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Pretenders, Usurpers
and Romances

Was Lady Jane Grey a rightful queen or a child victim?

Oh, Merciful God, consider my misery, best known unto Thee; and be Thou unto me a strong tower of defence. I humbly require Thee. Suffer me not to be tempted above my power, but either be Thou a deliverer unto me out of this great misery, or else give me grace patiently to bear Thy heavy hand and sharp correction …

Plea of Lady Jane Grey penned at the Tower of London,
11 February 1554.

Known to history as ‘the Nine Days Queen’, Jane Grey was the blameless sacrifice in the plots of her zealous father-in-law John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. He endeavoured to hold the Protestant religion in sway in England following the death of the young King Edward VI in 1553, instead of the Roman Catholic dominance which would result from the crowning of Henry VIII’s eldest daughter Mary. How did the 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey fall foul of England’s vicious Tudor politics?

Born at Bradgate Manor, 5 miles from the market town of Leicester, on or around 12 October 1537 – the same day that Prince Edward, Henry VIII’s only male heir was born – Jane Grey was the granddaughter of Princess Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Duchess of Suffolk, sister of Henry VIII; Jane was the eldest daughter of Henry and Frances Grey, later Duke and Duchess of Suffolk. Diminutive in stature yet admired for her beauty and sweetness of character, as great-niece of Henry VIII Jane was prominently placed in society and very well-educated for the day. She spent her childhood at Bradgate and the Grey’s Westminster home at Dorset Place. A classics scholar with a great talent for languages and a staunch adherent of the Protestant Reformation, Jane’s father’s chaplain John Aylmer (d.1594), later Bishop of London, acted as her tutor. In 1546 Jane became a member of the household of Queen Catherine Parr, a close friend of her grandmother now Dowager Duchess of Suffolk. Jane’s life at Queen Catherine’s Chelsea Manor House, the royal court, and later the Seymour home of Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire, when Catherine married once more, brought Jane into contact with the highest in the land. Her happy life was disrupted on the early morning of 6 September 1548, when the 36-year-old Catherine Parr died of childbirth fever, whereupon Jane became the ward of Queen Catherine’s second husband Lord High Admiral, Sir Thomas Seymour, Lord Sudeley, brother of Edward, Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector of England during the minority of Edward VI.

From this point Lady Jane Grey became a political pawn. Her fate developed in this way: During his last days Edward VI signed an amendment to his late father’s 1546 will – the ambiguous Device – setting out a new succession path for the English throne. In its hastily drafted wording Edward’s half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth would not succeed him, or the descendant of his aunt Margaret, Queen of Scots. Instead the male heirs of Lady Frances (Grey), Duchess of Suffolk and niece of Henry VIII, would succeed. As there were none at this date this meant that the male heirs of Frances’s surviving daughters Jane, Catherine and Mary would succeed. When the amendment was written the girls had no sons, so the Privy Council directed that the throne should go to Lady Jane Grey as heiress presumptive. There was some doubt among the Privy Councillors of the legality of the Device but on Edward VI’s death on 6 July 1553, Jane was duly named successor and proclaimed Queen of England in London on 10 July. Jane did not want to become queen and made this disavowal: ‘The Crown is not my right, and pleaseth me not. The Lady Mary is the rightful heir.’ Nevertheless, she was persuaded that her ascension to the throne would help the Protestant cause. Meanwhile, Henry VIII’s eldest daughter Mary, favoured successor to her half-brother, particularly by Roman Catholic interests, fled to East Anglia to muster loyal forces to her cause.

A few weeks before the succession, on 21 May 1553, Jane Grey married largely for political reasons. She wed Lord Guildford Dudley, the 17-year-old sixth son of the 1st Duke of Northumberland at Durham House, London. The marriage was against her will and Jane was coerced into it by intimidation and violence.

The Duke of Northumberland had assumed the role of Protector of the Realm during Edward VI’s reign. His scheme was to have his son declared joint-monarch with Jane. This, Jane refused to countenance, for at the beginning of her marriage she had little affection for her husband. The English nobility were unhappy with Northumberland’s schemes and in the country there was growing support for Mary Tudor. Jane Grey held the title of Queen of England for nine days, 10–19 July 1553, for Northumberland’s supporting army was dispersed without bloodshed and he was arrested and beheaded for treason on 22 August 1553. Jane Grey and her husband were arrested too, and imprisoned in the Tower.

At first Mary Tudor, who was crowned queen at Westminster Abbey on 1 October 1553, was prepared to be lenient to the teenage ‘usurper’ to her throne. But two factors brought Jane’s ultimate doom nearer. Her father Henry Grey was involved in the rebellion against Queen Mary organised by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Edward Courtney, Earl of Devonshire to prevent the marriage of Mary to the Roman Catholic King Philip of Spain. Again, Jane Grey refused to recant her Protestantism.

Jane was found guilty of treason at the Guildhall, London. The sentence was death, but as Jane was of royal blood her execution had to be observed reverently. She was led to the block by Lieutenant of the Tower of London, Sir John Brydges, and accompanied by 200 Yeomen of the Guard. Witnesses said that she met her end with ‘calm fortitude’, yet when blindfolded she showed anxiety when she could not locate ‘the block with her grasping hands’; thus aged 16 Lady Jane Grey died on Tower Green on 12 February 1554. A little earlier the same day Jane’s husband was executed on the same charge at Tower Hill; a more public location. From the window of her prison Jane watched his headless body being borne away on a cart. Jane was buried without religious ceremony alongside her husband near the north wall of the chancel of the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower, not far from the bodies of executed queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. A modern representative of Lady Jane Grey through her sister Catherine, wife of Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, is Beatrice Mary Grenville Morgan-Grenville, Lady Kinloss (b.1922). According to the will of Henry VIII her line has a legitimate line to the throne.

Who was England’s ‘Lost Queen’?

How do I thank thee, Death, and bless thy power

That I have passed the guard and ‘scaped the Tower!

And now my pardon is my epitaph

And a small coffin my poor carcase hath;

For at thy charge both soul and body were

Enlarged at last, secure from hope and fear

That among saints, this among kings is laid,

And what my birth did claim my death has paid.

Lines by the Bishop of Norwich at the death of
Lady Arbella Stuart.

Look down the family tree of Lady Arbella Stuart and her name appears boldly among the dynasties of the Tudors and Stuarts. See how the spider’s web of branches trace her back to her great-great-grandfather Henry VII of England, down through her great-grandmother Margaret, Queen of Scots, her grandmother Margaret, wife of Matthew Stuart, 4th Earl of Lennox, to her father Charles Stuart, 6th Earl of Lennox (d.1576) and mother Elizabeth Cavendish (d.1581), brother and sister-in-law of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. There Arbella’s name sits alongside her husband William Seymour, who in time became Duke of Somerset, who could also trace his lineage back through Mary, daughter of Henry VII. Together they made a dangerous dynastic threat to others seeking the throne.

Arbella Stuart (Latinised: Arabella) was born around 10 November 1575 at the Hackney house of her paternal grandmother Margaret, Lady Lennox, and christened at the parish church of Chatsworth. Charles Stuart, her father, died when Arbella was 18 months old, leaving her mother Elizabeth in strained financial circumstances. Elizabeth died when Arbella was 6 and the child was now in the charge of her grandmother, four times married Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, known to history as the redoubtable, ambitious ‘Bess of Hardwick’. Well-educated, and because of her background, Arbella knew well the courts of Elizabeth I – who thought her pushy and arrogant – and James I/VI. To James she was an unsettling figure; she was after all James’s first cousin and to many Arbella had a more legitimate right to the throne than James on the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603. James was the senior descendant of Henry VII, but had not Henry VIII’s will declared that all ‘aliens’ be excluded from the succession? Born in Scotland in 1566 James was considered by some as an ‘alien’, but Arbella being English-born was not an alien in these terms. Thus, to James’s supporters Arbella was a dynastic threat.

In the early months of his reign James ignored the tortuous rumours that linked Arbella with alleged plotting against him by such men as Henry Brook, 8th Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh. Their scheme was to depose James and put Arbella on the throne; their machinations earned them a capital sentence which James countermanded in his own idiosyncratic way at the last minute. Until 1609 James then treated Arbella with kindness yet parsimony. He kept her at court where he could keep an eye on her. But alas, her marriage caused her to descend into disaster.

Over the years Arbella’s name was linked for future matrimony ‘with every single prince in Christendom’. Yet her romance with William Seymour is somewhat lacking in historic detail. By 2 February 1610 they were betrothed and married on 21 June. Arbella’s marriage to Seymour was provocative to King James; it had been in secret and without the permission of her royal cousin. This act of ‘virtual treason’ to a man twelve years her junior had sent King James into a frenzied fit. Not only was a royal prerogative slighted, but Seymour was a dynastic threat, for he was a grandson of Lady Catherine Grey who was of the line descending from Margaret Tudor. So for her secret marriage James put William Seymour in the Tower and Arbella under house arrest at Lambeth with plans to move her out of harms way to the north of England under the supervision of the Bishop of Durham. En route for Durham, Arbella fell ill (or pretended to be so), and the party lodged at a ‘sorry inn’. From here, on 3 June 1611, dressed as a man, she slipped away from her captors, for both she and her husband had planned a double yet separate escape. William effected a successful escape but was delayed by a rapid hue-and-cry from making rendezvous with Arbella. Incandescent with rage King James ordered the Lord High Admiral, the Earl of Nottingham, to organise a pursuit as the escapees made their separate ways to France. The pursuit was carried out by Admiral Sir William Monson. Arbella’s party was able to join Captain Corvé’s French barque to take them to France, however, just off Calais Arbella was caught by Captain Griffen Cockett’s pinnace Adventure and she was returned to England. William Seymour successfully escaped to Ostend. In time he made his peace with James and received the Garter and the dukedom of Somerset in the year of his death, 1660.

After capture James incarcerated Arbella in the Tower as a ‘close prisoner’ under the Lieutenant of the Tower Sir William Waad (or Wade). Although in close confinement she was allowed servants. Her health declined and she was reported to be ‘dangerously sick of convulsions’ to which was added that she ‘continues crakt in her brain’. Plots flowed round her for her escape but they came to nothing. At length she died on 25 September 1615; some said she had been poisoned, but she is more likely to have died from malnutrition. In death she had a little more honour, although King James ordered that there be no court mourning for his royal cousin. James further ordered that her coffin be laid inside the tomb which he had constructed for his mother Mary, Queen of Scots, whose cadaver was moved from Peterborough Cathedral to Westminster Abbey. This is a strange quirk of fate: When Mary Stuart fled to England after her deposition, one of her successive custodians was Bess of Hardwick at the Shrewsbury family country houses of Sheffield Castle, Sheffield Lodge and Chatsworth. There Arbella, Mary Stuart’s niece-in-law, had been her child companion.

There is some doubt among historians whether or not Arbella had any pretensions to the throne of England and Scotland, despite the possible brainwashing to this end by her maternal grandmother Bess of Hardwick. So Arbella Stuart has lain in Westminster Abbey scarcely noticed yet had she been male, she might have succeeded to the throne after all.

Why did Henry VIII marry six times?

Choose yourself a wife you will always and only love.

Advice of John Skelton (c. 1460–1529),
created poet laureate by Oxford and
Cambridge universities, to pupil
Prince Henry (later Henry VIII),
in ‘Speculum Principis’, (
c. 1499).

Henry VIII’s marriage records read like this:

1.  Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536), daughter of Ferdinand II, King of Aragon and Isabel I, Queen of Castile, married at Greyfriars church, Greenwich, 11 June 1509. Marriage annulled, 23 May 1533. Six children; only one survived, became Queen Mary I.

2.  Anne (c. 1500–36), daughter of Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde and Lady Elizabeth Howard, married at York Place (later Whitehall Palace), 25 January 1533. Marriage declared invalid, 17 May 1536. Executed. Three children; one ruled as Elizabeth I.

3.  Jane (c. 1508–37), daughter of Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth, married at Whitehall Palace, 30 May 1536. Died in childbirth. Son became King Edward VI.

4.  Anne (1515–57), daughter of Johann II, Duke of Cleves and Marie of Julich and Berg, married at Greenwich Palace, 6 January 1540. Marriage annulled, 9 July 1540. No offspring.

5.  Catherine (c. 1520–42), daughter of Lord Henry Howard and first wife Joyce Culpeper, married at Oatlands Park, Surrey, 28 July 1540. Executed. No offspring.

6.  Catherine (c. 1512–48), daughter of Sir Thomas Parr of Kendal and Maud Green, married at Hampton Court Palace, 12 July 1543. Outlived Henry to marry again. No offspring.

Although Catherine of Aragon became Henry VIII’s first queen she was first married to his brother Arthur, Prince of Wales, on 14 November 1501. Five months after the marriage, the consumptive, syphilitic Arthur died at Ludlow Castle. Had the marriage been consummated – ‘last night I was in Spain’, boasted Arthur – did he infect his wife with syphilis? These were to remain mysteries to be raked over later, for Catherine insisted that she came out of her first marriage virgo intacta.

By 1503 Catherine was proposed as a bride for Prince Henry; a papal dispensation was obtained from Pope Julius II for Henry to marry his brother’s widow, yet Henry VII dithered in pressing for the marriage ceremony as he hoped for a better candidate for Henry’s nuptial bed. No such candidate appeared, and on the death of Henry VII in 1509, Henry, ardently in love, married Catherine at Greyfriar’s church, Greenwich on 11 June. Four children were born; three stillborn and one who lived barely eight weeks, until in 1516 Catherine gave birth to Mary Tudor. Another stillborn birth occurred in 1518, following two further miscarriages. Catherine had no more pregnancies.

Henry and Catherine ceased to co-habit in 1526 and the following year the long divorce process began. The basis of Henry’s divorce suit was affinity; that is it was ‘illegal’ for him to marry his brother’s widow despite the Pope’s dispensation. Although Catherine had powerful support from her nephew, the Emperor Charles V, and in Rome, a compliant Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, declared the marriage null and void on 23 May 1533 and an Act of Parliament sealed the issue.

Catherine was demoted to Dowager Princess of Wales. Throughout she refused to accept the divorce and died of cancer at Kimbolton Castle on 7 January 1536. The queen Henry had loved with a deep devotion and whose spirit was never crushed by the divorce was buried at Peterborough Cathedral.

Contemporary commentators suggest that Henry also fell in love with his second wife Anne Boleyn. Anne knew the ramifications of court life well. Her father held various diplomatic posts and she served as a court lady in the household of Henry VIII’s sister Mary, Queen of France, then that of King Louis XII of France’s daughter Claude, and by 1521 she was back in England as maid of honour to Queen Catherine of Aragon.

Anne’s French court manners were considered charming by the young gentlemen at Henry VIII’s court. Records show that she had a probable sexual relationship with Henry Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland, then resident in the household of Cardinal Wolsey. It is likely too that they had some sort of betrothal agreement. Her name was also linked with the notorious adulterer Sir Thomas Wyatt, whose pursuit of Anne would later earn him a sojourn in the Tower. Henry VIII paid her increasing attention too, transferring his affection from his mistress, Anne’s elder sister Mary Boleyn. For some time Anne fended off Henry’s advances, but kept him interested with coquettish flirting and amorous letters. Probably she became his mistress around 1527 and in 1532 Henry made her Marchioness of Pembroke. Anne was pregnant by Henry in December 1532, and at that point a divorce from Catherine of Aragon loomed prominently in Henry’s mind.

The divorce was sealed by parliament in May 1533, but Anne and Henry had been secretly married on 25 January that year; five days after the divorce Anne was crowned queen, the last queen consort ever to have a separate coronation. Anne gave birth to Princess Elizabeth on 7 September and Henry’s disappointment at not having a son meant his ardour for Anne diminished. By 1534 he had taken up with one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour.

The loss of a possible male heir by miscarriage in 1536 brought Anne’s fate nearer. A commission was set up to examine her conduct. In time, on no real evidence and dubious accusations extracted by torture, Anne was accused of an incestuous relationship with her brother George, Viscount Rochford, and treasonous adultery with a gentleman of the King’s Chamber, Henry Norris. The superstitious, too, noted that the deformity on one of her hands (a rudimentary sixth finger) indicated that she was a witch. Anne was arrested and taken to the Tower where she was interrogated about her life and relationships. On 17 May 1536 an ecclesiastical court declared the royal marriage null and void ab initio (from the beginning); again the pretext of affinity was quoted because of Henry’s relationship with Mary Boleyn.

Anne was condemned to death and beheaded on Tower Green on 19 May 1536, to be buried at the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. Just before her death Anne summed up her royal progress: ‘The king has been very good to me. He promoted me from a simple maid to be a marchioness. Then he raised me to be a queen. Now he will raise me to be a martyr.’

A day after the execution of Anne Boleyn, Henry announced his betrothal to Jane Seymour and they were married eleven days later. Jane Seymour was half second-cousin to Anne Boleyn so she was not out of place as maid of honour to Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, despite her somewhat humble birth as daughter of a ‘simple knight’, Sir John Seymour of Nettlestead, Suffolk. Jane was not considered a court beauty and her skills were not to promote any physical attributes but to entrap Henry VIII. She seduced him by posing as a simple, innocent girl. Courtiers noted that she successfully resisted Henry’s carnal approaches with the inference that the road to her bed was through marriage; she was after all a conservative Roman Catholic.

When Anne Boleyn was being tried and executed Jane Seymour with discretion took up residence at the family house of Wolf Hall, near Savernake, Wiltshire. Eleven days after Anne’s execution Henry and Jane were married in the Queen’s Closet, York Place. The outbreak of plague in London and Jane’s pregnancy meant that plans for Jane’s coronation were put off (she was never crowned). On 12 October 1537 Jane gave birth to a boy, Prince Edward, at Hampton Court. Henry was ecstatic and ordered lavish celebrations; his son’s christening was attended by both his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. Twelve days after the birth Jane died of puerperal fever and she was buried in St George’s chapel, Windsor. As herald and chronicler Charles Wriothesley (d.1562) commented, Jane ‘reigned as the King’s wife … one year and a quarter’. She had given Henry what he most desired, a son, and for him she was the ‘perfect wife’. How long Jane would have remained in Henry’s favour after Edward’s birth is a matter of speculation.

Jane Seymour was only dead a week when Lord Great Chamberlain, Thomas Cromwell, pressed Henry to seek a wife that would stress an alliance with a foreign royal house. English ambassadors to the Continental courts began their search and by 1538 the daughter of the Duke of Cleves entered the frame. After all, the duke was one of the most keen and strong supporters of the Protestant Reformation. What did she look like? Henry dispatched Hans Holbein to paint a likeness. Henry’s envoys backed up the opinion that Anne of Cleves was beautiful ‘as the golden sun excelleth the silver moon’.

A marriage negotiation was completed on 4 October 1539 and Dutch-speaking Anne arrived at Deal that December to make for Rochester to meet her eager fiancé. Henry was aghast at what he saw, dubbing her the ‘Flanders Mare’, her looks repulsing him. If he could have reneged on the marriage Henry would have gladly. He could not, and the marriage, conducted by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, went ahead. The marriage was never consummated – they are said to have played cards on their wedding night for eight hours. A girl of limited education and no knowledge of spoken English, her personality at odds with what Henry found attractive in a woman, forced Henry to eject her from Court. Henry hurried to gather pretexts for an annulment. He had not wanted the marriage; it was not consummated; and had not Anne been pre-contracted to the son of the Duke of Lorraine? That was enough. A convocation pronounced the marriage null and void on 9 July 1540.

Anne did not object to the divorce proceedings. Henry endowed her with money and two houses. A friendship developed between them – he dubbed her ‘sister’ – and she remained on good terms with her step-children. So Anne became a well-provided divorcee, but some historians believe that she hankered after re-marrying Henry, especially after Catherine Howard was executed. It was not to be and Anne outlived Henry by ten years. Anne died at Chelsea on 17 July 1557. She was buried in a tomb on the south side of the altar of the Confessor’s Shrine at Westminster Abbey.

Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard, was Anne Boleyn’s first cousin, mirroring her sensuality but outdoing her in promiscuity. With her grandfather, the 2nd Duke of Norfolk, Catherine was well placed in court circles, but this highly sexed girl had a long list of physical lovers, from Henry Manox her music teacher, to her cousin Thomas Culpeper. She first met Henry VIII at the London residence of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. Instantly attracted, Henry had Catherine promoted to maid of honour to Anne of Cleves.

Henry’s repugnance for Anne of Cleves made it easier for Catherine Howard to ensnare Henry. On that day in May 1540 which marked the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves, the Council urged Henry to move swiftly towards a new marriage ‘to the comfort of his realm’. Catherine was well placed through scheming to be prime candidate and Henry and Catherine were married on 28 July 1540.

Refreshed in vitality by his high-spirited bride, Henry rode and hunted with new vigour, and lavished property and jewellery on Catherine. Repulsed by Henry’s growing girth and physical ailments, Catherine made the very unwise move of taking up again with her former lovers, particularly one of her grandmother’s retainers Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper. During a progress that Henry and Catherine made to the northern lands of his kingdom, and with the help of her lady-in-waiting Viscountess Rochford, Catherine had Culpeper smuggled into her apartments. It was only to be expected that Henry would find out when the Council heard of the infidelities. At first Henry did not believe the accusations but, being very upset, he went off on a prolonged hunting trip.

In due time Catherine was placed under house arrest at Syon House, and her lovers along with sundry members of the Howard family were brought to trial. Dereham and Culpeper were executed. In 1542 parliament agreed a Bill of Attainder against Catherine which was given the Royal Assent through the Council (to spare Henry’s tender feelings on the matter) on 11 February. Two days later Catherine and her aider and abetter Viscountess Rockford were executed at Tower Green. Catherine was buried near to her cousin Anne Boleyn in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula.

Courtiers noted how the infidelities aged Henry VIII further and for a while he was a broken man. At length his spirits revived and a year later he was jockeying again in the marriage stakes. Henry’s sixth and last wife Catherine Parr came from a rich, influential northern family which was at the centre of court affairs. Henry VIII was in fact her third husband, she having first married Sir Edward Borough (d. c. 1533), and then John Neville, 3rd Baron Latimer (d.1543). Four months after Latimer’s death she married Henry at Hampton Court Palace on 12 July 1543.

This time the syphilitic, ailing Henry VIII was looking for a step-mother to his children; from her two marriages Catherine Parr had no children, except step-children from Lord Latimer’s first marriage. But in his courtship Henry had a rival. It was gossiped at court that Catherine Parr was enamoured of Henry’s brother-in-law Thomas Seymour. Before they could marry Henry intervened and claimed Catherine Parr for himself.

Historically the well-educated ‘religious radical’, Catherine Parr could be called the first Protestant Queen of England, remembering though, as with Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard, no arrangements were ever made for her coronation. An accomplished religious debater, Catherine wrote learned papers. This would lead her into danger with the pro-Roman Catholic factions, led by Gardiner and Wriothesley; in 1546 a charge of heresy against her was prepared, although slipping into senility, Henry defended her against the caucus.

Henry’s motives for marrying Catherine Parr paid off; she was a kindly, attentive step-mother, bringing together Henry’s three mismatched children Mary, Elizabeth and Edward, promoting their education and encouraging their intellectual talents. Catherine gave Henry a round of family life he had not had since Jane Seymour’s day. When Henry departed for the war zone in France in 1544 he left Catherine to rule as Governor of the Realm and Protector, a role she carried out with assiduity and competence.

After Henry died at Whitehall, 28 January 1547, Queen Dowager Catherine married the womaniser Thomas Seymour, and became aunt to her step-son now Edward VI. At the age of 36 Catherine became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter. She died of puerperal fever on September 1548, to be buried in St Mary’s church, Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire. (She was reburied in the Chandos vault in 1817.)

Was George III a bigamist?

All descendants of George II under 25 years of age (except the issue of princesses marrying into foreign families) must obtain royal consent, otherwise the marriage is void.

Royal Marriages Act, 1772.

In the National Archives at Kew there is a curious royal marriage certificate. It enters the name of Prince George William Frederick, Prince of Wales, and a Quaker girl called Hannah Lightfoot, and their marriage as being on 17 April 1759. Officially the prince, who became George III on the death of his grandfather George II in 1760, married at St James’s Palace, 8 September 1761, HSH Princess Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz. So does the Kew certificate show that George III was a bigamist?

Prince George, the son of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (d.1751), was born at Norfolk House, London, on 24 May 1738. He was not wayward like his father and despite being obstinate he was well-educated, but among his character faults was a lack of judgement which led him to stuff a skeleton into his juvenile cupboard.

The skeleton was given a public airing in 1866 in the Court of Probate and Divorce, wherein barrister Dr Walter Smith represented one ‘Princess’ Lavinia, who claimed to be the ‘legitimate granddaughter of Prince Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland’, sixth child of Prince Frederick Louis and George III’s brother. The claim, opposed in court by Attorney General Roundell Palmer, and before Lord Chief Justice Sir Alexander Cockburn, was that Lavinia’s grandmother Olive Wilmot had secretly married the scapegrace Cumberland. Lavinia thus pursued recognition of her royal rights and titles in court. The basis of the plaintiff’s case was a cache of documents left by Olive Wilmot when she died in 1834. They showed signatures of George III, William Pitt (as Earl of Chatham) and Lord Brooke (as Earl of Warwick) attesting to Olive’s royal birth and affirming a clutch of monetary donations to her. In the event the claim was dismissed on a jury verdict, although Lavinia pursued the claim until her death in 1871. During his address to the court barrister Smith made the astonishing claim that before his marriage to Princess Sophia Charlotte, George III had been married to one Hannah Lightfoot. He was queried by the Lord Chief Justice as to the relevance of his statement and was admonished for his ‘great indecency to make such uncouth and unverified statements about the royal family’. Yet, the public were intrigued by the assertion: Who was Hannah Lightfoot?

Records show that she was born in London on 12 October 1730, the daughter of Quaker Matthew Lightfoot (d.1733), a shoemaker of Execution Dock, Wapping-in-the-East, and his wife Mary Wheeler (d.1760). Gossip of the day recounts that Prince George first saw Hannah sitting in the window of her uncle’s linen draper’s shop by St James’s Market (now Waterloo Place and Regent Street). Struck by the girl’s beauty, he arranged for one of his mother Augusta, Princess of Wales’s maids of honour, Elizabeth Chudleigh (later Countess of Bristol), to effect a meeting; this she did, added the court gossips with relish, with the assistance of a high-class pimp called Jack Emm.

When Prince George’s father died in 1751 he became heir apparent and it was thought necessary by his mother and others that George’s mistress be married. Thus Hannah married a grocer, one Isaac Axelford on 11 December 1753. Other versions of the story say that Prince George snatched Hannah before she could be married to Axford and married her himself in 1757 or 1759; the dates vary from version to version. The documents of the 1866 trial showed that three children were born of the union to be named as George Rex, John Mackleon and Sarah Dalton. The event of children became an accepted story in the biography The Fair Quaker, Hannah Lightfoot by Mary Lucy Pendreth. Again, the theme was taken up by John Lindsay in The Lovely Quaker who gave further details of George Rex’s pedigree and his ultimate residence at the Cape of Good Hope. Professor Ian R. Christie, a historian with a special interest in George III’s life and reign, researched the George Rex story with the conclusion that it was ‘based on evidence which is without exception hearsay or else suspicious in origin …’ Over the years variations of the Hannah Lightfoot story have emerged, but most note that she died around 1759.

The documents produced for the 1866 trial were deemed a forgery, and today authenticity has never been proven. During the purported year of Hannah Lightfoot’s death, Prince George fell in love with Lady Sarah Lennox (1745–1820), daughter of Charles, 2nd Duke of Richmond, a great-granddaughter of Charles II and his mistress Louise de Kéroüalle, Duchess of Portsmouth. The royal family and their advisers thought a marriage for Prince George with a British commoner was not acceptable and a German princess was sought. Thus historians largely agree that if Hannah Lightfoot existed at all there was no marriage between her and Prince George and consequently George III was not a bigamist. However, curious stories persist. Archaeologists working at St Peter’s church, Carmarthen, West Wales, in 2000, discovered an unmarked brick barrel vault in the centre of the chancel, before the altar. The work was precipitated by the fact that the huge church organ was sinking and the floor needed shoring up. The organ had been a personal gift, tradition has it, from George III in 1796, who had intended it for Windsor Castle. As the archaeologists worked downwards four coffins were revealed, along with this obscured gravestone:

IN THIS VAULT ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OF CHARLOTTE AUGUSTA CATHERINE DALTON,
ELDEST DAUGHTER OF JAMES DALTON ESQUIRE, FORMERLY OF THIS TOWN AND OF BANGALORE IN THE EAST INDIES. SHE DIED ON THE 2ND DAY OF AUGUST, 1832, AGED 27 YEARS.

ALSO THE REMAINS OF MARGARET AUGUSTA DALTON, SECOND DAUGHTER OF DANIEL PRYTHERCH, ESQ. OF THIS TOWN AND OF ABERGOYLE IN THIS COUNTY, BY CAROLINE HIS WIFE, YOUNGEST DAUGHTER OF THE ABOVE JAMES DALTON. SHE DIED ON THE 24TH DAY OF JANUARY 1839 IN THE NINTH YEAR OF HER AGE.

As news spread of the discovery, Dalton family historians began to associate the grave with the ‘Sarah Dalton’, purported daughter of George III, who married one James Dalton. Again, they asked, why did George III give an expensive organ to an obscure church in Wales? Mystery plied on mystery; was the gift to hallow the place of worship of his daughter? The jury is still out.

Which royal duke married twice – illegally?
And which one hated arranged marriages?

Will you allow me to come this evening? It is my only hope. Oh! Let me come, and we will send for Mr Gunn. Everything but this is hateful to me. More than forty-eight hours have passed without the slightest nourishment. Oh, let me not live so … If Gunn will not marry me, I shall die.

HRH Prince Augustus, Duke of Sussex to The Lady
Augusta Murray, 4 April 1793.

Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, was born at Buckingham House, St James’s Park, 27 January 1773, the sixth son and ninth child of George III and Queen Charlotte. Educated at Göttingen University, along with his brothers Ernest, Duke of Cumberland and Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, Augustus was not destined for the army like his brothers because of ‘convulsive asthma’. He travelled and studied classics at Rome to become something of a scholar; he had a passion for music and books – his 50,000 volume collection included 5,000 bibles. While in Rome he fell into the matrimonial net set out by Lady Charlotte Stewart for her daughter Augusta, the second daughter Lady Charlotte had had by her husband John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore. Lady Augusta was five years the prince’s senior, was considered ‘plain’ and had inherited her mother’s bossiness.

Following what seems to have been a mutually celibate relationship the prince married Lady Augusta at Rome on 4 April 1793 under the Anglican rite by the Revd Gunn. They were married again at St George’s, Hanover Square on 5 December. Both ceremonies were in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772.

George III was much angered by the illegal marriage and it was declared null and void by the Court of Arches on 3 August 1794. Augustus and Augusta lived together despite all this and two children were born. Sir Augustus Frederick d’Este (1794–1848) was born in Essex and became Deputy Ranger of St James’s and Hyde Parks, and unsuccessfully claimed the dukedom of Sussex on his father’s death. Augusta Emma d’Este (1801–55) was born at Lower Grosvenor Street, London, and married Thomas Wilde, 1st Baron Truro, who became Lord High Chancellor from 1850–52. Neither of the children left issue.

For years the illegal union alienated Prince Augustus from George III and his Court, but by royal licence in 1806 Lady Augusta assumed the surname of de Ameland and was styled Countess. An estrangement developed between the prince and Augusta and she died at Ramsgate in 1830.

Once again, in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act, around 2 May 1831, Prince Augustus married Lady Cecilia Letitia Underwood, widow of Sir George Buggin and daughter of the 2nd Earl of Arran. Although she was twelve years younger than the prince there were no offspring from the union. Small in stature and quaint in dress, Cecilia was accepted by the Royal Family as the prince’s wife, and in 1840 Queen Victoria created her Duchess of Inverness.

While his morganatic illegal wife became a personality in society, Prince Augustus was a great patron of art, science and literature. He was held in great favour by Queen Victoria, who he gave away at her wedding to Prince Albert in 1840. At the time, one wag was heard to remark: ‘The Duke of Sussex is always ready to give away what does not belong to him.’

Prince Augustus died of erysipelas at Kensington Palace on 21 April 1843. In his idiosyncratic way he left instructions that he was to be buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, north of Paddington. This is certainly because he wanted, in due time, for his wife to be buried with him; her cadaver would not have been accepted for the royal vault. Lady Cecilia died at Kensington Palace on 1 August 1873.

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It was Queen Victoria’s wedding day, Monday 10 February 1840. Among the guests that day were the queen’s uncles Prince Augustus, Duke of Sussex, who ‘sobbed throughout the ceremony’ and Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, who ‘made, loud good humoured comments’; alongside them was Cambridge’s son Prince George William Frederick Charles, who at 21 was the same age as his cousin the queen. Rumour had it that Prince George had been skulking abroad for some time in case he had been forced to marry Victoria. He commented to any who cared to hear, ‘arranged marriages are doomed to failure’.

George went on to be a field marshal and commander-in-chief of the British Forces from 1856–95, but his marriage caused more scandal in court circles. Later, on the day of Queen Victoria’s wedding, Prince George met Sarah – called Louisa – Fairbrother (b.1815), the fifth daughter of Robert and Mary Fairbrother, a theatrical printer family in Covent Garden. Louisa had gone on the stage in 1830 and was a well-known actress in pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the Lyceum and Covent Garden. Possessed of a captivating charm she was considered a ‘classical beauty’ and Prince George was instantly smitten. It is likely that Prince George knew that Louisa already had an illegitimate son Charles (1839–1901), whose father was probably Charles John Manners-Sutton, 1st Viscount Canterbury, Speaker of the House of Commons. A relationship developed and marriage was discussed; a marriage that would not have been acceptable to the Royal Family. Nevertheless, and in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act, Prince George and Louisa were married at St John’s church, Clerkenwell, on 8 January 1847. Thereafter Louisa was known as ‘Mrs FitzGeorge’, and took up residence at No. 6 Queen Street, Mayfair, ‘where’, wrote George’s biographer the Revd Edgar Shepperd, ‘the Duke devoted to his wife all the hours he could spare from his public duties and private engagements’. Prince George had his official residence at Gloucester House, Piccadilly.

Three children were born of the union. George William Adolphus FitzGeorge (1843–1907), served in the army; Sir Adolphus Augustus FitzGeorge (1846–1922) became a rear admiral, and Sir Augustus Charles Frederick FitzGeorge (1847–1933) also served in the army and was his father’s private secretary. Louisa had given birth too, on 22 March 1841, to a daughter Louisa Catherine; she was never openly acknowledged as Prince George’s daughter but she took the name FitzGeorge and was frequently at her putative father’s house; she died a childless widow in 1919.

Louisa FitzGeorge suffered a distressing two-year illness and died on Sunday 12 January 1870 to be buried in the mausoleum Prince George had erected at Kensal Green. Prince George died at Gloucester House on 17 March 1904. His morganatic illegal marriage was deemed to be a happy one and he openly mourned Louisa’s death for the rest of his life. On his wedding day he was to have said this to his new bride:

You alone know love, or ought to know, how blessed and happy I feel that this day made you my own and me yours.

Who were the youngest royal child grooms and brides to inherit or be consort to the thrones of England and Scotland?

The passion of John for his queen [Isabella of Angoulême], though it was sufficiently strong to embroil him in war, was not exclusively enough to secure conjugal fidelity; the king tormented her with jealousy, while on his part he was far from setting her a good example, for he often invaded the honour of the female nobility.

Agnes Strickland (1796–1874), historian on King John, 1840.

No one had seen the like before as the great English wagon-train trundled through France. Two hundred men-at-arms, knights, clerks, stewards, sergeants, squires and retainers, all led by Thomas Becket, Chancellor of England, slowly made their way through town and village. Crowds flocked to see the five-horse wagons and packhorses loaded with furniture, clothes, food, beer, and chests of gold and silver plate, bound for the French Court. There King Louis VII and his second wife Constance of Castile awaited the marriage proposals carried by Becket from King Henry II of England. In a short time, in that year of 1158, it was agreed that the French king’s daughter Marguerite be betrothed to Henry the Younger, eldest surviving son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. An early marriage was not contemplated as Marguerite was 2 years old and young Henry 4. They were married though when Henry was crowned King of England in his father’s lifetime (a Capetian practice) at Westminster Abbey on 24 May 1170. Henry the Younger never succeeded his father, dying in 1182.

Had Henry the Younger reigned he would have been the youngest monarch to marry, but ten more monarchs and consorts were to marry in the Middle Ages before they were 13. On 24 August 1200, John Lackland, King of England, married Isabella (d.1246), daughter of Count Aymer Taillefer of Angoulême as his second wife. She was just 12 and John just over 32. In his Chronica Majora Matthew Paris made this comment on the royal couple:

He detested his wife and she him. She was an incestuous and depraved woman, so notoriously guilty of adultery that the king had given orders that her lovers were to be seized and throttled on her bed. He himself was envious of many of his barons and kinsfolk, and seduced their more attractive daughters and sisters.

Isabella, it seems, continued to lead a racy life after John’s death in 1216.

Henry III (r.1216–72), married off his sister Joan to Alexander II (r.1214–49), King of Scots. At his marriage at York on 18 June 1221, Joan was some ten months over her tenth birthday and Alexander was not yet 23. Joan died in 1238, their marriage being childless; yet this was another political marriage which led to much diplomatic haggling between the two kingdoms. Eleanor, daughter of Count Raymond Berenger of Provence, was around 13 when she married Henry III on 14 January 1236 at Canterbury Cathedral. He was a few months over 28 years old. They were married some thirty-six years, their first child (Edward I) being born in 1239 when Eleanor was 16 and they went on to have eight more children. Another political marriage occurred between Henry III’s eldest daughter Margaret (d.1275) and Alexander III (r.1249–86), King of Scots. Margaret was just over 11 years old at the marriage in York on 26 December 1251 and Alexander just over 10; they had three children, all of whom died within five years of their mother.

Historians have described the wedding of 13-year-old Eleanor, daughter of King Ferdinand III of Castile and 15-year-old Edward I (r.1272–1307), at Las Huelgas, Castile, in October 1254, as ‘one of the great love matches of history’. They were to have sixteen children. Another long marriage, but childless, was that of David II (r.1329–71), King of Scots, to Joanna (d.1262) daughter of Edward II of England at Berwick-upon Tweed on 17 July 1328. David – the heir to King Robert I, the Bruce – was just over 4 years old and Joanna 7. Another heir to the throne, like David II, was Henry Boilinbroke, when he married Mary (d.1394) daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Warwick, at Arundel, Sussex on 3 April 1367. She was around 11 years of age and Henry just over 13. Mary gave birth at 13 and Henry ruled as Henry IV (r.1399–1413). One marriage never consummated was that of Richard II (r.1377–99) to Isabella (d.1409), daughter of Charles VI of France. Richard was then 29 and Isaballa 6 years old. The marriage was part of a peace treaty between England and France.

Scotland’s kingdom was expanded when James III (r.1460–88) married Margaret (d.1486), daughter of Christian I of Denmark, at Holyrood Abbey on 10 July 1469, for her dowry included the islands of Orkney and Shetland. The last of the young marriages of the Middle Ages was that of Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII to James IV (r.1488–1513), King of Scots at Holyrood Abbey on 8 August 1503. Margaret was around 13 and James 30 years old. Through this marriage, 100 years later, the thrones of England and Scotland were united under James I/VI.

Did British monarchs use contraceptives?

A Gentleman of this House [Wills Coffee House, 1 Bow Street, London] … observ’d by the Surgeons with much Envy; for he has invented an Engine for the Prevention of Harms by Love-Adventures and has, by great Care and Application made it an Immodesty to name his Name.

‘On the inventor of the condom’, Tatler Magazine, 1709.

In the picture archives of the British Library there is a print of 1744 dubbed ‘Quality control in a condom warehouse’. It shows a gentleman purchaser offering his fee while a seated woman blows into the contraceptive he is about to buy to test its capability. On a table lies a range of condoms of different sizes in production while a clergyman blesses the merchandise. On the floor a cat and dog fight over a discarded condom; above them a line of condoms are suspended of prodigious sizes. The business looks prosperous, but Britain always lagged behind other nations when it came to contraception. Condoms were known among those who felt need of them from the seventeenth century. The first recorded modern mention of them is in Gabriello Falloppio’s De Morbo Gallico published after the author’s death in 1564. Even so there was a persistent belief throughout the eighteenth century that condoms were a British invention.

Better-off men in the eighteenth century probably used condoms to protect themselves from venereal diseases when consorting with street whores. From the early 1700s condoms were available from London street sellers in St James’s Park, Spring Gardens, the Play-House and the Mall. Mostly made of animal membrane, biographer James Boswell noted in his London Journal for Saturday 4 June 1763, that the condoms worked best if they were first dipped in the lake at St James’s Park. Soldiers used them even earlier; such a condom dating from around 1650 was found in a cesspit at Dudley Castle.

There were a range of ‘contraceptive potions’ available from apothecaries, but they were disdained by many, as were other contraceptive techniques such as the rhythm method, coitus interruptus and saline douches. It was not until 1823 that contraception was given a public airing by political radical Francis Place in his handbill To the Married of Both Sexes. Ideas on contraception were also taken up by a printer called Richard Carlile in his journal The Republican, and later in 1825 in a full publication Every Woman’s Book; or, What is Love? A boost to such publications was given by philosopher John Stuart Mill who circulated them while a junior clerk in the India Office. Socialist Robert Dale Owen in his Moral Physiology (1830) advocated the ‘complete withdrawal method’ while George Drysdale’s Elements of Social Science (1854) offered ‘five techniques of contraception’.

The high incidence of illegitimacy among British royal houses from the days of Henry I (d.1131), with his estimated twenty-five illegitimate children at least, would suggest that contraception was not high on the list of royal concerns. One popular story has it that a ‘royal physician’, one ‘Dr Condom’, invented the preventative sheath to help Charles II reduce the roll of his illegitimate children; there seems to have been a decided lack of success as the king had at least sixteen illegitimates by some eight mistresses. A pamphlet issued around 1690 entitled Duchess of Portsmouth’s Garland has Charles II’s mistress Louise Renee de Kéroüalle (Duchess of Portsmouth) using ‘new fashioned sponges to clear her … from slimy sperm’. Dr Condom – whoever he was – did not invent the sheath. The Ancient Egyptians beat him to it as a sketch of the XIX Dynasty (1350–1200 bc) shows.

Other monarchs had more diverse difficulties than Charles II. His brother James II/VII and his wife Mary of Modena took the waters of Bath to produce a male heir, and it is thought that Queen Anne visited the town for the same purpose.

By the reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837, ‘a pall of prudery lay over nineteenth century England’; methods of contraception were little known, or spoken about, and were considered ‘not respectable’. Although printed adverts for condoms did not appear until the early years of Edward VII’s reign – whether he availed himself of them during his career of serial adultery is not known – their mention in the press always caused a public sensation. For eighteen days during November–December 1886, the nation was spellbound by the Campbell versus Campbell legal case. This evolved after the collapse of the marriage of Lord Colin Campbell – fifth son of George, 8th Duke of Argyll – and his wife, the former Gertrude Blood. Lord Colin accused his wife of adultery with Charles Spencer Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, General William Butler and London’s fire chief Captain Eyre Massey Shaw, and others. Lady Campbell counterclaimed.

Calling before Sir Charles Parker Butt, the trial included an examination of the Campbells’s sex life. Answering a question from lawyer Frank Lockwood, Lady Campbell admitted that contraceptives had been used during their sexual intercourse. This was because Lord Colin was thought to have syphilis. This gave rise to the public belief that contraception was in regular use among the upper classes in their adulterous relationships. Both the Campbells were exonerated at the trial. Lord Colin died in 1895 and Lady Campbell in 1911. Although her life had more to it than the promiscuity of earlier years – which earned her the title of Victorian ‘Sex Goddess’ – her court appearance added a facet or two to the history of Victorian contraception. With her brood of nine children Queen Victoria and Prince Albert seem not to have practiced contraception. Even so, Frenchman Hector France found in London’s Petticoat Lane, a vendor selling condoms bearing the portrait of Queen Victoria.

Whatever advice on contraception was given to royalty by their physicians, one royal doctor’s opinion was clear. While the Lambeth Conference of Bishops of 1920 condemned the use of ‘artificial means of restriction’, physician-extraordinary to George V, Lord Dawson of Penn, denounced the conference’s opinions in these terms:

The love envisaged by the Lambeth Conference is an invertebrate, joyless thing – not worth having. Birth control is here to stay.

The royal doctor made the headlines with his opinion of contraception, a feat not repeated since the days of Charles II.