The Pocket Guide to Scandals in the Aristocracy

By Andy K. Hughes

We were going to call this a Pocket Guide to Noble Scandals but theres nothing noble about these aristocrats. Tales of greed, list, murder and mayhem litter the pages of Andy Hughes must-read book. Whether its gambling away their familys fortune, writing racy poems and shocking decent people, the aristocracy have been at the center of scandals for centuries, abusing their position of power to take advantage of everyone else or kill those who get in their way. This Pocket Guide to Scandals in the Aristocracy is a race through history, divided into eras to introduce the best and worst scurrilous tales from Francis Lovell being bricked up alive in his stately home to the ongoing mystery of Lord Lucan and delicious (but true) gossip which delighted readers when the aristocrats were thinly disguised in the novels of their day. Bring history alive with this fact-filled guide.Youll also love: The Pocket Guide to Royal Scandals and The Pocket Guide to Political Scandals, both by Andy Hughes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781844687503

Book preview

To Mr Andrew Huang and his surgical team, the doctors, nurses and staff at Wycombe General Hospital, Chiltern House Medical Centre, the Sunrise Cancer Clinic, Dr Weaver, his cancer team and support staff.

I am grateful to my family for their love, and to my wife Bridget for nursing me during those difficult times.

Without them, especially throughout 2010 and 2011, I would not have been here to write this book.

Thank you.

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

Remember When

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright © Andy K. Hughes 2012

ISBN 978 1 84468 092 4

eISBN 9781844687503

The right of Andy K. Hughes to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Typeset in 10pt Minion by Mac Style, Beverley, East Yorkshire Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CRO 4YY

Cover photograph by John Manning

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Family History, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Pen & Sword Discovery, Wharncliffe Local History, Wharncliffe True Crime, Wharncliffe Transport, Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics, Leo Cooper, The Praetorian Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Frontline Publishing.

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Contents

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1   Setting the Scene

The Real Aristocracy?

The Scandal of the Paid For Titles

Milestones in Strengthening the ‘Real’ Aristocracy

Aristocracy and the Press

Chapter 2   The Main Big Scandals

The Dramatic Ups and Downs of Thomas de Beauchamp, 12th Earl of Warwick

The Kidnap of Muriella, Daughter of the Thane of Cawdor

The Unfortunate Dukes of Bedford

The Earls of Bristol and their Shenanigans

The Castlehaven Sex Scandal – an earl arranges for his wife to be raped

Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk ‒ so greedy he was executed

Exactly what was the Ridolfi Plot?

L’affaire des Poissons – murder and scandal in France in the 1670s

Sorting Out the Dirty Servant – when an aristocrat beds her footman

The Battle of the Baths – an angry marquess cuts off his own son

Marquise de Sade – a terrible attitude to women and sex – the original sadist

The Butcher of Scotland, William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland

The Scandalous Prince Grigory Potemkin – sex with his niece assisting with the coup building a fake village where do we begin?

The Randy Servant – Mr MacDonald

Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, ‘The Unhappy Countess,’ Beaten and Kidnapped

Henry Cyril Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey – The Campest Aristocrat Ever

The 7th Earl Beauchamp and His Gay Lovers

Grace Dalrymple Elliot, Kidnapped and Almost Guillotined for Her Aristocratic Links

The Scandal in the Life of Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire

Georgiana’s Sister, Henrietta Ponsonby, Countess of Besborough and a Life of Drama, Scandal and Intrigue

William Beckford’s Horrible Lust: Paedophile and Proud!

The Revenge on Lord William Russell: Stabbing the Boss

The Tale of the Transsexual Baron

Lady Emma Hamilton and her Affair with Nelson

Lady Worsley and Her Lover

John Mytton, ‘The Mad Aristocrat’

The Sex Scandals of Lady Ellenborough, Jane Elizabeth Digby

The Cleveland Street Scandal

Hugh Cecil Lowther – The Earl Obsessed with Yellow

Frances Evelyn ‘Daisy’ Greville, a Bed-Hopping Countess

Lewis Vernon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt, The Sexual Predator

Vita Sackville-West

Edward Fitzgerald, 7th Duke of Leinster, The Bed-Sit Duke

Kathleen ‘Kick’ Kennedy Cavendish

12th Duke of Manchester, The Conman

Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll

The Scandalous Mitford Sisters

The Colourful Life of Victor Frederick Cochrane Hervey

You Can Call Me Lord Lambton – Or Can You?

The White Mischief Murder

The Lord Montagu Sex Scandal

To The Manor Porn

The Disappearance of Lord Lucan

The Italian Aristocrat Who Fiddled His Visa

The Lord Goldsmith Affair

The Lusty Lord

The Duchess of York’s Cash for Access

Scotland’s Party-Loving Aristocrat

Chapter 3   The Nobles, their Responsibilities and Work

The Posh Dosh and Aristocratic Duties

Selling off the Family Silver

The Servants of the Rich and the Aristocratic Folk of England

Chapter 4   The Stately Homes

Britain’s Lost Aristocratic History

Stately Homes & Castles

Chapter 5   The House of Lords

Useful Contact Details and Research Sources for the House of Lords

How to Write to a Member of the House of Lords

The House of Lords: Major Developments in a Thousand Years

Peers v The People – The 1900 Budget and the 1910 General Election

Cash-for-Honours 2006–2007

The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010

The Breeding Poor

The Hereditary Peerage Association

Chapter 6   And Finally

Quotations about the Aristocracy

Did You Know? – The Aristocrats are a Funny Old Lot!

Bibliography

‘Any historical opinions are my own’

‘History is subjective, it’s only ever His-Story after all.’ Bridget Bean

About the Author

Andy K. Hughes is a successful writer, having already released The Little Book of Big Words (2006) and The Pocket Guide to Royal Scandals (2011). This is his third book, looking at the scandals surrounding the aristocracy. Book number four, The Pocket Guide to Political Scandals, is due to be published in 2012.

Andy spent almost two decades working as a writer, journalist and broadcaster for some of the country’s top organisations, including the BBC, ITN and London’s LBC Radio and Capital Radio. His writing has also appeared around the world on National Public Radio (NPR) in America and via BFBS (Forces Radio). Andy has previously reported on the ITV morning news and on Magic Radio. He has written extensively on subjects ranging from the economy, to local history and from retail to the arts. He also worked on a number of magazines before committing himself full-time to writing books, in 2009.

Andy’s first love has always been history, studying as an undergraduate at the University of Reading, and at Masters level at Oxford Brookes. He is particularly interested in English history from 1509 to 1702. There are plans for several other books in the future and he is very interested in some of England’s queens and stories connected to the royals, political figures and twentieth-century American history. Andy has also spent several years researching the Brighton Bombing (1984), and plans to write about this in coming years, having interviewed Lord Tebbit and the Brighton bomber, Patrick Magee. He has spoken on a one-to-one basis at length to some of those involved. All this runs in the family, as his mother has already written a number of books in The Pocket Guide series, including: The Pocket Guide to Musicals, The Pocket Guide to Classic Books, The Pocket Guide to Ballroom Dancing, The Pocket Guide to Plays and Playwrights and The Pocket Guide to Pantomimes.

Andy lives in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, with his wife Bridget, but is originally from Shrewsbury in Shropshire. He has four sons from a previous marriage, and three grandchildren.

Acknowledgements

THANKS FOLKS!

Icannot believe how many people have helped me in one form or another while I wrote this book. Here I would like to express my sincere thanks, and point out that without them, this book would not have made it to the print room! Also, thanks to my agent Hilary George at Straight Line Management and my mother, Maureen Hughes, an author of several books in this Pocket Guide series. Their professional support, contribution and guidance have been invaluable.

I also need to thank my wife, Bridget Hughes, who has shown incredible support during my illness and has nursed me back to health. I need to thank my father, David Benson, who has helped check some spellings and dates. Errors left in, if any, would be entirely my own! Other people who have helped and supported me in a number of different ways include my sister, Vicky Hughes, and also Gwyn Hughes, especially for everything they did during December 2010 and January 2011 (they know!). Thanks, as always, to my other sisters, Rachel Benson and Helen Benson, always on the end of a phone to correct my spelling! Thanks also to Elizabeth Benson, the staff at High Wycombe Library for all their technical support, and Andrew Elston. My thanks to my friend and History Doctorate student, Daniel Renshaw M.A. for checking historical facts on several of the sections, and his many kind text messages of encouragement! Thanks to Michael Barry for continually fixing my computer and offering invaluable IT support. A big thanks to Miss Nabeelah Ullah for checking facts and layout, and Abby White for her words of encouragement. Thanks to Chris and Nick Folley for allowing photos of Harleyford Manor to be taken and to Alice Ramcharran for photographic assistance, and generous assistance from the British Boxing Board of Control and the Plumbers Arms in London. Thanks also to Mrs C. Cook for helping, and to the office at Fawley Court.

Andy K. Hughes

Chapter One

Setting the Scene

Britain has nearly always had some sort of class system, a pecking order or a social hierarchy, of one kind or another. The British aristocracy is hundreds of years old, and some would argue, part of the cause of a class-ridden society. Others would say it helps make up our richly endowed social spectrum. Do we need a noble class in this day and age? Are they really superior to us, and if so, in what way? First of all, before we look at scandals in the aristocracy throughout the ages, let us look at what exactly the aristocracy is. The word actually comes from the Greek ‘aristos’ and ‘kratos’, literally meaning ‘rule by the best’. Other modern day dictionary definitions of aristocracy include one or more of the following terms:

Government by ruling class

A class of people superior to others

Noble birth

Upper class

High birth

Privileged

Socially, economically or intellectually superior

Powerful members of society

Those in the highest places of the social hierarchy

Landowning gentry

If you look back throughout history, both in Britain and in other countries, you can see real evidence that power and strength often came from wealthy, landowning and titled aristocrats. However, the scale of Britain’s middle class has dramatically increased over the generations. Put simply, the balance of power has gradually moved from royalty, to nobility, to democracy, with a democratically elected parliament, and eventually a middle-class section of society with the vote, after the Reform Act of 1832, plus later reforms. Some women got the vote in 1918, and more in 1928.

Aristocrats may not be our social and political betters any more, but for many of them their wealth and longstanding genealogical background provides them with a secure standing in the social pecking order. Britain’s social history has varied between three main structures; hierarchical, triadic and dichotomous. A hierarchical society is organised into several levels and structural layers, laid out according to certain rules, criteria and tradition. Triadic is simpler; with an upper, middle and lower class. Dichotomous is a simple ‘them up there’ versus ‘us down here’ society, or a division into two easily recognised different parts. In other words, the patricians looking down on the peasants. A patrician is simply classed as one of refined and noble origin. David Cannadine argues, in Class in Britain, that the vagueness of these three models has allowed Britain to put up with them for so long and alternate from one to the other. I would agree that the lines can be crossed and rather blurred. Is society and social class so two-dimensional and like a ladder, or it is more complex, like a revolving tree, three-dimensional and with depth?

Former British Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, in office 1997–2007, ended the right of some hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords and help govern the country from their unelected seat. One can argue the lines of class have become blurred throughout the last two or three generations. Hundreds of years ago, most people knew who they were and accepted their lot. We are more ambitious now and have better opportunities in much of the developed world. Do East End working-class boys and big achievers like Alan Sugar, later ‘Sir’ Alan Sugar and then ‘Lord’ Sugar, turn from working class to upper class? Here is another example. In the 1950s and 1960s my grandfather was a proud ‘working-class’ man. Ernie Rowan always voted Labour, and did not like the ‘posh people with titles’. But his social lines were definitely blurred; he loved the Queen for starters, and despite frequenting the working men’s clubs of York, worked hard, saved harder and by the 1970s lived in one of the most exclusive ‘posh’ parts of York. To refer to him as a middle-class man would have been a real insult to his values. In other words, can you choose your class? Can you earn it? Can you be given it? Can you change it? Therefore, who exactly is an aristocrat and why? For example, what makes Earl Spencer an aristocrat? Is it the title bestowed upon his family, or the immense wealth that generations of the family earned and built on, or is it both? If the Earl gave it all up and went to work in a burger bar, but kept a five-bedroom house, would he be working class, middle class, or still a noble aristocrat?

The aristocracy has faced its fair share of troubles throughout the years. In Europe, the First and Second World Wars and the Russian Revolution helped spread communism and weaken the aristocracy throughout the continent. The situation came full circle in places though. After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, some European aristocrats even had their confiscated property and land restored to them. They have survived wars, depressions and family splits, to hang on to immense wealth in most cases. Britain’s own aristocracy has had both good and bad times throughout history. It was a straightforward existence in the times of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, through the 1700s and into the Victorian age. But everything from the Civil War and republicanism, to plagues and economic troubles has hit the top echelons of society, not to mention divorce, death duties and incompetence.