartbreak. We end the book by looking at the impact these two marriages had on the royal family as we know it today, completing the saga of this branch of the royal family tree.

Never ones to let a good tale escape us, our research led us a merry dance back in time to an earlier marriage and to an eighteenth-century courtesan named Grace Dalrymple Elliott; our biography of Grace was published early in 2016 as An Infamous Mistress: The Life, Loves and Family of the Celebrated Grace Dalrymple Elliott. This is a continuation of the former book and alongside the two couples involved in the ‘scandalous marriages’ we also continue the life of their relative, Grace’s granddaughter Georgiana, but both books can be read independently of each other.

So many interesting people form part of the backdrop to this tale of the marital exploits of two successive generations of the Cavendish-Bentinck family. To set the scene we have ventured a little into the histories of the Wellesley family and of the British royal family as both are relevant and run parallel with our tale. It would have been incredibly easy to write much more on the life of Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess, and his wife Hyacinthe Gabrielle for they are fascinating characters. We have been able to add to what was already known in respect of Wellesley’s oft-reputed son Edward John Johnston and we hope this will prove worthwhile to those interested in the wider Wellesley family. However, the 1st Marquess and Marchioness Wellesley are but supporting actors to the main drama in our book and so we have reluctantly glossed over much of their lives; likewise with Arthur, Duke of Wellington and the royals of the period. Should the reader wish to delve deeper into their lives we recommend the books listed in our bibliography for further research.

For the benefit of our readers, we must mention the confusing variations in the Cavendish-Bentinck surname. While this is now the accepted version, earlier generations used it in their own preferred manner. Hence we have Lord Charles Bentinck and his son Charley Cavendish Bentinck. Both seemed to view Cavendish as a middle name rather than part of their surname. However, various children of both these men used Cavendish-Bentinck. We have chosen to use the hyphenated full version when referring to the ducal family, but within the pages of our book we allow each participant to be known by the name they used in life.

After her marriage to Lord Charles Bentinck, his second wife Anne had the courtesy title Lady Charles Bentinck. During her first marriage she was Lady Abdy. For ease we have, however, also referred to her as Lady Anne throughout.

We hope you enjoy reading.

Joanne Major and Sarah Murden, 2016

Prologue

Intrigue and Gossip in Regency London

On the streets of Regency London in the autumn of 1815 everyone was talking about Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. He was the hero of the hour following his victory at the Battle of Waterloo, which was fought just weeks earlier. Wellington, still in France, had triumphantly commanded the British forces at the battle and he was fêted not only at home but across Europe with balls, ceremonies and celebrations in his honour. Monuments to the battle and to the fallen were planned and subscriptions raised to help the wounded soldiers and the widows and orphaned children belonging to those men who never returned home.

Against this backdrop Lady Anne Abdy, Wellington’s beautiful but selfcentred niece, was surreptitiously entertaining her lover behind the closed doors of her elegant London town house on Hill Street in Berkeley Square, totally unbeknown to her husband. It was a scandal waiting to break and one that would occupy the newspaper gossip columns and the haut ton for some months. Instead of praising the duke, shocked tongues now wagged at the behaviour of his wayward niece. It was an unfortunate fact that the elders of the Wellesley family were no strangers to gossip about their private lives. Some society hostesses even whispered that it was no wonder Lady Anne had behaved in such a scandalous manner.

Lady Anne Abdy, née Wellesley, was the daughter of Richard Colley Wellesley, 2nd Earl of Mornington and 1st Marquess Wellesley of Norragh (both Irish peerages), an imperious man who had been eclipsed by the military successes and acclaim of his younger brother Arthur, Duke of Wellington. Her mother was Hyacinthe Gabrielle Rolland, a beautiful Frenchwoman and former opera dancer with whom her father had fallen head over heels in love during a stay in Paris as a young man before cruelly separating from her and setting up home in Kent with a seraglio of nymphs and courtesans.¹ Anne had inherited her mother’s flirtatious nature and French gaiety in full and with it her father’s horrendous temper and imperious demeanour. On the face of it she had made a splendid marriage to the spectacularly rich Sir William Abdy, a marriage made with her parents’ full approval and one that gave her wealth, status and a title, but Sir William was dull and dim-witted and she had, in fact, been given little choice in the matter. The couple were ill-suited for a life together.

The Abdys lived in a large and sumptuous red-brick mansion on the corner of Hill Street and Waverton Street, just a short stroll away from Park Lane and Hyde Park. Six windows wide and three storeys high, along with its next-door neighbour the Abdys’ house was much larger than those facing it.² Lady Anne wanted for nothing materially but emotionally she was very much adrift. Behind the façade of her fine house and perfect life she was unfulfilled and seeking a distraction; her life was starting to unravel.

Her lover was Lord Charles Bentinck, a younger and somewhat impecunious son of the 3rd Duke of Portland and a 34-year-old widower with a 4-year-old daughter. Handsome and charming, he was a confidante of the Prince Regent, one of the close-knit set around the prince that included the fashion icon and dandy Beau Brummell. A retired army officer, Lord Charles had a talent for little more than impressing a ballroom full of ladies with his elegant manner and graceful dancing but, nevertheless, he infamously captivated the bored Lady Anne Abdy in a way her husband had failed to do.

On a Tuesday morning in early September while Sir William was away from home, Lord Charles and Lady Anne made the fateful decision to elope. Lady Abdy stepped through the doorway of her marital home as its mistress for the last time with nothing more than her pet dog and the clothes on her back and determinedly walked into a new beginning. Stepping into her lover’s new carriage that awaited her a short distance away, she allowed him to whisk her away to a secret bolt-hole in Greenwich. Within days the newspapers, instead of reporting on the successes of the Duke of Wellington, were busily employed in salaciously imparting the news of his niece’s indiscretion to their readers.

The cuckolded and enraged Sir William Abdy immediately threatened to launch a Criminal Conversation (Crim. Con.) charge upon his rival, seeking damages of £30,000 for the loss of the rights to his wife; a staggering amount of money at that time. The laws of the day regarded a married woman as the property of her husband; hence Abdy was free to sue for the damage to his ‘goods’. A full divorce allowing both parties to remarry could only be obtained via a parliamentary bill, and the crueller option of a legal separation was a distinct possibility, debarring any prospect of a remarriage. If Lady Abdy was neither reconciled to her husband nor freed from her marriage to wed again she would be irredeemably ruined in the eyes of society, and if Lord Charles was ruined financially in the Crim. Con. case then he would be unable to keep his lady in the style to which she was accustomed.

The stage was set. Reputations and fortunes were at risk: the lives of all involved would never be the same again and a new chapter of history was about to be written, one that would indelibly leave its mark on the future generations of several families along the social scale, all the way from British royalty to Romany gypsy.

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,