Mrs. Fitzherbert is often depicted as the patient, saintly, and long-suffering romantic victim of the Prince of Wales. In truth, she was a woman of spirit and spunk who liked an off-color joke, spoke frankly, and, although her income had derived from her marriage settlements, was remarkably self-reliant. Like her royal admirer, she was vain, proud, and had a sizeable ego.
She was born Mary Anne Smythe at Tong in Shropshire to an affluent Catholic royalist family and was educated at an English convent school in France. By the time she met the Prince of Wales in March 1784, she was a twenty-eight-year-old childless widow with eighteen hundred pounds a year to live on—over half a million dollars today.
After attending the opera one evening, the prince became transfixed by Maria as she waited for her carriage. That night her fate would change dramatically.
Described by his friend Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire as “inclined to be too fat and looks much like a woman in men’s cloaths [sic],” the prince was six years younger than Maria. Throughout his life, he exhibited a penchant for older women, especially those who combined sexuality with a certain maternal quality; in other words, he was a sucker for an ample bosom.
Although the heir apparent found her irresistible, Maria was not a classic beauty. Indeed, she mocked her own aquiline “Roman Catholic” nose. Her chin was considered too “determined” and there was rather a vast amount of cheek along the sides of her oval face, described by contemporaries as “a very mild benignant countenance without much animation.” And even in her twenties, she had ill-fitting false teeth. But she made up for it with her hazel eyes, silky blond hair, and flawless complexion, not to mention the requisite poitrine.
By March 10, 1784, just days after George demanded an introduction to the mysteriously veiled beauty, rumors abounded that the Prince of Wales was making “fierce love to the widow Fitzherbert.” He sent her gifts of jewelry, peppered her with invitations to Carlton House, and commissioned Gainsborough to paint her portrait. But Maria failed to be dazzled. “My mother always recommended . . . to throw cold water on my lovers if I did not like them,” she told Lady Anne Lindsay—which might account for the Duchess of Devonshire’s observation during the early stages of the prince’s pursuit that “Mrs. Fitzherbert is at present his favorite, but she seems, I think, rather to cut him than otherwise.” Maria made it quite clear to the prince that she had no interest in becoming his mistress.
So he proposed marriage.
Mrs. Fitzherbert countered with every pragmatic reply. First of all, she was a devout Catholic with no intentions of renouncing her faith. Should she marry him, it would cost him his crown, contravening the Royal Marriages Act, which prohibited a royal under the age of twenty-five from marrying without the king’s permission; the 1701 Act of Settlement, which settled the succession on the Protestant heirs of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, as long as they did not marry a Catholic, as well as—to some degree—the 1707 Act of Union, which also barred any Catholics, or anyone married to a Catholic, from inheriting the throne. Even a secret marriage would violate those laws.
But the prince was uninterested in a rational argument for rejection. Maria thought it was one of his practical jokes when late in the evening of July 8, 1784, four men from his household showed up at her doorstep, informing her that George had stabbed himself, and demanding that she return to Carlton House with them immediately.
To preserve her honor from malicious gossip, she insisted that their mutual friend Georgiana accompany her as a chaperone. At Carlton House, they found the prince in a bloodstained shirt tearing at his bandages, foaming at the mouth, and banging his head against the wall. The only thing that could “induce him to live,” George insisted, was Maria’s consent to marry him. So she relented, signing a hastily written promissory note, and the duchess pulled a ring from her own finger, as the prince had none of his own to bestow upon his bullied bride.
Back at Devonshire House, Georgiana wrote up a deposition stating that Maria was aware that a written promise extracted under such threats was invalid, thus protecting themselves against the illegality of the bedside agreement.
Maria packed her trunks as soon as she arrived home, and the following day she went abroad (soon followed by her friend Lady Anne Lindsay) in the hope that the whole messy business with the prince would blow over. Lady Anne intimated in her journal that “Fitz” was too proud to take the “common packet” boat with the rest of the riffraff—“her who was running away from being Queen of England!”
After learning that Maria had fled, the twenty-two-year-old heir to the English throne wept uncontrollably, tore at his hair, banged his head against hard objects, and vowed to relinquish his rights to the crown, sell his plate and jewels, and elope to America with Maria. The prince wrote to his “wife” regularly (and copiously), pledging his eternal fidelity. He even had the chutzpah to assure Maria (in a whopper of a lie) that his father was aware of their plans to wed and approved wholeheartedly. And in an eighteen-page love note, George told Maria that he now looked upon himself as married. “You know I never presumed to make you any offer with a view of purchasing your virtue. I know you too well,” he insisted. Imploring her to return to him, the prince signed this letter, “Not only the most affectionate of lovers but the tenderest of husbands.”
According to Lady Anne, by this time Maria was of two minds when it came to the prince. His pestering barrage of correspondence drove her crazy, but she complained when she didn’t hear from him. By the end of October 1785, having spent more than fifteen months in France, Maria resolved to come back to England and commit herself to the prince, accepting that the marriage would not be valid “according to law in England,” but that it certainly was such “according to every other law, both human and divine.” To Lady Anne, who had departed before her, Maria wrote: . . . I have told him I will be his. I know I injure him and perhaps destroy forever my own tranquility. . . . Could I banish from my idea the fatal consequences that may attend such a connexion I then might be happy in attaching myself for life to the man that has gone thro’ so much for my sake & to whom I feel myself very sincerely attach’d to, but alas whenever I look upon it in a favourable light, that Idea vanishes. . . . All I can say is that since it is to be I shall make it the Study of my life to make him happy.
The prince wanted to wed almost as soon as Maria landed in England. But because George had to keep their marriage a secret, she insisted on certain terms before she would tie the knot: she would always be known as “Mrs. Fitzherbert,” would maintain her own separate address and establishment, would have the place of honor at George’s table, and an annual allowance of £10,000 (over $1.5 million today). Furthermore, she would not spend a single night under the prince’s roof until their marriage was made public.
It was not easy to find a clergyman willing to risk the wrath of heaven and earth to perform a wedding ceremony that violated at least five statutory acts. Finally, a young curate, the Rev. John Burt, was located—in the Fleet, where he was incarcerated for debt. Most historians believe that Burt struck a hard bargain: he would marry the prince to Mrs. Fitzherbert for £500, payment of all his debts, an appointment as one of the prince’s chaplains, and a future bishopric.
The ceremony was performed on the frosty afternoon of December 15, 1785, behind the curtained windows and locked doors of Maria’s Park Street parlor. The twenty-nine-year-old bride wore a simple suit of traveling clothes. Maria’s uncle, Henry Errington, and one of her brothers, John Smythe, stood as witnesses, endangering themselves if their complicit participation was ever discovered. The prince’s friend Orlando Bridgeman stood guard outside the door. After the groom and the two witnesses signed the marriage certificate, George gave it to Maria to keep. It is currently in the Royal Archives.
Although the marriage was illegal in the eyes of the state, it was valid in church law; therefore, any issue would be considered illegitimate according to English civil law, but legitimate by canon law. Nevertheless, the royal wedding
was almost immediately followed by the systematic public denials of the event, particularly by George’s pals in Parliament.
The few people who knew the truth were sworn to secrecy, yet everyone seemed to know about it immediately and caricatures of the prince and Mrs. Fitzherbert appeared in every shop window. The Daily Universal Register bawdily punned, “The Prince’s musical talents are of the first rate. . . . He is attached to, and peculiarly happy in humming old pieces. His Highness has lately set ‘The Dainty Widow’ much higher in order to suit his pipe.” A clandestine royal marriage, true or not, was the talk of the town. Maria herself later referred to her union as “the One Truth which all the world knows.” The rumors increased after Maria let one of the thirty-six boxes at the opera house—real estate that was the purview of the tippy top of the haute ton.
Without officially admitting to anything George endeavored to make things right for her. Although Maria remained adamant about maintaining separate residences, his carriage was seen every morning at her door, and he footed the bills for her establishment. Maria had precedence at every function. The prince let it be known that Mrs. Fitzherbert was to receive the courtesy of any social invitations extended to him, and if precedence could not be waived in her favor by other hosts, then His Royal Highness would refuse to attend their affairs. And he was as solicitous and attentive to her in public as if she were his legal wife.
But the idyll couldn’t last forever. By the summer of 1786, the sum total of George’s debts was a whisper below £270,000—a shade over $4.1 million today. Parliament, and his father, refused to give him a bailout. So, with no financial relief in sight, the prince closed up Carlton House and decamped to Brighton with Maria. A frequent tourist to the burgeoning seaside resort commented on Mrs. Fitzherbert’s popularity there: “Though nobody ventured to call her ‘Princess,’ everyone of her innumerable admirers of both sexes enthroned her as a queen. She was recognised as the ‘Queen of Hearts’ throughout the length and breadth of fast-expanding Brighton. . . . They honoured her, they almost worshipped her.”
That July, those who glimpsed Mrs. Fitzherbert with the prince in Brighton were certain she was visibly pregnant. Most people believe that she and George had at least one child, and Maria never denied having any. On the death of George IV in 1830, Lord Stourton, a distant cousin of Maria’s and one of her executors, as well as her eventual biographer, asked her to sign a declaration written on the back of her marriage certificate that read, “I, Mary Fitzherbert, testify that my Union with George P. of Wales was without issue.”
“She smilingly objected on the score of delicacy,” said Stourton. Surely she would have signed the endorsement without hesitation if she had never given George any children. Considering their relationship lasted several years, and contraception was still in its infancy, so to speak, it is certainly likely that she became pregnant by him and carried to term.
Her first child may have been born in the early autumn of 1786. There was a baby boy given the name of his foster father, James Ord, who was taken first to Bilbao, Spain, and then to Norfolk, Virginia, raised by prominent Catholic families and afforded the best education available. The boy’s key connections were all distantly related to Mrs. Fitzherbert through her previous marriages. When he reached adulthood, Ord—who was given a plum job at the Spanish court, also courtesy of one of Maria’s well-placed relatives—was told by his “uncle” (James Ord) that he was the son of one of the sons of King George III. Although the elder Ord had assumed that the boy was the Duke of York’s child because the duke had handled the negotiations with the Ord family for his care, Ord himself believed “. . . the probabilities were that I was the child of Mrs. Fitzherbert and the Prince of Wales, to which he [Father William Matthews, an intimate friend of his “uncle”] replied that he had heard this stated by others, but he declined to say by whom.”
Maria and the prince may have had another child in addition to “James Ord”—if Ord indeed was their son. A little girl named Maryanne Smythe (a version of Maria’s birth name) was born around 1800, although she did not enter Mrs. Fitzherbert’s household until 1817. Maryanne was passed off as Maria’s niece, the daughter of her younger brother John—although official records reflect that John and his wife had no children. The page that spans the years 1799 to 1801 is missing from the baptismal register of St. John the Baptist Church in Brighton, where Maria worshipped, so we’ll never know if it contained anything incriminating. It was purportedly removed by George in 1811 when he became the regent.
Despite the pledges he’d made in his correspondence, the prince’s eternal fidelity to Maria was short-lived. George continued to dally with other women, while she was expected to play the traditional role assigned to wives of her class and suffer in quiet dignity. But Maria had a “fierce temper,” according to the prince, and that, combined with her jealousy of his frequent conquests and rather publicly conducted affairs, put a tremendous strain on their marriage.
In September 1788, while the semi-royal couple remained in Brighton, the press continued to speculate on the reasons for their absence from London. The World published an “epitaph” of Maria that was probably ghostwritten by the renowned playwright and Whig MP Richard Brinsley Sheridan: MRS. F-TZHE-B-T
To the Remembrance of one
Who was, Wife, and no Wife, Princess
and no Princess, sought, yet shunned,
courted, yet disclaimed: the Queen of all
parties, yet the Grace of none: the
Theme of Wonder, Curiosity, and
Submissive respect: yet
The Constant Subject of Doubt, reserve, and
Apprehension.
Mrs. F—
Was fond of Sovereignty, and obtained it: fond
of the World’s Friendship, and secured it:
fond of that best Courage, the Courage of being
unabash’d and contrived
To exercise it safely.
A sum paid by Carlton House to the editor of the World silenced that particular anonymous pen.
But there were others. In 1792, as the health and sanity of George III continued to remain uncertain, a pamphlet was circulated proclaiming that the prince’s relationship with Mrs. Fitzherbert would “one day become a matter of most serious national discussion,” and that “his behavior to her . . . has not been of the most grateful, delicate, or honorable nature.”
But by the winter of 1793, Maria’s marriage to the prince was floundering. Their diverging tastes became an increasing problem. The diarist Thomas Raikes averred that the Prince of Wales was “young and impetuous and boisterous in his character and very much addicted to the pleasures of the table.” Maria preferred intimate, quiet evenings at home and her husband’s rowdy, often childish, excesses were wearing very thin. Additionally, by the following summer, his debts had swelled to upwards of £500,000 (well over $66 million today), and Maria was lending him money out of her £3,000 royal annuity!
George had commenced a relationship with the forty-one-year-old former Frances Twysden, now the beautiful but diamond-hard Lady Jersey, cleverly introduced to him by his mother the queen in the hopes of detaching him from his Catholic inamorata. Married to the 4th Earl of Jersey, who was thirty-five years her senior, her ladyship was one of the Devonshire set, the fast crowd of Whigs who orbited around the glamorous Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana. Lady Jersey convinced George that the reason he was so unpopular was because Maria was a Roman Catholic and that he might redeem his reputation if he married a Protestant princess.
By the autumn of 1793, George’s affair with Lady Jersey had caused what was left of his marriage to Maria to deteriorate even further. But according to some sources, their union had really hit the skids in the early part of 1793, after Maria had an affair—or was widely rumored to have done so—with a twenty-two-year-old Frenchman named Charles de Noailles, who was said to be “as handsome as the day.” The liaison, which many believed to have been little more than a mild flirtation, ended that summer
when Maria went to Brighton.
In any event her conduct was a public humiliation that threw George back into full-bore victim mode. During the summer of 1794 he continued to rave at anyone who would listen that Maria “has dishonor’d me in my own eyes and in the eyes of the world,” melodramatically adding that he felt as though someone “had first open’d my breast and then poured boiling lead into it.” Although he had no tangible proof of Maria’s affair with Charles de Noailles, “the strongest probability” that it had taken place was enough for him to convict her.
On June 23, 1794, Maria received a note of apology from the prince just as she was about to depart for Bushy Park, the residence shared by the Duke of Clarence and his mistress Dorothy Jordan. The note expressed the prince’s regrets at being unable to join her, as he had just been called to Windsor. That evening, Captain Jack Willet-Payne, the head of the prince’s household, arrived at Bushy Park with a subsequent letter from his employer, tersely telling Mrs. Fitzherbert that their relationship was over.
A livid Maria rallied support from her friends as well as from within the royal family, several of whom were fond of her. Lady Clermont advised her to “rise above her own feelings and to open her house to the town of London.” Lady Anne Lindsay, assuming that her old friend’s temper had a lot to do with the break, urged, “Dearest Fitz, be not too violent for your own sake,” and to remain calm in Pall Mall. As for her rival, Lady Jersey, Anne reminded Maria that “it is not in her power, a married woman as she is, with other dutys to fulfill, to supply your place to him.”
Although George still seethed a bit over what he assumed was Maria’s betrayal of their vows, he had admitted to Jack Willet-Payne, “to tell you what it has cost me to write, and to rip up every and the most distressing feelings of my heart . . . which have so long lodged there, is impossible to express.” He ended the letter with the words “whichever way this unpleasant affair ends, I have nothing to reproach myself with.”
Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny, and Desire Page 31
