JOHN HANSON. HE had always been there. As a newly qualified solicitor, he had worked as the ‘confidential legal adviser’ to Portsmouth’s father and mother. He had spearheaded the dowager countess’s efforts to secure Newton Fellowes’ inheritance from his uncle Henry Arthur. In July 1799, he was one of the rescue party for Portsmouth when he was abducted by Seilaz, and he led the prosecution against the valet in King’s Bench. In 1804, he acted for the Gordon brothers during their trial at the Oxford assizes. The Portsmouth family trusted him completely. They ‘laid open’ their ‘family situation’ to him, and he offered them reassurance and protection. He was the author of the 1790 and 1799 legal deeds that were designed to safeguard the family’s fortune and future. It was said ‘no business of importance’ relating to the Portsmouth family ‘was done without consulting the said John Hanson’, and ‘unlimited confidence was reposed in him by the whole family’.
He could be relied upon at moments of crisis, and he found practical solutions to emotional problems. He remained clear and level-headed when things went wrong. He went that extra mile for this family, and well beyond what his job description as a solicitor required. He knew all their secrets, and they told him of their worst fears. Byron thought of Hanson as a benevolent father figure, and as someone who cared for him at his weakest moments. To the Portsmouths, Hanson also appeared to be a man who was dedicated to the needs of their most vulnerable member.
But the events of 7 March 1814 shattered this illusion. By marrying his oldest daughter to Portsmouth without the knowledge of any of the other trustees, and most importantly his brother, Newton Fellowes, Hanson revealed himself in an entirely different light. For years he had been in the shadows, gathering information and earning trust – waiting. On Monday, 28 February, Coombe brought Portsmouth to General Norton’s house in Lincoln Inn’s Fields. Norton was absent, and the only member of the family present was the nineteen-year-old Fletcher (future 3rd Lord Grantley). For reasons that never became clear, Coombe made the fateful decision to resign his post, and to leave Portsmouth, ‘as a man would hand over a bale of goods’, to his trustees. Hanson saw his chance. Within the space of one week, he had put arrangements in place for the marriage of his daughter to Portsmouth. Far from being the kind and devoted family adviser, Hanson’s true character, as a ruthlessly ambitious man driven by greed and an overly inflated sense of his own importance, was now exposed. If Portsmouth, the man who would be subjected to a Lunacy Commission, had mastered the art of hiding his real self, then this was well within the capabilities of Hanson. But it was Hanson’s conduct towards Mary Ann that was hardest to believe. Surely no father, however great his ambitions, would sacrifice his daughter to a man like Portsmouth?1
Mary Ann had grown up knowing about Lord Portsmouth. As the eldest girl in a family of eight children, she had seen how closely her father’s career was tied to his relationship with the Portsmouth family. From modest, middle-class beginnings, he had expanded his legal practice, becoming a partner with a Mr Birch and setting up offices in Chancery Lane. He was well known within the legal profession, and held a number of government posts. In October 1794, he was appointed Receiver-General of the Land Revenue, and from 1807 he became solicitor to the Board of Stamps. But it was his income from his private clients, most notably the Portsmouths, which had the greatest impact on his family life. Even without the many legal disputes that arose because of Portsmouth’s condition, Hanson would have been kept busy, and well paid, by managing their vast estates in several English counties, and in County Wexford, Ireland. From November 1799, he also received an annual payment of £150 as Portsmouth’s trustee.
Mary Ann was ten years old when Portsmouth married Grace. Her father’s success and increasing financial confidence meant that in 1802 the family moved from Earl’s Court to Bloomsbury Square. The perks of her father’s work for the Portsmouths were not just financial, however. Farleigh House had become Urania’s dower house in her widowhood, but she had no desire to live there, preferring to be in London. For a short time Urania let the mansion to Newton Fellowes, and he and his wife Frances bought furniture from London for it in May 1802. But by 1804 Urania was looking for a new tenant as Newton and his family moved to make Eggesford in Devon their permanent home. It was offered to John Hanson. Farleigh House was a beautiful home. More manageable in size than Hurstbourne, the house had been substantially restored by Viscount Lymington, later the 1st earl of Portsmouth, in 1731. Hanson jumped at the chance, and even purchased the new furniture from Newton. Five years later, Hanson was also given the opportunity to rent the farm there, negotiating a competitive rate that was offset against his legal costs.
Mary Ann and her family found themselves pursuing a lifestyle that was more akin to their aristocratic patrons than their humble origins. Mrs Hanson and her children spent the winter months in London, but in the summer moved to Farleigh for ‘the season’. There they enjoyed entertaining their affluent Hampshire neighbours. Byron looked forward to staying at Farleigh in the September before he started Cambridge. With excitement he wrote to Hargreaves Hanson, who shared his love of shooting, that ‘I hope we shall be the cause of much destruction of the feathered Tribe, and great Amusement to Ourselves’. Such was the ease with which the Hanson family fitted into the county set, a later biographer of Byron assumed that Farleigh House was owned by them. John Hanson saw himself as a country gentleman whose residence in the country as well as in the town was a measure of his success. In later years, when he commissioned a portrait of himself, the country scene depicted through the window behind him may well have been from Farleigh. If the man standing in the book-lined office was the John Hanson of Chancery Lane, the place shown through the window was where he believed he was destined.2
Hanson was proud, but he wanted more. When Portsmouth was left a widower in November 1813, and then arrived in London on 28 February, he could see a way in which through the marriage of his daughter he could achieve much more than just a resemblance to an aristocratic family. As a solicitor, he knew what legal documents were needed for a marriage, but he left everything to the weekend before the marriage on the Monday morning. Everything was done in haste, and, in hindsight, with a suspicious irregularity. First there was the marriage settlement. Oliver Turner, a law stationer on Chancery Lane, never before employed by Hanson, started receiving parts of the settlement to copy on Saturday. In the forty years of his working life, Turner had never seen a deed so full of blanks. He delivered it back to Hanson on Sunday. The original was not produced at Portsmouth’s trials (the Hansons refused to surrender it), but it was said to have given Mary Ann one thousand pounds a year for the rest of her life, even if she outlived Portsmouth; John Hanson and Lord Byron the same annual sum; and, within eighteen months of the marriage, ten thousand pounds plus an annual payment of one thousand pounds until the total reached thirty thousand pounds to Byron and Charles Hanson.
On Sunday, Charles Hanson was sent by his father to a clerk of a lawyer in Doctors’ Commons, the church court that administered marriages. He failed to get a marriage licence there and then, but persuaded the clerk to come to Bloomsbury Square with the necessary documentation the following morning. So, when Byron arrived at the Hansons’ home around nine o’clock on Monday, 7 March, there was work to be done. If Byron knew of how he would benefit from the marriage settlement, his role in the wedding no longer looks so altruistic. But, although Byron witnessed the signing of both the settlement and the licence, there was foul play afoot. Both John and Charles Hanson planned to falsify the documents. The group assembled in the drawing room to witness the necessary signatures and oaths was certainly an odd one, deliberately so. It included John Dell, a watch-maker, who only vaguely knew Charles Hanson as a customer. Dell made the audience at the Commission laugh with his remark that ‘there was nothing in the affair which required the aid of an eminent watch-maker; there was no stop-watch. Mr Hanson did not seem to require winding up.’3
Jokes aside, John Hanson had every reason to feel wound up and tense that morning. Although he had got everything in place for the wedding, the behaviour of his daughter and her husband-to-be was difficult to predict. At twenty-three years old, nobody thought Mary Ann was attractive. ‘She was not pretty,’ Byron wrote, perhaps offended that others thought he had an affair with her. The best that a guest at the dinner held by Hanson the evening after the wedding could say was that Mary Ann was a ‘well-informed person; not, as I think, of a good figure; very genteel in her manners, and of uniform decorum’. He may as well have said nice, but ordinary.
Mary Ann was head-strong; her future life with Portsmouth would prove that. She might have enjoyed her stays at Farleigh House, but that did not mean she wanted to become a countess by marrying the earl of Portsmouth. Indeed, her marriage to Portsmouth took so many by surprise that questions were raised about how willing she was to become his wife. The first that Elizabeth James, an old friend of Mrs Hanson, knew of the wedding was when she received some wedding cake and a card announcing their marriage. Meeting Portsmouth at a concert given by Mr Hanson in Bloomsbury Square soon afterwards, ‘she did not find him so weak a man as from previous reports she had been led to believe’. Still, she felt compelled to address the rumours that Mary Ann had been forced into the marriage. She found a moment in a quiet corner to ask her if it was true, but Mary Ann denied anything of the sort. Similarly, although the Hanson’s chambermaid Elizabeth Wiseman knew nothing of Mary Ann’s wedding until it was over, she had not heard that Mary Ann ‘was with great difficulty prevailed upon by her father’, or that she did not give her consent ‘until very late in the night previous to the said marriage taking place’.
If Mary Ann was up late on Sunday, 6 March, then by the next morning she wanted nothing to do with the wedding arrangements. She was not present in the drawing room when the documents sealing her future were being signed, and she later claimed ignorance of their contents. To Portsmouth, she seemed a reluctant bride. ‘Old Hanson had not got her in the humour to have me,’ Portsmouth told his coachman the day later. In the future most people focused upon whether her husband had been tricked into the marriage, with far less attention given to Mary Ann’s feelings. It took Byron, in private correspondence to Hobhouse, to remark about the wedding, ‘It struck me as so little an entrapment for Ld. P. that I used to wonder whether the Girl would have him – and not whether he would take the Girl.’ For what young girl would want to marry a man more than twice her age, and who was notorious for being ‘weak-minded’? Were the riches that Portsmouth offered enough?
Hanson knew that Portsmouth would also need careful handling if he was to achieve his goal. At first he tried the charm offensive, inviting Portsmouth to Bloomsbury Square numerous times in the week before the wedding. Portsmouth was there so often that gossip below stairs in the Hanson household was that he was intending to marry one of the Hanson girls, although nobody seriously thought it was going to happen.
If the Hanson servants did not know a marriage was afoot, neither did Portsmouth. Telling Portsmouth beforehand ran the risk that he would talk, and news of Hanson’s plans would reach the other trustees. But not telling Portsmouth meant that he did not look or behave like a husband-to-be. After the marriage, Portsmouth told all the people he knew best, which in his case were his servants and workers, that, even on the morning of Monday, 7 March, he did not know that he was going to get married that day. Joseph Head dressed him. Portsmouth did not have a clean shirt, and wore a black coat and waistcoat, breeches, and hessian boots. His hat still had the mourning band on it to mark the death of his wife, Grace. He had not shaved. As he left, he told his servants that he was invited to breakfast at the Hanson’s house in Bloomsbury Square.
Witnesses thought Portsmouth was perfectly calm during the signing of the marriage documents. He read them through, paid attention as oaths were administered, and gave his signature without any problem. But whether Portsmouth understood what was happening was another matter. In some ways, he seemed unaware of the importance of the occasion, repeatedly asking the Doctors’ Commons’ clerk if he had heard news of his friend Mr Farquahar.
It may only have been after ten o’clock, when Charles Hanson was sent to the church to tell the clerk to prepare for a wedding, that John launched his offensive. As Portsmouth later told a gardener in the stables at Hurstbourne, Hanson said that he must marry his daughter, ‘otherwise I never should have a wife, and my brother would take me into Devonshire and shut me up’. Newton Fellowes was planning to confine him in a private madhouse owned by Mr Clay, Hanson warned.
Hanson knew exactly how to scare Portsmouth. He could have been aware that Urania had threatened to lock her son up, and over the years she may have even discussed the possibility with Hanson. Hanson was certainly privy to the family secrets surrounding the confinement of both Portsmouth’s aunt Dorothea, who was still confined in Fisher House, and his cousins, Loudoun and Catherine Gordon. As Newton Fellowes was a fellow trustee, and because he thought his brother held no affection for him, Portsmouth was all too willing to believe that Hanson had gained some advance knowledge of his brother’s plans for him. He was left terrified. Marriage beckoned as an attractive escape route.
Hanson had played his trump card, and it worked. Portsmouth agreed to marry one of his daughters, but asked if he could marry Laura, the ‘pretty one’. Hanson would not accept, and said that ‘the eldest was the one he had looked out for me’. The bully Hanson pushed Portsmouth out of the house, and along the passage to meet Byron for their walk to the church.4
In the future legal trials of Portsmouth, people had to decide whether his marriage to Mary Ann was valid. To be so, there had to be evidence that both bride and groom gave their consent freely. It also had to be demonstrated that Portsmouth understood what he was saying as he made his promises at the altar, and that he had the mental ability to give his consent. Insanity took away the right to enter into any kind of contract. This is why the detail of events on the wedding day was so critical. It even meant that a key witness like the parish clerk, John Harrison, was examined twice by the church courts to ensure he had got his story right.
Harrison was adamant that Portsmouth was sane on 7 March 1814. Portsmouth was ‘perfectly rational and sensible’, and he saw no evidence of ‘coercion or restraint’. ‘I saw no appearance of entrapment or compulsion,’ Byron insisted to Hobhouse. Marriage arranged over the course of a week, within four months of the death of a first wife, to a woman twenty-four years younger and of nowhere near the same social status might be surprising, but it was no indicator of insanity. Indeed, that Portsmouth did not tell his family of his plans was even construed as ‘strong proof of soundness of mind’. In the past, Portsmouth felt his family ‘had very much interfered in his affairs’, and so he was ‘desirous of keeping them in the dark’. He was in control now, and could make decisions for himself. John Hanson did not force Portsmouth or his daughter to get married. ‘It would have been an act of insanity in Mr Hanson to have married his daughter to a lunatic,’ it was argued a year later. No father was so cruel.
In March 1814, eyebrows might have been raised about the marriage of Lord Portsmouth to his solicitor’s daughter, but for the moment only the domestic servants, gardeners, and coachmen whom Portsmouth had befriended had any indication that its arrangement hid sinister intentions. Portsmouth had been married before, and there was no reason to believe that this marriage would not work. The success of this marriage could not be judged on just its beginnings.
As for Mary Ann, was she simply a pawn for her father’s ambitions? ‘This unfortunate and devoted girl was dragged on by her own family to lend herself to this project of fraudulent and cruel iniquity,’ the lawyer Stephen Lushington argued in Portsmouth’s trials. Lushington’s emotional speech caught the attention of reporters and was printed in the newspapers. Mary Ann was ‘the victim of the wicked designs of her own family,’ he said, ‘whose parental and family duties to her, should have preserved and protected her from entering upon the fatal paths into which they compelled her to venture’. Let down by her family, she was pushed into a marriage she did not want, and with a man she did not desire. Lushington knew well enough how to win public support. Arranged marriages might be tolerated, but forced unions filled everyone with horror.
Yet, when stories were told of the marriage that followed 7 March, Mary Ann’s status as a victim looked less certain. In the space of a couple of days Byron already saw a change in Mary Ann. From being the young girl he once knew, crowded out by her seven brothers and sisters, and perhaps overshadowed by her prettier younger sister, she had been transformed into a countess. Marriage brought her a new confidence, an opportunity to assert herself, and be herself. Even a father like John Hanson could not determine the kind of wife she would be.5