famous imposter 8

famous imposter 8

The strange position was that even if the petitioner should win her

main case she would prove her own illegitimacy. For granting that the

alleged Olive Serres should have been legally married to the Duke of

Cumberland, the Royal Marriage Act, passed five years later, forbade

the union of the child of such a marriage, except with the sanction of

the reigning monarch.

 

In the making of the claim of Mrs. Ryves a grave matter appeared--one

which rendered it absolutely necessary that the case should be heard

in the most formal and adequate way and settled once for all. The

matter was one affecting the legality of the marriage of George III,

and so touching the legitimacy of his son afterwards George IV, his son

afterwards William IV and his son the Duke of Kent, father of Queen

Victoria--and so debarring them and all their descendants from the

Crown of England. The points of contact were in documents insidiously

though not overtly produced and the preparation of which showed much

constructive skill in the world of fiction. Amongst the many documents

put in evidence by the Counsel for Mrs. Ryves were two certificates of

the (alleged) marriage between Olive Wilmot and the Duke of Cumberland.

On the back of each of these alleged certificates was written what

purported to be a certificate of the marriage of George III to Hannah

Lightfoot performed in 1759 by J. Wilmot. The wording of the documents

varied slightly.

 

It was thus that the claim of Mrs. Ryves and her son became linked

up with the present and future destinies of England. These alleged

documents too, brought the Attorney General upon the scene. There

were two reasons for this. Firstly the action had to be taken against

the Crown in the matter of form; secondly in such a case with the

possibility of such vast issues it was absolutely necessary that every

position should be carefully guarded, every allegation jealously

examined. In each case the Attorney General was the proper official to

act.

 

The Case of the Petitioners was prepared with extraordinary care.

There were amongst the documents produced, numbering over seventy,

some containing amongst them forty-three signatures of Dr. Wilmot,

sixteen of Lord Chatham, twelve of Mr. Dunning (afterwards the 1st

Baron Ashburton), twelve of George III, thirty-two of Lord Warwick and

eighteen of H.R.H., the Duke of Kent, the father of Queen Victoria.

Their counsel stated that although these documents had been repeatedly

brought to the notice of the successive Ministers of the Crown, it had

never been suggested until that day that they were forgeries. This

latter statement was traversed in Court by the Lord Chief Baron, who

called attention to a debate on the subject in the House of Commons in

which they were denounced as forgeries.

 

In addition to those documents already quoted were the following

certificates:

 

“The marriage of these parties was this day duly solemnized at

Kew Chapel, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church

of England, by myself.

 

“J. Wilmot.”

 

“George P.”

“Hannah.”

 

Witness to this marriage

 

“W. Pitt.”

“Anne Taylor.”

 

May 27, 1759.

 

* * * * *

 

April 17, 1759

 

“This is to Certify that the marriage of these parties (George,

Prince of Wales, to Hannah Lightfoot) was duly solemnized this

day, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of

England, at their residence at Peckham, by myself.

 

“J. Wilmot.”

 

“George Guelph.”

“Hannah Lightfoot.”

 

Witness to the marriage of these parties,--

 

“William Pitt.”

“Anne Taylor.”

 

* * * * *

 

“I hereby Certify that George, Prince of Wales, married Hannah

Wheeler _alias_ Lightfoot, April 17, 1759, but from finding the

latter to be her right name I solemnized the union of the said

parties a second time May the 27th, 1759, as the Certificate

affixed to this paper will confirm.

 

“J. Wilmot.

Witness (Torn)”

 

* * * * *

 

The case for the Crown was strongly supported. Not only did the

Attorney-General, Sir Roundell Palmer (afterwards Lord Chancellor

and First Earl of Selborne) appear himself, but he was supported by

the Solicitor-General, the Queen’s Advocate, Mr. Hannen and Mr. R.

Bourke. The Attorney-General made the defence himself. At the outset

it was difficult to know where to begin, for everywhere undoubted and

unchallenged facts were interwoven with the structure of the case; and

of all the weaknesses and foibles of the important persons mentioned,

full advantage was taken. The marriage of the Duke of Gloucester to

Lady Waldegrave had made him unpopular in every way, and he was at the

time a _persona ingrata_ at Court. There had been rumours of scandal

about the King (when Prince of Wales) and the “Fair Quaker,” Hannah

Lightfoot. The anonymity of the author of the celebrated “Letters of

Junius,” which attacked the King so unmercifully, lent plausibility to

any story which might account for it. The case of Mrs. Ryves, tried

in 1861, in which her own legitimacy had been proved and in which

indisputable documents had been used, was taken as a proof of her _bona

fides_.

 

Mrs. Ryves herself was in the box for nearly the whole of three days,

during which she bore herself firmly, refusing even to sit down when

the presiding judge courteously extended that privilege to her. She

was then, by her own statement, over seventy years of age. In the

course of her evidence a Memorial to George IV was produced, written

by her mother, Mrs. Serres, in which the word offspring was spelled

“orfspring”; in commenting on which the Attorney-General produced a

congratulatory Ode to the Prince Regent on his birthday in 1812, by the

same author, in which occurred the line:

 

“Hail valued heir orfspring of Heaven’s smile.” Similar eccentric

orthography was found in other autograph papers of Mrs. Serres.

 

The Attorney-General, in opposing the claim, alleged that the whole

story of the Duke of Cumberland’s marriage to Olive Wilmot was a

concoction from beginning to end, and said that the mere statement of

the Petitioner’s case was sufficient to stamp its true character. That

its folly and absurdity were equal to its audacity; in every stage

it exposed itself to conviction by the simplest tests. He added that

the Petitioner might have dwelt so long upon documents produced and

fabricated by others, that, with her memory impaired by old age, the

principle of veracity might have been poisoned, and the offices of

imagination and memory confounded to such an extent that she really

believed that things had been done and said in her presence which were

in fact entirely imaginary. No part of her story was corroborated

by a single authentic document, or by a single extrinsic fact. The

forgery, falsehood and fraud of the case were proved in many ways. The

explanations were as false and feeble as the story itself. “I cannot

of course,” he said, “lay bare the whole history of the concoction

of these extraordinary documents, but there are circumstances which

indicate that they were concocted by Mrs. Serres herself.”

 

Having commented on some other matters spoken of, but regarding which

no evidence was adduced, he proceeded to speak of the alleged wife of

Joseph Wilmot D. D., the Polish Princess, sister of Count Poniatowski,

afterwards elected King of Poland (1764), who was the mother of his

charming daughter, Olive. “The truth is,” said Sir Roundell, “that

both the Polish Princess and the charming daughter were pure myths;

no such persons ever existed--they were as entirely creatures of the

imagination as Shakespeare’s Ferdinand and Miranda.”

 

As to the documents produced by the Petitioners he remarked:

 

“What sort of documents were those which were produced? The

internal evidence proved that they were the most ridiculous,

absurd, preposterous series of forgeries that the perverted

ingenuity of man ever invented ... they were all written on

little scraps and slips of paper, such as no human being would

ever have used for the purpose of recording transactions of this

kind, and it would be proved that in every one of these pieces of

paper the watermark of date was wanting.”

 

This was but a new variant of the remark made by the Lord Chief

Justice, just after the putting-in of the alleged marriage Certificate

of the Prince of Wales and Hannah Lightfoot:

 

“The Court is, as I understand, asked solemnly to declare, on the

strength of two certificates, coming I know not whence, written

on two scraps of paper, that the marriage, the only marriage of

George III which the world believes to have taken place, between

His Majesty and Queen Charlotte, was an invalid marriage, and

consequently that all the Sovereigns who have sat on the throne

since his death, including Her present Majesty, were not entitled

to sit on the throne. That is the conclusion which the Court is

asked to come to upon these two rubbishy pieces of paper, one

signed ‘George P.,’ and the other ‘George Guelph.’ I believe them

to be gross and rank forgeries. The Court has no difficulty in

coming to the conclusion, even assuming that the signatures had

that character of genuineness which they have not, that what is

asserted in these documents has not the slightest foundation in

fact.”

 

With this view the Lord Chief Baron and the Judge-Ordinary entirely

concurred, the former adding:

 

“... the declarations of Hannah Lightfoot, if there ever was such

a person, cannot be received in evidence on the faith of these

documents ... the only issues for the jury are the issues in the

cause and this is not an issue in the cause, but an incidental

issue.... I think that these documents, which the Lord Chief

Justice has treated with all the respect which properly belongs

to them, are not genuine.”

 

Before the Attorney General had finished the statement of his case, he

was interrupted by the foreman of the jury, who said that the jury were unanimously of opinion that there was no necessity to hear any further evidence as they were convinced that the signatures of the documents were not genuine. On this the Lord Chief Justice said: