Available from Pen and Sword Books
A Right Royal Scandal recounts the fascinating history of the irregular love matches contracted by two successive generations of the Cavendish-Bentinck family, ancestors of the British Royal Family.
We are delighted to have
been asked back to Tony Riches’ blog. This time we would like to share a little
information on the background to our second book, A Right Royal Scandal: Two Marriages That Changed History.
This was originally going
to be our first book, our interest in its subject piqued by a chance throwaway
comment between us during a telephone conversation almost a decade ago when we
were discussing all things genealogical, as we mentioned in our first post for
Tony. “Have you ever heard about the
gypsy girl who married an ancestor of the queen?”
The story was true but
not widely known although it had been reported on and gossiped about in the
mid-Victorian era, during the lifetime of the queen’s ancestor who followed his
heart when his family wanted him to do otherwise.
Not
a few Oxford men, of nine or ten years’ standing, could tell a tale of frantic
passion for a Gipsy girl entertained by two young men at one time, one of them
with ducal blood in his veins, who ultimately wooed and wedded his Gipsy love.
So that it is no way impossible (the heirs to the dukedom being all unmarried,
and unlikely to marry) that the ducal coronet of ____ may come to be worn by
the son of a Gipsy mother.
The Reverend Charles
Cavendish Bentinck was the grandson and nephew of two successive Dukes of
Portland. On his mother’s side, his grandfather was Marquess Wellesley and the
famed Duke of Wellington was his great-uncle. His father had been amongst
George IV’s inner circle and his elder half-sister Georgiana was – reputedly –
the king’s granddaughter. Charley, as he was known to his family, was of
illustrious and highly aristocratic stock which made it all the more shocking
when, as a young man studying at Oxford University, he fell head over heels in
love with a working-class girl named Sinnetta Lambourne, a girl with gypsy
blood running through her veins… and secretly married her.
Sinnetta’s parents had
met at a horse fair held at Warwick racecourse; her mother was a full-blooded
gypsy and her father an Oxfordshire horse dealer who was known to settle
disputes with his fists. A Right Royal
Scandal documents the romance between Charley and his beautiful gypsy bride,
as well as his family’s devastating reaction to it. We found his union
mentioned in letters written by Lord and Lady Hatherton – Charley’s maternal
aunt and uncle – who addressed the matter both directly and obliquely; at times
we had to read between the lines of the letters to discover the truth. Official
documents – birth, marriage and death certificates, census returns and wills –
provided yet more evidence of Charley and Sinnetta’s life together and they
appeared within the pages of a diary written by a Victorian gentleman who was their
friend and neighbour. Slowly and methodically we pieced together the story of
their romance and married life, which was to be cut tragically short.
Charley made a second
marriage in his later life and became the proud father of three daughters, the
eldest of whom married the Earl of Strathmore. The Earl and Countess of
Strathmore’s youngest daughter, the Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, is now better
known to us as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
But our title promises
two marriages and so what of the other? We start A Right Royal Scandal by taking the story back a further generation:
Charley’s father, Lord Charles Bentinck (a widower with a young daughter),
faced his own scandal when he eloped with the married niece of the Duke of
Wellington just weeks after the Battle of Waterloo. The bored and unfulfilled
Lady Abdy was the daughter of Marquess Wellesley, one of five children borne by
his mistress, an exotically beautiful French opera dancer named Hyacinthe
Gabrielle Rolland (the marquess married his mistress but only after the birth
of his children). Anne, Lady Abdy, was beautiful, flirtatious and impetuous
just like her Gallic mother, and she inherited her aristocratic father’s hot
temper too.
A
married Lady has recently eloped with the brother of an English Duke. A female
friend, on learning the story, coolly observed – ‘Who could expect a tame duck
out of a wild duck’s nest?’
It was said that Lady
Abdy resembled the first Lady Charles Bentinck and this, together with her
solicitude for his young daughter who had been left motherless, led to Lord
Charles becoming besotted. The scandal of the elopement involved many famous
personalities of the day, the Prince Regent, the extended Wellesley family
including the Duke of Wellington, the Duke of Portland and the Regency
courtesan Harriette Wilson and a very public Criminal Conversation trial and
divorce hearing was to follow.
There are ups and downs,
love, laughter and tragedy in the stories of the tangled love affairs of this
branch of the royal family tree and we hope that our readers will find their
lives as fascinating as we do. The people we have written about were close to
the royals in many ways over the years and generations, as courtiers, friends,
lovers, illegitimate offspring and – finally – as legitimate members of the
family itself. It is a love story as much as a meticulously researched
historical biography and a continuation of our first book, An Infamous Mistress, about the eighteenth-century courtesan Grace
Dalrymple Elliott whose daughter was the first wife of Lord Charles Bentinck
(although both books can be read as independently of each other). A Right Royal Scandal ends by showing
how, if not for a young gypsy and her tragic life, the British monarchy would
look very different today.
Joanne Major and Sarah Murden
# # #
About the Authors
Sarah and Joanne are genealogists and historians who live in Lincolnshire, England and spend the majority of their lives immersed in both the Georgian and Victorian Eras. They describe themselves as 'history detectives' and aim for all posts on their with our blog to have at least one piece of information that is not already in the public domain. You can find out more at their blog www.georogianera.wordpress.com and follow them on Twitter
@sarahmurden and Joanne @joannemajor3.
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