The official coronation of George IV, postponed from the previous year because of the Queen’s trial, took place on 19 July 1821 with as much pomp and fanfare as his courtiers, including Sir Thomas, could contrive. After the King’s disastrous attempt to divorce his wife, he hoped to erase the embarrassment and improve his public image, as historian Steven Parissien has observed, ‘by casting himself as the embodiment and inspiration of a newly-confident and militarily-successful nation’. He had always had a reluctant admiration for and sense of rivalry with his old foe Bonaparte, ‘and intended to outshine Napoleon’s imperial coronation of 1804’.1 A tailor was even sent to Paris to measure the former emperor’s robes, to ensure that George’s were longer and more splendid.
On the great day, Westminster Abbey was decked out with all the trappings of Tudor pageantry. But the grandeur of the occasion was somewhat marred by Queen Caroline’s attempt to gatecrash it. (Caroline actually had a ticket of entry, ‘sent to her by the Duke of Wellington, who seems to have been struck with sympathy for her predicament’.2) A public riot had been anticipated if she was not crowned as well, so guards had been placed at each door of the Abbey to bar her entrance. However, it was said that ‘the sight of her on foot, jostled by the rabble, frantically but vainly rushing from door to door, evoked nothing but catcalls from the spectators’.3 Blocked at every entrance, by the Lord High Chamberlain’s orders, she left in her carriage, admitting defeat. Queen Caroline was said to be ‘destroyed’ by her public humiliation. Her former counsel at her trial, Henry Brougham, thought she had ‘lost incalculably’ for ‘getting out of her carriage and tramping about’.4 Her health deteriorated from that time.
After the five-hour ceremony, the 312 invited guests proceeded to Westminster Hall for a sumptuous banquet. Continuing the Tudor theme, trumpets announced a young man on horseback in Elizabethan armour. He rode his horse between the tables, but unfortunately the horse ‘defecated dramatically’.5 The Duke of Wellington was naturally more stylish; his friend Mrs Arbuthnot noted how he ‘performed to perfection his duty as High Constable, riding a white Arabian horse up to the King’s table and backing out again. Lord Anglesey said he was “the only man in England who can back his horse down Westminster Hall”.’6
The King had been crowned at last, with enormous pageantry and expense, never to be attempted by succeeding monarchs. After the banquet, even the gold plate and silver cutlery were plundered by drunken guests.
Since the brutal Battle of the Boyne of William of Orange in 1690, no British monarch had dared visit his dominion of Ireland. But George IV had always professed himself to be ‘Irish at heart’ and wished to attempt a conciliation of the fractious religious and political differences. On 6 August, just over a fortnight after the coronation, he boarded the royal yacht at Portsmouth for his state visit to Ireland.7
Given that the King was a covert admirer of Napoleon, it was a strange coincidence that his yacht passed the storeship Camel, bringing Bonaparte’s closest companions to England after their long sojourn on St Helena. John Bull magazine reported: ‘When the Royal yacht passed through Spithead, immediately on coming abreast of the Camel store-ship (on board of which were the suite of the late Ex-Emperor Napoleon) His Majesty, with the usual urbanity that ever marks his noble character, condescendingly sent Sir William Keppel, and others of his suite, on board, to inquire after the health of Madame Bertrand and her family, as also the health of others, the attendants of Napoleon. They fully appreciated the high honor done them.’8
The royal yacht put in at Holyhead in north Wales, where a messenger brought the King news of the Queen’s sudden death. Caroline had not fulfilled her threat to ‘live some years to plague him’ and George did not pretend dismay. But he took the advice of the Home Secretary and interrupted his journey, staying a few days at Lord Anglesey’s house as a token of bereavement. He wrote to Sir William Knighton—with whom he had become confidential, still cool with Tyrwhitt over the issue of the Queen’s trial—that ‘the Hand of God had bestowed a blessing’ upon him.9
Napoleon’s former companions were obliged to disembark at the naval base at Portsmouth, but were greeted by onlookers with enthusiasm and interest. According to Marchand, ‘the population was curious to see men who had remained faithful in misfortune’. The customs officials were respectful in examining Napoleon’s relics, his ‘silver, legacies and uniforms’.10
The Bertrands and Montholon went to London, taking rooms in Brunet’s Hotel, Leicester Square. They were overwhelmed by visitors wishing to show their support and learn of Napoleon’s last days. No doubt the Balcombes were anxious to see their old friends, but travel was expensive, they were financially distressed, and they must have feared official ire. There would have been little time anyway, for within the fortnight the French were provided with passports by their embassy in London and on 16 August sailed for their homeland at last.
Three weeks earlier, on 25 July, Sir Hudson Lowe and his suite had left St Helena on the Dunira. Lowe took with him a great deal of furniture, including many pieces from Longwood ‘bought for a derisory sum’, and a vast hoard of documents. He wrote to Henry Goulburn before sailing, requesting special treatment by customs on his arrival, to avoid his boxes ‘being broken open & examined’.11
On 14 November, Lowe had the gratification of being presented to King George IV. As he bent low to kiss His Majesty’s hand, ‘the King took hold of his and shook it heartily, saying, “I congratulate you most sincerely upon your return, after a trial the most arduous and exemplary that perhaps any man ever had. I have felt for your situation.”’12
‘But evil days were now before him,’ according to Lowe’s apologist, William Forsyth. ‘The partisans of Bonaparte could not forgive the man who had had the guardianship of his person, and for six long years discharged the duties of his trust with such firmness and fidelity. The floodgates of abuse were opened against him, and he had to endure insinuations and attacks the most painful to an honourable mind.’13 Lowe was having a bad time of it. He also had difficulty obtaining the remuneration he considered owing from the East India Company. He complained to Bathurst that ‘no Pay or Allowance whatsoever was granted to me by the East India Company, until the day of my landing, though my Commission as their Governor & Commander in Chief had been signed & delivered Seven Months preceding’.14
Bathurst no doubt took solace from the thought that Lowe’s regular reams of correspondence were coming to an end with his governorship (but if so, he would find himself mistaken). The Secretary of State had many other pressing colonial concerns. Securing Upper and Lower Canada was an enormous worry, and so was the expense occurring in New South Wales. In that colony, John Thomas Bigge, the Trinidad chief justice he had commissioned, was concluding his exhaustive enquiry into ‘all the laws, regulations and usage of the settlements’. Bathurst had already appointed Sir Thomas Brisbane, another Scottish military man, as the new governor of New South Wales, to succeed Lachlan Macquarie, whose expenditure on public buildings seemed to be out of control.
It was at the end of 1821 that Betsy Balcombe made the acquaintance of the dashing former Indian army officer Edward Abell, whom she had almost certainly met, albeit briefly, four years earlier when his ship had called at St Helena on its homeward voyage from Madras in October 1817. No record survives as to how they encountered each other in Devon, but it is not difficult to imagine a scenario, as Abell’s family home was in the village of Alphington, just over eight miles from Chudleigh. At the time, Edward was actually living in St Gregory’s parish in London, but must have come home to visit his ageing parents. He may have met Betsy at one of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt’s celebrations for the Plymouth and Dartmoor Railroad or through mutual friends.
Dame Mabel Brookes wrote that Edward Abell was ‘a relative of the Nevill family, and reputed to be an extremely handsome man-about-town’, and this she had ‘learned from the late Lord William Nevill’.15 The Nevills, the Earls of Abergavenny, were members of the aristocracy in an unbroken line back to early medieval times, with their family seat at Eridge Castle in Kent. Tyrwhitt would have known the 2nd Earl through Parliament.16
Edward Abell was some eleven years older than Betsy, probably born in 1791.17 Other than the reputed connection with the Nevills, he came from a modest and respectable family settled at Alphington. His father, Francis Abell, was a tanner who had done well and expanded his business, enabling him to give his sons a good education and for himself to retire and add the gentlemanly ‘Esquire’ to his name. His first wife, mother of three children, had died; his second wife died without issue; and Edward was the youngest of three surviving sons by the third wife, Mary Stock.18
Edward’s eldest full brother, William, owned a sugar plantation in Jamaica, worked by slaves, and had married an English girl the previous year. (He had sent a young mixed-race girl ‘reputed’ to be his daughter to be raised by his elderly parents at Alphington.) The other brother, Charles, an officer in His Majesty’s 83rd Regiment of Foot, was stationed in Ceylon and leased a tea plantation in Colombo.19 Edward himself was more footloose, but had profited in India from his proficiency at gambling and from various other exploits. He was adventurous, dangerous, unreliable and alert for his own advantage. He was exactly the sort of man Betsy should have avoided—but just the sort whom Napoleon would have predicted was likely to attract her. The appearance of a stylish cad is almost mandatory in any story about the Regency or Georgian era, and Betsy Balcombe had found hers.
In 1810, when Edward Abell would have been aged nineteen, he sought to join the service of the East India Company as a cadet. The application papers show that he was nominated by an East India Company director, Robert Thornton, and was recommended by his half-brother Frank Abell of Colchester, his father’s eldest son by his first wife.20 Edward wrote in a firm hand that his education was ‘principally at Exeter, Classical and Mathematical’, and that the profession of his father was ‘A private gentleman’. He was accepted for the coveted position of cadet in the military service of the Company, and on 2 March 1811 sailed for Madras on the Princess Amelia, along with other cadets and the usual collection of soldiers, civil servants and their wives. They went in convoy as protection against French attacks. On the Marchioness of Exeter, sailing in tandem with them, was the Reverend Richard Boys, bound for St Helena, so the whole convoy must have called at the island. Young Abell may even have glimpsed a tomboyish child called Betsy scrambling about the rocks.
The armies of the three ‘presidencies’ of the East India Company (Madras, Calcutta and Bombay) had been formed for no other reason than to protect the Company’s trade interests. India was divided into a number of kingdoms or states ruled by local princes or warlords. Some had already become vassals of the Company and received privileges in return, but if other rulers presumed to resist the foreigners taking riches from their state, the Company’s military units attacked them. Some wars continued for years with much bloodshed on both sides.
At Fort St George, the Madras headquarters, Abell was given the junior rank of ensign and appointed to the 7th Regiment of the Madras Native Infantry.21 As was standard, all the soldiers were Indian, commanded by Indian officers but with British officers above them in the hierarchy. Abell would have been attached to a lieutenant or captain to learn how to wage war and gain territory and riches for the East India Company and win some plunder for himself.
He was soon thrown into battle, in skirmishes against the Pindaris from central India, among the forces of the powerful Hindu Maratha Empire, but their artillery was outdated and the British had been victorious in the previous war against them. Abell was soon hardened by the deaths of enemy warriors and his own comrades, and inured to the squabbling over spoils that followed a battle. Looting after a victory was an approved Company activity—an incentive for the soldiers, a larger benefit for the officers—but the Company was widely hated for the practice.
Between campaigns, Abell learned he could accumulate further wealth through trading on the side and through gambling. Nor would it have taken him long to discover, as did most officers, that many Indian women were beautiful and sensuous, and they could be taken as mistresses, or sometimes as wives. His particular cronies, especially for card nights, gambling with other officers, were James Patterson, a military surgeon in the Company’s service, and an older officer, Colonel Francis Torrens, who had been in India for over forty years and had surrendered to its available vices; he had no doubt risen in rank to colonel through the assistance of his distinguished younger brother, Major-General Henry Torrens, who between 1812 and 1814 was aide-de-camp to the Prince Regent.22 However, it is remarkable that the junior officer Edward Abell was hobnobbing at this level and suggests that he had connections and social skills.
The final, decisive conflict with the Marathas—giving the East India Company control of most of the subcontinent—did not take place until the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817–18. But long before that, in the autumn of 1814, Abell and the 1st Battalion of the 7th Native Infantry, along with the 1st Battalion of the 6th, had joined other Company forces to undertake a massive invasion of Nepal.
There was no provocation for the invasion, only the pretext that British irregular forces which had already entered the country needed the support of the Company army. But this was a ploy. In the ruthless view of the East India Company, its commerce had to be protected at all costs. The Gurkhas of Nepal (or ‘Nypaul’ as the British then spelled it) had encroached on the Company’s own potential trade routes to China and Tibet through the northern provinces.
Rather than an initial explicit invasion with its own army, the Company gave tacit permission to two irregular fighting forces to enter Nepal. The first were the warriors of William Fraser, a wild Scot from Inverness, whose official position was with the Company army, as political agent to Major-General Sir Rollo Gillespie. But Fraser was a law unto himself; he had been in India since 1802 as assistant to the Resident in Delhi, spoke several languages and had built up his own band of warriors for mercenary expeditions. His men were joined by an irregular army, called Skinner’s Horse, led by Fraser’s comrade-in-arms James Skinner, son of a Scottish officer and a Rajput princess, to lead the foray against the Gurkhas. Because of his Indian heritage, Skinner had been excluded from becoming an officer of the Company army and had for years fought instead with its enemy, the Marathas. Skinner had raised his own private cavalry, a distinctive band with their yellow tunics, black shields and scarlet turbans.23
But the flamboyant William Fraser had arrived in India twelve years earlier for a particular reason. Like his four brothers, who followed him to the subcontinent, his intention was to restore the Fraser family fortune. The Frasers, like most late-eighteenth-century landowners in the Scottish highlands, had suffered from the economic depression that continued for decades after the 1746 Battle of Culloden. Few tenants could afford to pay rents and the Frasers were hard pressed to pay workers to tend their land and stock. The boys’ father, Edward Satchwell Fraser, had bought into a cotton plantation in Guyana, along with a neighbour, seeing it as an investment for his sons. But with cheap imported cotton from India, prices collapsed, and Edward Fraser needed to mortgage the family estate against it. They were badly in debt, their estate at risk.
But between William’s good intentions and the reality a shadow had fallen: the seductive lure of India. An impressive bearded character, he pruned his moustaches like a Rajput prince and acquired a ‘harem of Indian wives’ by whom he fathered several children. While he held various administrative positions with the East India Company, he had soon, unlike his British colleagues, learned to read ancient Sanskrit texts and developed a love of Persian poetry. However, his main passions were for hunting, riding and fighting with his own private band of warriors. (He was said to have killed some eighty tigers, hunting them on foot, and a number of lions, which helps explain the absence of lions in India today.)24 According to the author William Dalrymple, fascinated by this man to whom he had a family connection, Fraser remains ‘a strange enigmatic figure—misanthropic, antisocial and difficult to fathom—part severe Highland warrior, part Brahminized philosopher, part Conradian madman’.25
The East India Company found unofficial and irregular fighting forces such as Fraser’s and Skinner’s most useful. As Gillespie’s political agent, Fraser’s challenging brief was to recruit sturdy Nepalese Gurkhas to harass the supply lines of their own people. That he succeeded in recruiting a large number is testament to his language skills and powers of persuasion.26 The intrepid Fraser became legendary among the Company troops and somehow, at this time, Edward Abell met him.
Abell was a minor player in the war as a second lieutenant in the 1st Battalion of the 7th Native Infantry, part of Gillespie’s forces. One of four British columns, their task was to strike mid-west Nepal at Dehra Dun, attempting to divide the kingdom. In one of the first battles of the Anglo-Nepalese War, some 3000 British troops laid siege to Kalanga Fort. Gillespie led a rash assault against the strongly fortified position while his men held back; he was killed, along with nine officers and 62 men, followed in the second assault by twenty officers and 649 men.27 The 600 Nepalese within the garrison held out for over a month. The war ended with the Treaty of Sugauli on 4 March 1816. A British colonial administrator, Sir Charles Metcalfe, remarked of the conflict: ‘In this war, dreadful to say, we have had numbers on our side, and skill and bravery on the side of the enemy.’28 As part of the treaty, two Gurkha regiments were formed and taken into the permanent British army service.29
Towards the end of the war, William Fraser’s elder brother, James Baillie Fraser, arrived in Nepal. The two brothers took off together, officially to report on conditions in the Himalayan states, exhilarated to be together on the arduous trek. William needed to return to Delhi, but James continued on, riding and walking to the sources of the Jumna and Ganges rivers, sketching the dramatic landscape he passed through, for ‘the Devil of Drawing’ had taken hold of him. Later, in Scotland, he reworked the sketches into a series of superb aquatints, ‘Views of the Himalas’, and published a book about his travels.30
On 23 December 1816, Abell unexpectedly resigned from the Company army, still at the rank of second lieutenant. This was an unusual decision for an officer in good standing, for it meant he would have to finance his own accommodation and ship’s passage back to England, an expense of hundreds of pounds. It usually only occurred when an officer had chosen to become a merchant or found another activity profitable enough, or attractions sufficient, to make worthwhile his staying on independently. From December 1816 to May 1817, Abell’s activities are unaccounted for. One can only speculate that he may have taken up private trading or professional gambling, or that he had an Indian wife or mistress—or several. It is also not impossible that his resignation from the East India Company meant that he had become an officer in Fraser and Skinner’s now merged private army based at Delhi. If so, his timing was poor, with the Nepal war just having ended, but he may have engaged in some of their mercenary expeditions.
But some event changed his mind about staying on, for Abell departed from India as a private gentleman in May 1817, his ship the Woodford calling at St Helena on the way home.31 However, India drew him back; there must have been some great attraction. By late 1818 he was resident again in Madras, having been appointed civil agent for the British colony of Ceylon to the Madras Presidency, an apparently honorary position obtained with the help of his brother Charles in Colombo. The position was endorsed by Colonial Under-Secretary Henry Goulburn and the East India Company, although his travel and accommodation were at his own expense and the Company stipulated: ‘it being understood that Mr Abell will quit Madras whenever he shall cease to hold the said office’.32 The work could not have been onerous as he was listed in the Madras Year Book for the next two years as a British resident, with ‘Occupation: None’.33
On 5 August 1820, his gambling friend Francis Torrens died in Madras at the age of 72, perhaps of cholera, which was rife. He had enjoyed an unbroken residence in India of 51 years and had only recently been promoted (surely on retirement) to the rank of lieutenant-general in the 18th Native Infantry.34
That particular misfortune was followed a year later by the abrupt removal of another of Abell’s regular companions. In October 1821, the military surgeon James Patterson was charged with the crime of forgery. He was tried in Madras before two judges and a jury and found guilty. Using chemicals, he had expunged the signature of a deceased officer and substituted his own on a promissory note for a considerable sum. The sentencing judge particularly rebuked the ‘bad example and influence’ of Patterson’s crime, ‘committed by a British subject and by a person of your understanding, education and profession . . . upon the low and uninformed classes of the Natives’. It was an additional aggravation ‘that this crime was committed by some chemical process by a person in the medical line, whose profession furnishes (to one viciously inclined) such easy modes and materials for doing mischief’. He said that Patterson was fortunate, because if found guilty of the crime of forgery in the United Kingdom, he would have forfeited his life. ‘The sentence of the Court is that, you James Patterson, for the crime aforesaid, be transported to New South Wales during the term of fourteen years.’35
Patterson delayed his departure by brazenly launching his own legal action, claiming that the late Lieutenant-General Francis Torrens had died owing him a large sum of money. As the executors of his will, Torrens’s younger brothers were greatly perturbed. They suspected that their brother’s promissory note to Patterson had also been forged. Colonel Robert Torrens wrote a 53-page letter from India to General Sir Henry Torrens, by then adjutant-general to the British Forces at the Horse Guards in London (the army equivalent of the Admiralty), explaining the circumstances as he understood them: ‘You may depend upon it he will lose no opportunity of tormenting the expectations of this Estate by keeping the business in a state of agitation if it is merely to make believe his innocence. He is now about 45 years of age, so that if he is not pardoned, for which God forbid, he will be at the expiration of his term of 14 years, sixty. I trust however before that age he may have made his peace and gone to heaven . . . This very day however I believe he embarks for Calcutta on his way to Botany Bay, and I hope we have now done with this Chemical Hero!’36
It was after these events that Edward Abell came home to England and to Devon to visit his parents. There he met the pretty Betsy Balcombe.
The romance between Betsy and Abell developed rapidly, no doubt far too rapidly for the senior Balcombes to feel comfortable. Balcombe may have been taken in at first by Abell’s apparent charm and reputed connection with the Nevills; but he himself had spent much time in India as a youth, both at Calcutta and Madras, and had observed the wild lifestyles of some of the East India Company army officers—gambling, hookah, nautch girls and prostitutes. There must have been something in Abell’s manner that made Balcombe begin to think he was of that kind. He and his wife Jane were bound to take the view that this adventurer, with no distinction and an unreliable access to money, was not the sort of husband they had imagined for their beautiful younger daughter. After all, Betsy had been admired by every officer on St Helena, she could have wed Major Oliver Fehrzen, a military hero, and for years she had been the favourite of Napoleon Bonaparte, former ruler of half the world! It is probable that they tried to talk her out of continuing to see Abell; they may even have forbidden the couple to continue to meet.
Then came the news: Betsy was expecting a child.
No record survives of how her parents reacted, but much as they may have disliked Abell, everything had now changed. They would have determined that he had to wed their daughter, otherwise her life was ruined. She would never be able to show her face in society again. Did Balcombe confront Abell—as right-thinking fathers did in Jane Austen’s novels—and tell him that unless he did the honourable thing, he would expose him for the scoundrel that he was?
Probably there was no argument. At the time, young men in society who lacked inheritances were willing to go to extremes to secure their position. Such a man would marry a very plain or much older woman as long as she had wealth or useful connections; some would actively seek out such women, often planning to leave them soon after the wedding, knowing that the law entitled them to take the wife’s assets. (The parliamentarian Henry Fox (later an earlier Lord Holland), in debating Lord Hardwicke’s 1753 Marriage Bill had agreed that ‘something needed to be done to halt the fraudulent seduction of heirs and heiresses’. His hope was that the Marriage Act would stop this, but even after it was passed, the practice continued.37)
It would have been a bonus for Abell that Betsy was attractive. There are indications that he was a more than willing bridegroom, that he had actively courted her, and may have aimed to get her pregnant, having heard stories that her father was the natural son of George IV—stories that may have come from Balcombe’s own bragging when in his cups. Abell must have had expectations of future riches and influence from marriage to the granddaughter of the King of England. He would have observed what seemed clear evidence of a connection to the palace in the family’s protection by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, known to be close to the King.
Once the news of Betsy’s situation was confided to Sir Thomas, he would have made his own enquiries concerning Abell’s background, and naturally turned to General Sir Henry Torrens, whom he knew well from the latter’s period as aide-de-camp to the Prince Regent. He must have been disturbed by what he heard, and would have felt no confidence that this footloose former officer without prospects could be a reliable husband. What concerned him even more was that Balcombe, at the age of 44, had a family to support and no foreseeable future. He would do what he could for the family that he loved.
On 29 March 1822, Sir Thomas paid a surprise visit to Sir Hudson Lowe at his lodgings at 1 Edgware Road. Lowe had always had respect for the diminutive courtier, who clearly still had influence with George IV. He would have made him welcome. Sir Thomas told him that he was distressed to see William Balcombe and his family living in near-penury; it was making Mrs Balcombe ill with anxiety. He could not help them financially himself, having had to underwrite the float for the Plymouth and Dartmoor Railroad when too few subscribers were found. He believed it might be a year or so before any financial return could be expected. However, he had reason to believe that Lord Bathurst was willing to offer Balcombe a position in the colonies, but not if that offended Sir Hudson himself, who had been such a loyal servant of the government. These comments flattered Lowe, but he remained truculent. He said he did not see how he could assist Balcombe to any position of responsibility when he had shown no remorse, nor willingness to change his ways.
Sir Thomas then asked Balcombe to come up to London. Once they were together, this experienced strategist explained the politics of the situation to him: William should realise that Lowe’s hatred of O’Meara had come to embrace him as well. He saw them as part of a conspiracy against him, even though William had tried to disassociate himself. Tyrwhitt would have indicated that he believed it almost certain that Bathurst did not particularly care for Lowe—not least because of his time-wasting correspondence—but the governor had after all been a loyal public servant in following Bathurst’s instructions, even if he had interpreted them rather too rigorously. Therefore his lordship would not permit Balcombe to return to St Helena nor assist him to any government or colonial position if that offended Lowe. So William should realise that the barrier to his future was Sir Hudson Lowe. A profound apology was necessary.
On 4 April, Balcombe posted a letter from the London office of his wife’s brother-in-law Thomas Hornsby. He must have gritted his teeth writing every word of it:
Sir
Having just learned from Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt that you are pleased to lay aside all feeling of displeasure which my conduct towards you had so justly excited, I take the liberty of returning to you my sincere and grateful acknowledgement and to assure you that no person can more deeply feel Penitent for past indiscretions than myself.
I beg also to express to you my sincere thanks for your extreme kindness in your intention, in pity towards my family, of furthering my hopes of some Provision from the Colonial Office.
I have the honour to remain, Sir
Your faithful and obedient servant,
(Signed) W. Balcombe38
It must have given Lowe tremendous satisfaction to enclose Balcombe’s letter with his own, dated 7 April, to Wilmot Horton, the colonial under-secretary who had replaced Goulburn:
Dear Sir,
I beg leave to acquaint you that I was visited upon Friday last by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, who spoke to me at some length respecting Mr Balcombe, whom with his family, he represented to be in the greatest distress on account of the loss of the offices he had held at St Helena. He told me he had grounds to believe Lord Bathurst was not indisposed to some act of consideration towards him, if it was understood no objections prevailed on my part. I acquainted Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt that although Mr. Balcombe’s conduct had been in the highest degree improper, both as regarding the public services and his personal relations with me, yet I had always considered him more as the Dupe & Instrument of others than as having acted originally from his own impulses, and knowing the distress he had brought upon his family, I would certainly not think on their account of opposing anything that might be done for him.
Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt wished me to make this much known either to Lord Bathurst, or to you, which I accordingly take the present means of doing. I afterwards received a letter from Mr Balcombe which I beg leave to inclose. In reference to the concluding passage of it, I should say, nothing of any actual interference in Mr Balcombe’s favour was assured by me, but simply that I would not oppose any steps Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt might take regarding him. In other respects the contrition his letter manifests will furnish the best argument in his favor.39
The wedding of Lucia Elizabeth Balcombe and Edward Abell was booked to take place not at Chudleigh but at St Martin’s Church, Exminster, and not by the traditional ‘thrice-called banns’, which involved waiting three Sundays in a row while a notice of the intended marriage was posted on the church door, but by the swifter process of a licence, the document to be purchased from a bishop or one of his surrogates. While marriage by licence in the nineteenth century often signified that the bride was with child, that was by no means always the case; because a licence wedding was private and cost at least four guineas (a workingman’s weekly wage), it became the preference of the ‘patrician class’.40 However, in the case of the wedding of Betsy and Edward there is no doubt that the bride was four or five months pregnant.
It is curious that Exminster, eight miles away, was chosen for the ceremony instead of Chudleigh, noted for its beautiful thirteenth-century church. The Marriage Act required that ‘at least one party had to be resident for at least three weeks in the parish where the marriage was to be celebrated’.41 One can only assume that Betsy’s pregnancy was so obvious that the family wished to avoid gossip among neighbours and had briefly become residents of Exminster. Otherwise, as John R. Gillis notes in For Better, For Worse, sometimes families rented a room in the parish where the wedding would be held just long enough to fulfil the Act requirement without actually living there.42
Sir Thomas almost certainly gave Balcombe some further advice: that while the outcome of his apology to Lowe was awaited, it might be advisable to move with his family—including the young married couple—to France. There they would be away from prying eyes and gossip about Betsy’s advanced pregnancy, and the actual birth date would not be on English church records. In addition, the living was far more economical in France. Sir Thomas, who visited the country regularly, recommended Saint-Omer, inland from Calais, where there was a large British community.
Betsy’s marriage to Abell was solemnised on 28 May 1822 at Exminster. The ceremony conformed with all the requirements of the Marriage Act. The certificate stated: ‘Edward Abell Esquire, Bachelor of the Parish of Saint Gregory, London, And Lucia Elizabeth Balcombe, Spinster of this Parish, Were married in this Church by Licence with Consent of Parents this twenty-eighth day of May in the Year One thousand eight hundred and twenty two By me H. J. Burlton.’ The other signatures followed: ‘This marriage was solemnized between us—Edward Abell, Lucia Elizabeth Balcombe, In the presence of Wm Balcombe, Thos Tyrwhitt, Francis Stanfell RN, Jane Sophia Turner, Henry Brown.’43 Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt had come to be a witness at the wedding, supporting the family as always, and also Captain Stanfell, their old friend from St Helena.
It was clearly a desire to obscure the circumstances of the marriage that caused Dame Mabel Brookes to inform enquiring historians that it had taken place exactly one year earlier, 28 May 1821; as she was a Balcombe descendant, this date has been followed in most subsequent biographical listings and was accepted until pesky biographers began digging.44 The marriage certificate exists and the wedding was noted in the Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post or Plymouth and Cornish Advertiser of 29 May 1822: ‘Yesterday at Exminster, by the Rev. H.J. Burlton, Edward Abell Esq, to Lucia Elizabeth, daughter of W. Balcombe, Esq, of this place.’
Betsy had done just what Napoleon had forecast on the last day they met at St Helena. Afterwards, her father had informed Lowe of his prediction, which was immediately reported to Bathurst: Napoleon ‘told her she would be married immediately on her arrival in England & then railed her on her immediate Pregnancy’.45