The Heir of Douglas: The Scandal That Rocked Eighteenth-Century England

By Lillian de la Torre

A sensational account of the Lady Jane Douglas scandal: A penniless Frenchman claimed a title and turned eighteenth-century England upside down.

In 1748, Scottish noblewoman Lady Jane Douglas gave birth to twin boys in Paris. Although she and one of the boys died in poverty five years later, her surviving son was heir to one of the greatest fortunes in England, and would become one of the most important men in the empire—if his inheritance were secure. But was Archibald Douglas really Lady Jane’s son?
 
His mother was fifty at the time of his birth—an incredible circumstance in any century—and if it could be proven that Archibald was adopted, the fortune would pass to another. The Douglas Cause, one of the greatest scandals in English history, a legal case whose twists and turns mesmerized the British public, led the citizens of Edinburgh to riot, and threatened to undermine the very fabric of the empire.
 
Based on six years of research, The Heir of Douglas is the thrilling, definitive account of an astonishing court case, written by a woman who “knows her way about in the eighteenth century” (The New York Times).
 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Jun 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504044592

Lillian de la Torre

Lillian de la Torre (1902–1993) was born in New York City. She received a bachelor's degree from the College of New Rochelle and master's degrees from Columbia University and Radcliffe College, and she taught in the English department at Colorado College for twenty-seven years. De la Torre wrote numerous books; short stories for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; reviews for the New York Times Book Review; poetry; and plays, including one produced for Alfred Hitchcock's television series. In her first book, Elizabeth Is Missing (1945), she refuted twelve theories on the disappearance of a maidservant near the Tower of London in 1753, and then offered her own answer. Her series of historical detective stories about Dr. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell comprise her most popular fiction. De la Torre served as the 1979 president of the Mystery Writers of America.  

Book preview

PART ONE

Lady Jane Douglas

And if she was not the mother, she was strenuously playing a part.

(OATH BY THE LANDLADY OF THE HÔTEL D’ANJOU)

Chapter I

The heir of Douglas was born at Paris in the early summer of 1748. So much is certain. But under what roof he first saw the light, by means of what midwife, and even of what mother, has been matter for hot dispute ever since.

The debate centered about the lady whom the claimant called Mother. Friend and foe wondered unceasingly in what secret place she bore him, or from what street corner she stole him. She figured alternately in their briefs as a martyred saint or as a Machiavelli of duplicity. The case was tried in three countries over a period of seven years, and her character was made the decisive issue in the end.

In July 1748, at the Hôtel d’Anjou in the faubourg Saint-Germain, the heir of Douglas made his first undisputed appearance. His advent caused an agreeable bustle in the modest lodging-house.

The widow-woman from the provinces, sitting in her second-floor chamber with the door open lest she miss anything, saw it all.

First came a distinguished foreign gentleman to inquire after lodgings. He was a prodigious fine figure of a man; tall, strong, soldierly, and well made, his handsome form set off by a chestnut-coloured coat with gold buttons. He wore a round yellowish wig with a black silk bag behind. His laughing, open countenance had the ruddy glow of a boy’s, although he must have been sixty years old or more. The widow-woman took to him at once.

He got on well with the landlady—and indeed with all ladies then, before, and after—though he had to ask her a delicate question:

Are there any bugs in the house?

Nobody, replied the hostess without taking umbrage, has complained of bugs here.

Satisfied on that point, the attractive stranger chose two rooms and a dressing-room, and took himself off. He made no down payment. This was as characteristic of him as his charming open smile. The widow-woman felt pleased at the transaction, and opened her door wider. The rooms he had chosen were right opposite.

The gentleman in the chestnut-coloured coat returned that evening in a coach. He had two ladies with him, muffled to their noses in their cloaks. The maid ushered them up to their suite. When she came down, she duly entered his name and nation in the register. Though the drink had brought her low from her erstwhile post as a school-teacher, she could still write a better hand than anybody else at the inn.

There was a bit of unpleasantness the next morning. The ladies, sleeping together in the best bed, had bagged a brace of bugs. They confronted the landlady with them. She shrugged them off; her house was not infested. And indeed she was right; they never again had cause to complain. The offending pair of pests had clearly come with them.

The widow-woman studied the trio with consuming interest. In the first place they were Britishers, a race with whom the French had until these few weeks past been at war. The handsome gentleman spoke French freely, in a reckless, captivating, incorrect sort of style. He did most of the conversing for the party. One of his ladies spoke and understood a little, diffidently. The other spoke no more French than the parlour table. It was understood at the inn that the gentleman was a Scotchman. Nobody could pronounce his barbarous name, even if they knew it. They took to calling him Milord of England or Monsieur the Englishman.

Milord’s wife was a pale, melancholy lady of great beauty, tall and thin, with a smooth white skin, hair of rich deep auburn, and true violet eyes. She carried her slim body proudly, like a girl. They supposed her to be about thirty-five. She was in fact fifty years old. She wore a gown of blue-and-white-striped taffety, and covered her shoulders with a large lawn fichu. Her lovely hair was dressed round and flat, not built high; like an invalid, the widow-woman thought. The more sophisticated landlady recognized it for the English manner.

Milady’s attendant was of quite another breed. The landlady thought she had the air of a man in disguise (which she was not). She was very strong made, tall as Milady, but much thicker, plainly dressed in a brown gown.

This interesting trio had hardly got settled in their new lodgings when they sent for the landlady. That worthy woman rather hoped for a trifle on account, but it was not forthcoming.

Do not be uneasy for your money, said Milord in his rough-and-tumble French, though we take coach in the morning. We are not leaving you; but we set out early to go for our child, who is at nurse on the side of Paris towards Saint-Germain.

This sounded reasonable enough. At Saint-Germain-en-Laye was the little imitation Royal Court of Bonnie Prince Charlie, where he bided his time since his disastrous defeat at Culloden two years before. A knot of exiled Scots clustered about him. Saint-Germain-en-Laye was a likely place for a Scottish child. The landlady made no difficulty.

In that, said she, you may do as you please.

Accordingly, the next morning between six and seven, the Scottish party mounted into a hired coach and drove away.

They returned in the evening with the heir of Douglas. He arrived yelling the roof down. The old inn resounded with his unceasing outcries. The widow-woman shook her head as she listened, and wondered what the crazy English people were doing to him to make him howl so.

Suddenly the opposite door opened, and Milord the Englishman came forth in agitation. He came straight to her.

Pray, Madame, come to my lodging and look at my child, and tell me what ails him.

The widow-woman was delighted to follow him. She found in the gentleman’s lodging the howling child, hovered over by the anxious wife, her stolid companion, and a sullen, ill-clad, dirty peasant woman of meagre aspect. The beautiful lady in her blue gown advanced courteously toward the newcomer, took her by the hand, and with winning charm begged her to examine the child, for he would not take the breast of the bedraggled wet-nurse, but cried continuously.

Center of attention, the widow-woman sat herself upon the floor and undressed the child, noting the fineness of the English lace and the strange style of the swaddling-clothes.

The heir of Douglas was a large, strong-built child. The widow-woman judged him to be three or four weeks old, but meagre and miserable from some cause she could not find. He seemed a handsome child, with eyes of grey or blue, she hardly noticed which, and a fine white skin. The red colour that children have when they are born was quite gone off.

The widow-woman could find nothing wrong with him. She turned her attention to the wet-nurse, and found the explanation of the little mystery. The woman had no milk. The widow-woman was further mystified to notice, when she took her aside to strip and examine her, that on her back she bore the King of France’s mark; she had been branded as a thief. The widow hurried the discredited wet-nurse back before her employers, and bade them turn her off for a fraud.

Wretch! cried the gentleman, falling into transports of anger and lifting his eyes to heaven. Wretch! You know not whom you are dealing with; that child is of greater importance than you imagine!

The thin lady, imperfect in French, demanded an explanation. When she caught the drift of the matter, she threw herself into the arm-chair near the window and fainted away. The burly attendant ran with a glass of water; but the distracted lady rejected it, and fell a-weeping. The child howled on.

Call the landlady, advised the widow at this crisis, and get rid of this useless nurse.

On this the dirty little woman threw herself upon her knees before Milord in supplication.

I pity you, cried Milord loftily, for an unhappy wretch; for we would have carried you with us to our own country, and made your fortune.

Alas, cried the little woman, wringing her hands, have mercy upon me, for it is ten o’clock at night, and past, and I have not a penny in my pocket.

Give her something, advised the widow-woman, give her something in charity.

Milord gave her a couple of louis, and the fraudulent wet-nurse scuttled off hastily.

The landlady of the Hôtel d’Anjou was glad to assist the distressed Scotch family in this crisis. She hastened to summon her neighbour the joiner’s wife, whose own child was ready to be weaned. The joiner’s wife readily undertook to nourish the howling child, and soon his howls were stilled. Peace settled down upon the Hôtel d’Anjou.

Everyone who had beheld the little scene was much touched by Milady’s great sensibility and affection for her child. They were equally enchanted by Milady’s charm and condescension. Surely, they thought, she must be a person of consequence in her own country.

This night a DOUGLAS your protection claims

A Wife! A Mother! Pity’s softest names:

The story of her woes indulgent hear,

And grant your suppliant all she begs, a tear.

(PROLOGUE TO HOME’S Douglas)

Chapter II

Lady Jane Douglas was indeed a person of consequence in her own country. She was the only sister and presumptive heir of the richest nobleman in Scotland, and queen of many hearts in her own right.

First among her subjects were her companions at the Hôtel d’Anjou, her confidential woman, Helen Hewit, and her adoring husband, Colonel John Steuart.

Square, blunt, silent Mrs. Hewit had been her companion from birth, following her like a shadow and protecting her like a bodyguard. Even a husband could not separate them, nor oust Mrs. Hewit from her half of my Lady’s bed.

John Steuart had admired my Lady from afar for many years, but only recently had he won her. When Lady Jane was a young red-headed beauty at the Court of King George I, the toast of the courtiers as a great character of a woman, Colonel John Steuart was already a ruined man. In the rising of the ’15 he had drawn claymore under the blue-and-gold banner of the Old Pretender, charged at Sheriffmuir, and fled for his life when the rebellion failed. For a while his star continued high. Like many another exiled Scot, he had one thing only to sell, his sword; but he carried it to the best market, and made a good bargain. He became a Colonel on the staff of Charles XII of Sweden. He was ideally fitted for a soldier. He was thought one of the handsomest men of his age, with his regular features, ruddy complexion, and merry insinuating glance. He stood six feet high without shoes, which was very tall indeed in an age when the norm ran a good six inches shorter than it does today. An athlete, he was good at games, bold at the gambling table and tricky over the chess-board. He had a quick resolution, fertile resource, and elastic principles. He despised hardship, and neither illness nor age, grief nor loss, imprisonment nor exile, ever served for a minute to dim the gaiety of his wit and the charm of his gallantry. Men liked him, and women loved him. He must have found soldiering much to his taste.

However, prudent folk at home thought differently. Over-persuaded by family and friends, in the remote hope of heiring a wealthy cousin, John Steuart left the field to take the royal clemency and return to Scotland. It was a fatal mistake. His father, a Scottish judge, was a man who could beget children two at a time, and John was the fourth-begotten. The cousin’s entailed estate finally descended as far as his elder brother, and there it stuck, with not the smallest trickle left over for him. For the rest of his life John Steuart’s story was of mean lodgings abroad and duns at home, and his art was the devious art of living on his charm without work and without money. If in his difficulties he spared a thought to the radiant violet-eyed beauty so far above him, it was only because gossip about her affairs was rife.

He must have heard the romantic tale of the blow that broke her heart and set her mind against marriage. As the gossips told it, it would have served for a romance by Mistress Eliza Haywood. The Douglas beauty, the story ran, having promised her heart and her hand to Buccleuch’s heir, was proceeding in her brocades to the ball, when she met with a messenger who stopped her sedan chair to hand in a billet. It was from her fiancé and it informed her that he loved another.

The letter, they added, was a forgery. Gossips named the forger: Duchess Kitty of Queensberry, already one of the most promising eccentrics of the age, who in fact forthwith matched the vacillating youth with a lady of her own choice.

Lady Jane, her proud and tender heart cut to the quick, did not wait to investigate the letter or recapture the errant lover. She disguised her slim form in man’s attire and slipped off to France, intent on hiding her heart-break and chagrin in a Roman Catholic convent. Her family fetched her back, and her brother brought the recreant suitor to account at the sword’s point. The duel was bloodless. Buccleuch might better have fallen. All too soon he lost his wife, his equilibrium, and his dignity, till among the hackney-coachmen and washer-women of his private half-world it is said his contemporaries could scarcely recognize his face.

Lady Jane never forgot him, and she never forgave him. When at last, for reasons of her own, she gave her hand to the Colonel, the thought of Buccleuch was still in her mind. Your ladyship may very justly say, she wrote to a noble kinswoman, announcing her marriage, since I so well knew my brother’s intention not to change his state, why I delayed so long making that step? The reason I could easily give; and if it please God I shall be so happy as to see you again, I shall fully instruct you in that matter, but at present it is a subject too tedious for a letter, besides, that account would reflect so much upon the character of a certain noble Lord, that I formerly honoured with my esteem, and would paint him out so very great a fool and villain, and he being lately in a miserable enough situation and in danger of losing his life, I shall therefore at this time spare his reputation too.

The scandals of the house of Douglas were not over when Lady Jane lost Buccleuch. Mistress Eliza Haywood began circulating in one of her scurrilous chronicles an ill-natured caricature of Lady Jane, whom she represented as painting abominably and wearing false hips, and throwing herself thus equipped at men’s heads. While tongues were clacking over that, a major sensation burst, this time centering about the muddled head of Duke Archibald.

Archibald, Duke of Douglas, was as handsome as his sister, with fine eyes and an upstanding figure; but his mind was cloudy and his nature was proud, savage, and vindictive. He position as chief of the Douglas clan inflated his pride, shielded his savagery, and consecrated his vindictiveness. You scoundrel, cries the Scottish chieftain to his clansman, don’t you know that if I ordered you to go and cut a man’s throat you are to do it? Yes, replies the kern, an’t please your honour, and my own too, and hang myself too. Among such retainers the young Duke domineered unchecked.

Duke Archibald was passionately fond of his beautiful sister, and as jealous of her as if she had been his wife. He resented it when she began to show a sentimental inclination to patronize handsome youths. Lany Jane was always surrounded with humble adorers, her inferiors in rank and years, who gave her their confidences and their worship, and were rewarded with the flattery of her emotional interest and the inspiration of her elevated sentiments. One of these youths was a soldier, a bastard cousin of her own, who came to Douglas Castle and hovered about her. Duke Archibald seethed with anger.

Fury burst into madness when the youth was admitted to take his farewells in my Lady’s boudoir at midnight. The angry Duke waited until young Captain Kerr had retired to his own couch. Then he seized pistol and dagger, rushed to the soldier’s room, and killed him where he lay.

A lesser man would have gone to the gallows. The Duke went to Holland. Thence after a discreet interval he was permitted to return to Douglas Castle, where it was understood he might feel safe if he lived retired and did not flaunt himself about. The entire transaction by common consent came to be referred to as the Duke’s misfortune. What it was for the young soldier was not specified, his name being thereafter expunged from polite conversation. It was probably thought of as the Captain’s indiscretion. It was unheard-of presumption for a poor relation on the wrong side of the blanket to involve his Ducal kinsman in so much inconvenience.

The episode parted brother and sister. Thereafter Lady Jane dwelt with her mother at Merchiston, living quietly on the meagre income her brother had settled on her, and letting her youth slip from her.

My Lady was rising forty when Colonel John Steuart, a handsome widower of fifty with a half-grown son, turned up in Edinburgh. His eyes fell on the fascinating lady of whom he had heard so much, Lady Jane Douglas.

Know then, my dearest child [he wrote years later], that at first sight your noble mother captivated my heart, and that though I well knew the improbability, if not impossibility, of having my addresses to her hearkened to, after her having refused those of the Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch, and Athole, Earls of Hopetoun, Aberdeen, Panmure cum multis aliis, the strength of my passion brought me over all these difficulties, and forced me to make a respectful declaration of it, and had the pleasure to find I did not incur her displeasure by my aspiring boldness, as I was allowed the honour of continuing my visits and respectful assiduities for two years. I then met with a strong and unexpected shock from dear Lady Jane, which was, sending me back many trifles she had vouchsafed to receive from me, without giving me any reason, and from that time was forbid access, and had no return to letters I sent her begging to know in what I had offended, as I could not accuse myself in thought, word, nor deed.

Just so does the offended goddess withdraw from her peccant votary, wrapped in impenetrable cloud.

In short, wrote Colonel John, on this unhappy turn, I left Scotland, unable to be where she was whilst banished from her presence.

On July 25, 1745, seven men landed from a small French vessel in the remote Highland region of Moidart. The vessel was the Du Teillay, out of Dunkirk, outfitted by an Irish filibuster, one Rutledge, of whom we shall hear again; and two of the seven men were fated to play a part in Lady Jane’s story. One of them was Aeneas Macdonald, banker of Paris. The other was Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender.

The old Jacobite Colonel, meanly lodged on the Continent, heard with exultation how the Seven Men of Moidart rolled like a snowball through Scotland, until Bonnie Prince Charlie at the head of an army rode in triumph into Edinburgh. At the same time he heard personal good news: his father-in-law was dead, and his son Jock was the heir. He hastened back to Scotland.

He found his offended goddess in a rural retreat by the Water of Dean, and she was kinder. Upon his return, writes Colonel John, "I had the honour of an obliging message from Lady Jane, telling me that very soon after my leaving Scotland she came to know that she had done me an injustice, that she would acknowledge it publicly if I chose, as the undeserved shock was known; enfin, I was allowed to visit her as formerly." Soon the accepted wooer had the bliss of becoming one of my Lady’s household.

It was an Indian-summer idyll by the Water of Dean, marred all too soon when the tide turned against their gallant Prince and his hopes fell forever at Culloden. Soon my Lady was sheltering a fugitive with a price on his head, Mrs. Hewit’s nephew, who had been Prince Charlie’s aide-de-camp. He was one of her adoring young men, and he had elected to come straight to her at Edinburgh rather than take refuge in the heather. She did not fail him. She kept him hidden abovestairs, where his spirits were sustained by my Lady’s gay courage and the Colonel’s merry sallies. But the day came when the search grew hot, and the resourceful Colonel had to hide the young fellow in a hay-cock. This was coming too close. They packed him off in disguise; my Lady burnt-corked the fair eyebrows with her own hands.

Edinburgh was growing uncomfortable for Jacobites. It was time for them all to go. Colonel John found a little money; son Jock went on his note for £31–5–0. On this scanty capital, he called in a clergyman and made my Lady his wife. Then he slipped out