Mary Anne Clarke
As we have seen, the Duke of York was very fond of his wife, and she of him, and part of his domestic world consisted of their home at Oatlands, where he would be from time to time when not involved in his military duties, or at their London house. It was known, however, that the duchess was not able to bear children, so the duke was deprived of the pleasures and responsibilities of bringing up a family and there was nothing in this regard to bind them closer together. Frederica was not socially ambitious, having no desire to cut a figure on the London scene or to be influential in politics. She was content, in the main, to live quietly at Oatlands, surrounded by an alarming number of pet dogs, to dispense charity in the locality, and to attend Weybridge church on Sundays with her husband.
In the world in which the duke had been brought up, it was no great crime for a prominent member of society to keep a mistress, as long as this was done with some discretion. All Frederick’s brothers had mistresses, as did many members of the aristocracy: indeed, one of the few exceptions to this general state of affairs was the king himself. Frederick had a strong sexual drive and experienced little difficulty in finding women to suit his tastes. In 1803 he was introduced to Mrs Mary Anne Clarke and fell seriously in love. She was about twenty-seven, undoubtedly pretty and vivacious but also very clever, witty, ambitious and manipulative. The daughter of a journeyman printer, she received a respectable education for two years and then became involved with Joseph Clarke, a stonemason, with whom she had two children, George and Ellen. They were married, but soon separated, although without a divorce. Claiming to be a widow, she became an actress and ‘courtesan’, rising gradually through the social ranks with her clients until she hit the jackpot with the Duke of York.
By 1804 Frederick had provided for her use a house in Gloucester Place, off Portman Square, and he granted her £1,000 a year so that she could live there in considerable style, give parties and entertainments and keep her bed ready for him. Not content with the two carriages, eight horses, butler, postilion, coachman, groom, chef, gardener and two footmen she enjoyed there, she also persuaded Frederick to rent her a house near Weybridge so that they could even be together when he was supposed to be at Oatlands over the weekend. One day she made the tactical error of attending church when the duke and duchess were also at the service. The duchess said nothing, but wrote to Pitt (prime minister at the time) saying that he must have a word with her husband and make sure such a thing did not happen again.1
In fact, York’s infatuation with Mary Anne lasted for only about two and a half years. He began to suspect, rightly enough, that she was abusing his trust and he was alarmed by her reckless extravagance and constant demands for more money. In 1805 a tradesman threatened to sue Mary Anne for debt and call the duke as a witness, so that he was forced to bail her out. Worse still, in the autumn of 1806 Mary Anne’s husband, Joseph Clarke, emerged from the shadows and threatened to sue the duke, claiming damages from him on the grounds of adultery. As Mary Anne had said that she was a widow, this came as a considerable shock and embarrassment.
York’s loyal secretary William Adam was influential in persuading the duke that Mary Anne was a danger and with some reluctance he authorized Adam to tell her that their relationship was at an end. Moreover, Frederick’s interest by then had begun to shift to Mrs Carey, who lived in Fulham. This was widely known, because the caricaturist Charles Williams produced a drawing which he called ‘The Rival Queans [sic] – or a scene in the Beggar’s Opera’, which shows Mary Anne and Mrs Carey jealously ranting at each other, separated only by Frederick, who is saying, with his hands over his ears, ‘Zounds, the thunder of Valenciennes was music to this!’2
In May 1806 Mary Anne was informed by William Adam that her relationship with the duke was over, that she was required to leave her houses and that she would be paid £400 a year. In shock, she maintained that this was nothing like enough to meet the debts she had run up and she felt wronged and aggrieved, to put it mildly. A less skilful and manipulative woman might have melted into obscurity but Mary Anne plotted revenge. She became the lover of William Dowler, an official in the commissariat, and in June 1808, when the duke discontinued payments on the grounds that she was being insufficiently discreet, she blackmailed him by threatening to publish their love letters if she did not receive a far more generous ‘pension’.
This increasingly public animosity between the duke and his former mistress was steadily developed by a small but determined group of men into a plot to discredit him, and through him, the government. In 1806 Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville, had been impeached in the House of Lords for alleged financial misdemeanours when he held the office of treasurer of the admiralty between 1782 and 1800. Although he was acquitted, his reputation was seriously discredited. His case showed that it was possible to bring down one of the most powerful politicians in Britain, despite his close friendship with William Pitt. The Duke of York might be a royal prince, but he held a public office and he was not beyond the reach of the law.
One of the ‘plotters’ was Captain Dodd, secretary to Frederick’s brother, the Duke of Kent. Kent was also a professional soldier, but an unsatisfactory one because of his excessive attention to matters of discipline, which tended to cause unrest wherever he held command. In 1803 he was recalled by York from his post as Governor of Gibraltar, where he almost caused a mutiny. York had never been keen to advance the professional career of his brother because he was aware of his weaknesses, and Kent resented this. However, Kent was a field marshal and it seemed to Dodd (who was clearly daydreaming) that if the Duke of York could be toppled, his master would have a good chance of becoming commander-in-chief himself.
Two more malcontents were Pierre McCallum, who had unsuccessfully appealed to York against what he considered unjust treatment from General Picton when he was serving in Santo Domingo, and Captain Glennie, who had a grudge against the entire military establishment as a consequence of being dismissed (although not by York) from the Royal Artillery. These three men knew each other and, over time, hatched their plot. They needed someone with political influence and recruited Colonel Gwyllym Lloyd Wardle, a retired militia officer from Mold in North Wales, who had a rich wife and who had become MP for Okehampton in 1807. He was a member of the radical opposition, led by Sir Francis Burdett and Samuel Whitbread, who had instigated the impeachment of Melville. Despite being a recently elected backbencher, Wardle had already gained some prominence by alleging corruption in the granting of army clothing contracts, which were part of the Duke of York’s responsibilities. His general motive was political: if the commander-in-chief were to be disgraced, the government which supported him might well fall also.3
These four men proposed to Mary Anne Clarke that she should help them bring down the duke by making public the fact that, while she was his mistress, she took money from officers who wanted military promotion. There is no doubt that she did this and that the amounts were considerable. Naturally, she intimated to the men concerned that her influence with the duke was so great that any wish of hers would be granted. In return for admitting these activities, the conspirators promised that she would receive £100 as a down payment, and be moved to a house in Westbourne Place until a new house was furnished for her. Then the four men took Mary Anne on what was ostensibly a four-day inspection of the south coast Martello tower defences, during which time she told them as much incriminating detail as she could remember.
On 20 January 1809 Colonel Wardle announced in the Commons that he intended to propose a motion about the conduct of the Duke of York and on the 27th he formally called for a committee of investigation into a number of detailed charges against him. At this point Spencer Perceval, the chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, made a disastrous decision. He was so convinced that the charges against the duke would quickly be considered ludicrous that he decided they would be heard not in private by a board of inquiry, but in the most public way possible, by a Committee of the Whole House. Under this procedure the House of Commons switched from being a legislative body to its other function as a high court of law. The rules of an ordinary law court did not apply: the accused was neither present nor represented, and evidence was not taken on oath.
The detailed charges that Wardle put before the House were that a Captain Tonyn had paid Mrs Clarke to be promoted major, that she had taken money ‘to hasten the exchange of lieutenant-colonels Brooke and Knight’, that a Major Shaw had paid to be made barrack-master at the Cape of Good Hope, and that as he only paid half the fee she asked, he was placed on half-pay. Furthermore she obtained for a Colonel French the right to raise a levy of troops in Ireland and secured rapid promotion to the rank of captain for one Malling, who had been merely a clerk in the office of an army agent. Mrs Clarke also, allegedly, acquired a commission for her footman, Samuel Carter. The duke must have known about all these matters, argued Wardle, so he was guilty of corruption.4
On 27 January Sir Arthur Wellesley told the House of Commons that in his experience the records of army promotions were meticulously kept in the commander-in-chief’s office, ‘so that all these transactions may be completely traced through their history’. As to the case of the barrack-master, he said, ‘such removals are circumstances of common occurrence’. Addressing the Speaker, he concluded:
There is still, Sir, one topic upon which I would feel myself much to blame if I did not now say a few words. I allude, Sir, to the state of the army which I had the honour to have under my command last summer. I am bound to declare, Sir, that never was there an army in a better state, so far as its condition depended upon the care and exertion of the Commander-in-Chief. Nay, Sir, I must go further because I must say that, if the army had not performed the service for which it was destined, the blame would not have rested with the Commander-in-Chief but with myself; and whatever enthusiasm they felt in the execution of that service was the result of the example set, and the discipline established, by the illustrious personage at the head of the army.5
The House began to listen to the evidence in this case on 1 February and the hearings lasted for seven weeks, with members often sitting well into the early hours, sometimes all night. Moreover, the evidence and arguments for and against were widely circulated in newspapers and pamphlets so that the case escalated to the status of a national scandal, obsessing not only the literate and influential classes but also the wider public. Too many mistakes, it was widely felt, had recently been made by the authorities. Back in 1806 the trial of Melville had dealt with alleged corruption in the administration of the navy; in January 1808 General Whitelocke had been court-martialled and cashiered for surrendering his British force after a failed attempt to capture Buenos Aires; the Convention of Cintra had seemed to indicate incompetence and inefficiency in the military high command; and now the commander-in-chief himself was accused of selling commissions. And all this at a time when the war was going extremely badly, General Moore had been killed at Corunna, and British forces had been driven from the Peninsula.
For the first three weeks the House laboriously sifted through the evidence, calling many witnesses, including Mary Anne, who appeared twelve times. With her blue gown, striking looks and coquettish manner, she became a star attraction. Alfred Burne describes her as ‘undoubtedly one of the cleverest courtesans of her century and among the most remarkable women of her generation’, noting that she had ‘gained an astonishing hold on members by her air of assurance, her flashing wit, her ready retort, and her pert and saucy manner’. Indeed, the contemporary Annual Register considered that she ‘carried her ease, gaiety and pleasantry to a degree of pertness which was very reprehensible’. However, many members were gradually impressed by what she had to say, while to the mob outside she became a heroine.6
At first it seemed clear that, as far as Wardle’s initial charges were concerned, they could be explained legitimately and there was no evidence in these instances that Mary Anne had taken money from any of the men concerned. However, as the case proceeded, a certain Captain Sandon produced forty-one letters from Mary Anne in which she mentioned a number of men who were looking for promotion and gave the impression that she could influence the duke in their favour. Only one letter actually incriminated the duke because it seemed to be written by him to Mary Anne, concerning Captain Tonyn; it read: ‘I have just received your note, and Tonyn’s business shall remain as it is – God bless you.’ Hearing of this letter, the duke went immediately, even though it was late at night, to the house of his military secretary Colonel Gordon, and said to him indignantly ‘This is most extraordinary: it must be a forgery,’ and that remained his consistent view about the note, repeatedly stated. However, popular opinion was not disposed to believe him.7
Then Miss Taylor, a friend of Mary Anne, claimed that she had been present at dinner when Mary Anne and the duke discussed a Colonel French, while a letter from the duke to Mary Anne stated:
[General] Clavering is mistaken in thinking that any new regiments are to be raised; it is not intended; only second battalions to the existing corps; you had better therefore tell him so and that you were sure there would be no use in applying for him.8
Mary Anne’s butler later gave his opinion that Miss Taylor had never dined with her and the duke, while the Clavering letter was no proof of corruption, only that the duke did discuss military personnel with his mistress, as well as some of his military activities – although there was no harm in that. He told her in the same letter, for instance, written from Sandgate in August 1804, early on in their affair, that:
Nothing could be more satisfactory than the tour I have made, and the state in which I have found everything. The whole of the day before yesterday was employed in visiting the works at Dover; reviewing the troops there, and examining the coast as far as this place. From Folkestone I had a very good view of those of the French camp. Yesterday I reviewed the camp here, and afterwards the 14th Light Dragoons, who are certainly in very fine order; and from thence proceeded to Brabourne Lees to see four regiments of militia, which altogether took me up near thirteen hours. I am now setting off immediately to ride along the coast to Hastings, reviewing the different corps as I pass, which will take me at least as long. Adieu, therefore, my sweetest, Dearest Love, till the day after to-morrow, and be assured that to my last hour I shall ever remain, Yours and Yours alone.
Unfortunately, other parts of this letter contained enthusiastically amorous passages that seemed laughable and embarrassing when read aloud to the House of Commons, as intimate communications between lovers are bound to do:
How can I sufficiently express to my Darling Love my thanks for her dear, dear, letter or the delight which the assurances of her love give me? Oh, My Angel! Do me justice and be convinced that there never was a woman so adored as you are. Every day, every hour, convinces me more and more that my whole happiness depends upon you alone. What a time it appears to be since we parted, and with what impatience do I look forward to the day after tomorrow: there are still, however, two whole nights before I shall clasp my darling in my arms! …9
Another letter, written a year later, was equally full of amorous declarations:
How can I sufficiently express to my Sweetheart, my Darling Love, the delight which her dear, her pretty letter gave me, or how much I feel all the kind things she says to me in it? Millions and millions of thanks for it, My Angel, and be assured that my heart is fully sensible of your affection, and that upon it alone its whole happiness depends … What a time it appears to me already, My Darling, since we parted. How impatiently I look forward to next Wednesday night!10
These letters did not make a good impression and public hostility to the duke grew stronger. Many MPs, at first quite sure of his innocence, began to wonder. Sir Arthur Wellesley, who witnessed the trial from his seat as an MP and (as chief secretary for Ireland) a member of the government, was questioned at the end of this period of the trial and loyally defended the duke. He told the House:
I know that since His Royal Highness has had command of the army, the regulations framed by him for managing the promotion of the army have been strictly adhered to, and that the mode in which the promotion is conducted has given general satisfaction … the officers are improved in knowledge; that the staff of the army is much better than it was … that the system of subordination among the officers in the army is better than it was … and everything that relates to the military discipline of the soldiers and the military efficiency of the army has been greatly improved since His Royal Highness was appointed Commander-in-Chief…. The improvements to which I have adverted, have been owing to the regulations of His Royal Highness and to his personal superintendence and his personal exertions over the general officers and others who were to see those regulations carried into execution.11
Wellesley had been ‘positively certain’ that the duke was innocent of any corruption when the trial began and felt common cause with him when Mary Anne even hinted that Sir Arthur himself was involved in improper conduct (he certainly had a mistress at the time). As effigies of York were burnt by mobs in Suffolk and Yorkshire, Wellesley told the Duke of Richmond that this was because country people were shocked about the revelations concerning his private life. Gradually, however, he came to the conclusion that York would have to go or he would pull the government down with him. It was unlikely, he thought, that York did not at least suspect what was going on, and he wondered whether ‘a Prince of the Blood, who has manifested so much weakness as he has, and has led such a life (for that is material in these days), is a proper person to be entrusted with the duties of a responsible office’. There was more than a touch of hypocrisy here: Wellesley, like York, had a wife and many mistresses, and his Kitty was neglected far more than York’s Frederica.12
Aware that the tide was running against him, York wrote a formal letter the day after the completion of the taking of evidence on 22 February to Spencer Perceval, the Speaker of the House, in which he said:
With respect to any alleged offences connected with the discharge of my official duties, I do, in the most solemn manner, on my honour as a Prince, distinctly assert my innocence, not only by denying all corrupt participation in any of the infamous transactions which have appeared in evidence at the bar of the House of Commons, or any connivance at their existence, but also the slightest knowledge or suspicion that they existed at all.13
After this, the House turned its attention to the war once more, only to return on 8 March to debate the evidence in the Clarke case, one of the longest debates ever known in the Commons. Spencer Perceval opened with a powerful speech in defence of the duke, which he adjourned at 3.30 am and completed the next day. The second defence came from Francis Burton, a blind judge noted for his brilliant grasp of details and exposition, who damned Mary Clarke’s evidence as a tissue of lies, citing at least twenty-eight falsehoods. Finally there came an outstandingly forensic speech by the Irish lawyer and MP John Wilson Croker, who showed convincingly that, despite Mary Anne’s claims that she had secured the appointment of many a suitor, the evidence did not bear this out. Opposing speeches, mostly falling back on ‘sweeping assertions and general abuse’, came from Samuel Whitbread (the leader of the opposition), William Wilberforce, Lord Folkestone and the well-known radical, Sir Francis Burdett.
The debate that began on Thursday, 16 March dragged on until 6.30 am the following morning before at last a division was taken on Wardle’s motion, which stated that a number of specified abuses could not have existed ‘without the knowledge of the Commander-in-Chief’, and that ‘the Duke of York ought to be deprived of the command of the army’. The motion was lost by 241 votes, 123 for and 364 against. As the wording of this motion did not mention the duke’s possible corruption through knowledge of Mary Anne’s activities, another motion was proposed that afternoon which declared ‘that there were grounds from the evidence at the bar to charge HRH with a knowledge of these practices, with connivance at them, and consequently with corruption’. This was defeated by 334 votes to 135, a reduced majority of 199. Spencer Perceval then proposed a third motion, that there were no grounds on which to charge the duke with personal corruption or connivance, but this was passed by 278 to 196, a majority of only 82. Perceval managed to postpone a further motion, calling upon the duke to resign, from that Friday to the following Monday, and the next day, Saturday, 18 March, the duke resigned of his own accord.
In very few nations at this time would a favourite son of the king, third in line to the throne, who had proved himself without question a very able military administrator, have been forced into this position as the result of a parliamentary trial in which the evidence had been far from conclusive. It would have been unthinkable, for instance, in Russia, Prussia, Austria and even in post-revolutionary Napoleonic France, by now more or less a dictatorship. In that sense, the Clarke affair is a fine testimony to the extent to which Great Britain was truly a constitutional monarchy and not far from being a democracy. Addressing the question of why so many voted against the duke, Alfred Burne came to this conclusion:
United in the same lobby were members of many different factions. There were Jacobins and Republicans, who saw in this case a grand opportunity to aim a blow at the throne. There were the less extreme partisans of the Opposition, who, when they saw the Government ranged on one side, instinctively favoured the other. There were persons of the strong Puritan strain who felt they were striking a blow for morality. There were those whose legal faculties were not strongly developed and who were swayed by sentiment and the strong effect of a mass of apparently incriminating evidence, in the absence of the duke’s own testimony. Finally, there were those who were frankly swayed by the popular clamour outside, and either by fear or by favour of the mob voted in the way that they hoped would render them popular with that mob – as it did.14
With the resignation of the duke, who was replaced by General Sir David Dundas, Colonel Wardle became a national hero, the object of florid expressions of thanks and adulation from municipal authorities and social organizations across the entire country. On 19 June he made a three-hour speech in the Commons demanding reforms in the military administration, which the government felt obliged to accept. The City of London voted him its freedom, presented in a silver box worth a hundred guineas, noting that ‘Colonel Wardle is deserving the thanks of the country for his manly and independent conduct in having boldly dared single-handed to attack the Hydra of corruption, and to assail her even in her very den.’ A book about his achievements was soon published, claiming that he had been ‘instrumental in obtaining a new era in British politics’. Mary Anne, meanwhile, became the toast of London.15 She soon announced that her memoirs were about to be published, and because of their damaging nature, she was able to procure a settlement by which in return for her rights to the memoirs and any letters concerning the Duke of York in her possession, she would receive a cash payment of £7,000, as well as the restoration of her £400 annuity. She duly handed over all the letters (so she claimed) and 18,000 copies of her memoirs were burned.16
However, this bizarre story had an even more remarkable end. His main aim having been achieved, Wardle made the serious error of sidelining Mary Anne and conveniently forgot his promise to pay for the furnishings of her new house. An upholsterer named Francis Wright sued him for payment and Mary Anne appeared as a witness when the case was tried before the lord chief justice, Lord Ellenborough, on 3 July 1809. The prosecutor was the attorney-general, which signified the government’s determination to strike back at Wardle, and he lost the case and had to pay £1,300 in damages. Worse still, for him, was the fact that during the trial Mary Anne got her own back by telling the whole story of how Wardle and his associates had bribed her to incriminate the Duke of York, whom she now cast in a more favourable light.
The day after this trial Wardle wrote a piece entitled ‘To the people of the United Kingdom’, which claimed that he had lost the case because of lies told by the witnesses and he made arrangements to sue Mary Anne, Francis Wright and others for ‘conspiracy’. Lord Ellenborough heard this case in December 1809 but the jury found against Wardle after Ellenborough stated that he had undoubtedly used bribery. These two cases produced a new sensation, which provoked articles and pamphlets from the supporters of both sides. In 1810 Mary Anne herself, who could write in a talented journalistic style, produced a thoroughly libellous work entitled The Rival Princes, in which she suggested that the plot had originated in the jealous mind of Frederick’s brother the Duke of Kent, abetted by Wardle. She also stated, very frankly, that she would not have put herself through the huge strain of the Westminster trial and public exposure merely for the sake of what she described as ‘a pure patriotic zeal to serve the public’. She did it for the promised financial benefits, she wrote, and she had been swindled out of these.
Wardle’s reputation and his finances were both ruined by the two verdicts against him. He was not re-elected as an MP in 1812 and to avoid his creditors he left for the continent and lived in Florence, where he died in 1833. Mary Anne continued to write libellous pamphlets and articles but she came seriously unstuck in the summer of 1813 when she was successfully sued for libel by the youthful and ambitious William Fitzgerald, a lord of the treasury and chancellor of the Irish exchequer. In an open letter she had written: ‘I am anxious in the first place to caution the Irish nation in particular against the intrigues of one of the most vicious and profligate of men, who at present most mysteriously presides over the finances of that nation …’ The letter continued in this manner for many pages, accusing Fitzgerald of various improprieties, such as seducing the wife of a friend. These were falsehoods inspired by Mary Anne’s desire for revenge against the Fitzgeralds, who had destroyed a letter from the Duke of York, which, she alleged, had promised a commission for her son George.
When Fitzgerald sued for libel, she could only plead guilty and engaged the services of the able lawyer Henry Brougham to try to secure a light sentence. In fact, she was sentenced to nine months in the Marshalsea Prison for London debtors, where, according to a complaint she sent to Samuel Whitbread, she was badly treated. She claimed that she was put in a cell nine feet square with a small barricaded window and that she was denied fresh air and exercise, becoming seriously ill as a result. However, while she was in prison her son George reached his sixteenth birthday and on 17 March 1814 he received a commission ‘without purchase’ as a cornet in the 17th Lancers. This could not have happened without the express permission of the Duke of York, by then restored as commander-in-chief.17
Mary Anne was released in November 1814 and she left the country in disgrace to live in Paris with her daughter Ellen. She was thirty-eight years old and lived many years longer, dying in Boulogne in 1852. During her Paris years she was visited by a few loyal English friends, one of whom, Lord Queensbury, found that her manners were remarkable, that she still retained traces of her past beauty in old age, was still lively, sprightly and full of fun and still telling scandalous stories about the royal family.18 Her son George enjoyed a respectable career in the army, while her daughter Ellen, no great beauty, in due course married a minor French nobleman and somewhat eccentric inventor called du Maurier. Their son was George du Maurier (1834–1896), a famous cartoonist and illustrator for Punch and the author of a popular novel, Trilby, which gave its name to the hat and became one of the first ‘best-sellers’. His son was Sir Gerald du Maurier (1873–1934), a famous actor and theatre manager in his day, and his daughters were Angela (1904–2002) and Dame Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989), both well-known novelists. The latter was fascinated by Mary Anne and set out to discover whether there was any foundation in the du Maurier rumour that Ellen was in fact the daughter of the Duke of York, and that royal blood flowed in the du Maurier veins. She wrote an account of her family’s history in 1934 and a book entitled Mary Anne in 1954, both of which were essentially historical novels. However, neither in real life nor in fiction did she ever claim descent from the Duke of York.