"Not to be acted upon until the king's demise."
"With other sacred papers to Lord Warwick's care for Olive,
my grand-daughter, when I am no more. J.W."
"MY DEAR OLIVE,--As the undoubted heir of Augustus, King of
Poland, your rights will find aid of the Sovereigns that you
are allied to by blood, should the family of your father act
unjustly, but may the great Disposer of all things direct
otherwise. The Princess of Poland, your grandmother, I made
my lawful wife, and I do solemnly attest that you are the
last of that illustrious blood. May the Almighty guide you
to all your distinctions of birth. Mine has been a life of
trial, but not of crime!
J. WILMOT."
"_January_, 1791."
"If this pacquet meets your eye let not ambition destroy the
honour nor integrity of your nature. Remember that others
will be dependent on your conduct, the injured children,
perhaps, of the good and excellent consort of your king--I
mean the fruit of his Majesties first marriage--who may have
been consigned to oblivion like yourself; but I hope that is
not exactly the case; but as I was innocently instrumental
to their being, by solemnizing the ill-destined union of
power and innocence, it is but an act of conscientious duty
to leave to your care the certificates that will befriend
them hereafter! The English nation will receive my last
legacy as a proof of my affection, and when corruption has
desolated the land, and famine and its attendant miseries
create civil commotion, I solemnly command you to make known
to the Parliament the first lawful marriage of the king, as
when you are in possession of the papers, Lord Warwick has been
sacredly and affectionately by myself entrusted with, their
constitutional import will save the country! Should the
necessity exist for their operation, consult able and
patriotic men, and they will instruct you. May Heaven bless
their and your efforts in every sense of the subject, and so
shall my rejoiced spirit with approving love (if so
permitted) feel an exultation inseparable from the
prosperity of England.
J. WILMOT."
"GEORGE R.
"We are hereby pleased to recommend Olive, our niece, to our
faithful Lords and Commons for protection and support,
should she be in existence at the period of our royal
demise; such being Olive Wilmot, the supposed daughter of
Robert Wilmot of Warwick.
J. DUNNING.
ROBT. WILMOT. _January 7th_, 1780."
Mrs. Ryves, the petitioner, was the principal witness called. She gave
her evidence very clearly and firmly, and when offered a seat in the
witness-box declined it, saying that she was not tired, and could
stand for ever to protect the honour of her family. She said she
recollected coming from Liverpool to London with her father and mother
when she was only two years and a half old, and narrated how she lived
with them conjointly up to the date of the separation, and with her
mother afterwards. It was then proposed to ask her some questions as
to declarations made by Hannah Lightfoot, the reputed wife of George
III., but the Lord Chief-Justice interposed with the remark that there
was no evidence before the court as to the marriage of the king with
this woman. The petitioner's counsel referred to the two following
documents:--
"_April_ 17, 1759.
"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 TAYLER."
"_May_ 27, 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 TAYLER."
Upon this, the Lord Chief-Justice again interposed, saying, "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 to which the court is asked to come 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."
Lord Chief-Baron Pollock expressed his entire concurrence in the
opinion of the Lord Chief-Justice. After explaining that it was the
province of the court to decide any question of fact, on the truth or
falsehood of which the admissibility of a piece of evidence was
dependent, he declared that these documents did not at all satisfy him
that George III. was ever married before his marriage to Queen
Charlotte; that the signatures were not proved to be even like the
king's handwriting; and that the addition of the word "Guelph" to one
of them was satisfactory proof that the king, at that date Prince of
Wales, did not write it--it being a matter of common information that
the princes of the royal family only use the Christian name.
Sir James Wilde also assented, characterizing the certificates as
"very foolish forgeries," but adding that he was not sorry that the
occasion had arisen for bringing them into a court of justice, where
their authenticity could be inquired into by evidence, as the
existence of documents of this sort was calculated to set abroad a
number of idle stories for which there was probably not the slightest
foundation.
The evidence as to Hannah Lightfoot being thus excluded, the
examination of Mrs. Ryves, the petitioner, was continued. She
remembered proceeding to Brighton, in 1805, where herself and her
mother were introduced to the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV.
The prince had subsequently many conversations with them, and had
bestowed many kindnesses on them. She knew the Duke of Kent from a
very early age--he being a constant visitor at their house from 1805
till the time of his death. In the spring of 1815 Lord Warwick's
disclosure was made, and the Duke of Kent acknowledged the
relationship even before he saw the proofs which were at the time at
Warwick Castle. Thither the earl went to procure them, at the expense
of Mrs. Serres, he being at this time so poor that he had not the means
to go; indeed, Mrs. Ryves asserted that sometimes the earl was so
terribly impoverished that he had not even a sheet of note-paper to
write upon.
His mission was successful; and on his return he produced three sets
of papers, one of which he said he had received from Dr. Wilmot,
another set from Lord Chatham, and the third set had been always in
his possession. One packet was marked "Not to be opened until after
the king's death," and accordingly the seal was not broken; but the
others were opened, and the papers they contained were read aloud in
the presence of the Duke of Kent, who expressed himself perfectly
satisfied that the signatures of George III. were in his father's
handwriting, and declared that, as the Earl of Warwick might die at
any moment, he would thenceforward take upon himself the guardianship
of Mrs. Serres and her daughter. The sealed packet was opened in the
latter part of 1819, and Mrs. Ryves, when questioned as to its
contents, pointed out documents for the most part relating to the
marriage of Dr. Wilmot and the Polish princess. Among other documents
was the following:--
"Olive, provided the royal family acknowledge you, keep
secret all the papers which are connected with the king's
first marriage; but should the family's desertion (be)
manifested (should you outlive the king) then, and only
then, make known all the state secrets which I have left in
the Earl of Warwick's keeping for your knowledge. Such
papers I bequeath to you for your sole and uncontrolled
property, to use and act upon as you deem fit, according to
expediency of things. Receive this as the sacred will of
JAMES WILMOT."
"_June --st_, 1789.
Witness, WARWICK."
Mrs. Ryves maintained that up to the moment of the opening of the
sealed packet her mother had believed herself to be the daughter of
Robert Wilmot and the niece of Dr. Wilmot, and she did not know of any
Olive Wilmot except her aunt, who was the wife of Mr. Payne. When the
first information as to her birth was given to her by Lord Warwick,
she supposed herself to be the daughter of the Duke of Cumberland by
the Olive Wilmot who was afterwards Mrs. Payne, and had no idea that
her mother was the daughter of Dr. Wilmot, and was another person
altogether. There was a great consultation as to opening the packet
before the king's death; but the Duke of Kent persisted in his desire
to know its contents, and the seals were broken. The Duke of Kent died
on the 26th of January, 1820, and George III. in the following week,
on the 30th of the same month.
Mrs. Ryves then proved the identity of certain documents which bore the
signatures of the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Kent. They were
chiefly written on morsels of paper, and elicited the remark from the
Lord Chief-Justice, that "his royal highness seemed to have been as
poor as to paper as the earl." She said that these documents were
written in her own presence. Among them were these:--
"I solemnly promise to see my cousin Olive, Princess of
Cumberland, reinstated in her R----l rights at my father's
demise.
EDWARD."
"_May_ 3, 1816."
"I bind myself, by my heirs, executors, and assigns, to pay
to my dearest coz. Olive, Princess of Cumberland, four
hundred pounds yearly during her life.
EDWARD."
"_May_ 3, 1818."
"I bequeath to Princess Olive of Cumberland ten thousand
pounds should I depart this life before my estate of
Castlehill is disposed of.
EDWARD."
"_June_ 9, 1819."
"I hereby promise to return from Devonshire early in the
spring to lay before the Regent the certificates of my
dearest cousin Olive's birth.
EDWARD."
"_Novr_. 16, 1819."
"_Jany._ (_illegible_).
"If this paper meets my dear Alexandria's eye, my dear
cousin Olive will present it, whom my daughter will, for my
sake, I hope, love and serve should I depart this life.
EDWARD."
"I sign this only to say that I am very ill, but should I
not get better, confide in the duchess, my wife, who will,
for my sake, assist you until you obtain your royal rights.
"God Almighty bless you, my beloved cousin, prays
EDWARD."
"To Olive my cousin, and blessing to Lavinia."
Mrs. Ryves then went on to state that, after the death of the Duke of
Kent and his father, the Duke of Sussex paid a visit to herself and
her mother. On that occasion, and subsequently, he examined the
papers, and declared himself satisfied that they were genuine.
In her cross-examination, and in answer to questions put by the court,
Mrs. Ryves stated that her mother, Mrs. Serres, was both a clever
painter and an authoress, and was appointed landscape painter to the
court. She had been in the habit of writing letters to members of the
royal family before 1815, when she had no idea of her relationship to
them. Her mother might have practised astrology as an amusement. A
letter which was produced, and described the appearance of the ghost
of Lord Warwick's father, was in her mother's handwriting--as was also
a manifesto calling upon "the Great Powers, Principalities, and
Potentates of the brave Polish nation to rally round their Princess
Olive, grand-daughter of Stanislaus," and informing them that her
legitimacy as Princess of Cumberland had been proved. Her mother had
written a "Life of Dr. Wilmot," and had ascribed the "Letters of
Junius" to him, after a careful comparison of his MS. with those in
the possession of Woodfall, Junius's publisher. She had also issued a
letter to the English nation in 1817, in which she spoke of Dr. Wilmot
as having died unmarried; and Mrs. Ryves could not account for that, as
her mother had heard of his marriage two years previously.
A document was then produced in which the Duke of Kent acknowledged
the marriage of his father with Hannah Lightfoot, and the legitimacy
of Olive, praying the latter to maintain secrecy during the life of
the king, and constituting her the guardian of his daughter
Alexandrina, and directress of her education on account of her
relationship, and also because the Duchess of Kent was not familiar
with English modes of education. Mrs. Ryves explained that her mother
refrained from acting on that document out of respect for the Duchess
of Kent, who, she thought, had the best right to direct the education
of her own daughter (the present queen). She also stated that her
mother had received a present of a case of diamonds from the Duke of
Cumberland, but she did not know what became of them.
The Attorney-General, on behalf of the crown, after explaining the
provisions of the Act, proceeded to tear the story of the petitioners
to pieces, pronouncing its folly and absurdity equal to its audacity.
The Polish princess and her charming daughter he pronounced pure
myths--as entirely creatures of the imagination as Shakspeare's
"Ferdinand and Miranda." As to the pretended marriage of George III.
and Hannah Lightfoot, the tale was even more astonishing and
incredible, for not only were wife and children denied by the king,
and a second bigamous contract entered into, but the lady held her
tongue, the children were content to live in obscurity, and Dr. Wilmot
faithfully kept the secret, and preached sermons before the king and
his second wife Queen Charlotte. Not that Dr. Wilmot did not feel these
grave state secrets pressing him down, but the mode of revenge which
he adopted was to write the "_Letters of Junius!_"
Yet Dr. Wilmot died in 1807, apparently a common-place country parson.
Surely there never was a more wonderful example of the possibility of
keeping secrets. One would have imagined that the very walls would
have spoken of such events; but although at least seven men and one
woman (the wife of Robert Wilmot) must have been acquainted with them,
the secret was kept as close as the grave for forty-three years, and
was never even suspected before 1815, although all the actors in these
extraordinary scenes seemed to have been occupied day and night in
writing on little bits of paper, and telling the whole story. In 1815
the facts first came to the knowledge of Mrs. Serres; but, even then,
they were not revealed, until the grave had closed over every
individual who could vouch as to the handwriting.
As far as the petitioner, Mrs. Ryves, was concerned, the
Attorney-General said he could imagine that she had brooded on this
matter so long (she being then over 70 years of age), that she had
brought herself to believe things that had never happened. The mind
might bring itself to believe a lie, and she 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 entirely imaginary. He contended that Mrs.
Serres, the mother of the petitioner, was not altogether responsible
for her actions, and proceeded to trace her history. Between 1807 and
1815, he said, she had the advantage of becoming personally known to
some members of the royal family, and being a person of ill-regulated
ambition and eccentric character, and also being in pecuniary
distress, her eccentricity took the turn of making advances to
different members of that family. She opened fire on the Prince of
Wales in 1809, by sending a letter to his private secretary, comparing
His Royal Highness to Julius Cæsar, and talking in a mad way about the
politics of the illustrious personages of the day. In 1810 other
letters followed in the same style, and in one of them she asked,
"Why, sir, was I so humbly born?"
Scattered about these letters were mysterious allusions to secrets of
state and symptoms of insane delusions. In one she imagined she had
been seriously injured by the Duke of York. In another, she fancied
that some one had poisoned her. In one letter she actually offered to
lend the Prince of Wales, £20,000 to induce him to grant the interview
of which she was so desirous, although in other letters she begged for
pecuniary assistance, and represented herself to be in great distress.
The letters were also full of astrology; she spoke of her "occult
studies;" and she further believed in ghosts. The manifesto to Poland
also pointed to the same conclusion as to her state of mind. A person
of such an erratic character, he said, was very likely to concoct such
a story, and the story would naturally take the turn of trying to
connect herself with the royal family.
During the interval between the death of Lord Warwick in 1816 and
1821, when it was first made public, her story passed through no less
than three distinct and irreconcilable stages. At first she stated
that she was the daughter of the Duke of Cumberland by Mrs. Payne, the
sister of Dr. Wilmot; and in 1817 she still described herself as Dr.
Wilmot's niece. It was said that she did not come into possession of
the papers until after Lord Warwick's death, but this assertion was
contradicted by the evidence of Mrs. Ryves, as to events which were
within her own recollection, and which she represented to have passed
in her presence.
The second stage of the story was contained in a letter to Mr.
Fielding, the Bow Street magistrate, in October, 1817. Having been
threatened with arrest, she wrote to him for protection, and in this
letter she represented herself as the natural daughter of the late
Duke of Cumberland by a sister of the late Dr. Wilmot, whom he had
seduced under promise of marriage, she being a lady of large fortune.
In connection with this stage of the story, he referred to another
letter which she wrote to the Prince-Regent in July, 1818, in which
she stated that Lord Warwick had told her the story of her birth in
his lifetime, but without showing her any documents; that he excused
himself for not having made the disclosure before by saying that he
was unable to repay a sum of £2000 which had been confided to him by
the Duke of Cumberland for her benefit; and then she actually went on
to say that when Lord Warwick died she thought all evidence was lost
until she opened a sealed packet which contained the documents. This
was quite inconsistent with the extraordinary story of Mrs. Ryves as to
the communication of the papers to her and her mother in 1815.
The claim of legitimate royal birth was first brought forward at a
time of great excitement and agitation, when the case of Queen
Caroline was before the public; and it was brought forward in a tone
of intimidation--a revolution being threatened if the claim were not
recognised within a few hours. The documents were changed at times to
suit the changing story, and there was every reason to believe that
they were concocted by Mrs. Serres herself, who was a careful student
of the _Junius_ MSS., who was an artist and practised caligraphist,
and who had gone through such a course of study as well prepared her
for the fabrication of forged documents. The internal evidence of the
papers themselves proved that they were the most ridiculous, absurd,
preposterous series of forgeries that perverted ingenuity ever
invented. If every expert that ever lived in the world swore to the
genuineness of these documents, they could not possibly believe them
to be genuine. They were all written on little scraps and slips of
paper such as no human being ever would have used for the purpose of
recording transactions of this kind, and in everyone of these pieces
of paper the watermark of date was wanting.
At this stage of his address the Attorney-General was interrupted by
the foreman of the jury, who stated that himself and his colleagues
were unanimously of opinion that the signatures to the documents were
not genuine.
The Lord Chief-Justice, thereupon, immediately remarked that they
shared the opinion which his learned brethren and himself had
entertained for a long time--that everyone of the documents was
spurious.
After some observations by the counsel for the petitioner, who
persisted that the papers produced were genuine, the Lord
Chief-Justice proceeded to sum up the facts of the case. He said it
was a question whether the internal evidence in the documents of
spuriousness and forgery was not quite as strong as the evidence
resulting from the examination of their handwriting. Two or three of
them appeared to be such outrages on all probability, that even if
there had been strong evidence of the genuineness of their
handwriting, no man of common sense could come to the conclusion that
they were genuine. Some of them were produced to prove that King
George III. had ordered the fraud to be committed of rebaptising an
infant child under a false name as the daughter of persons whose
daughter she was not; another showed that the king had divested the
crown of one of its noblest appendages--the Duchy of Lancaster--by a
document he was not competent by law to execute, written upon a loose
piece of paper, and countersigned by W. Pitt and Dunning; by another
document, also written upon a loose piece of paper, he expressed his
royal will to the Lords and Commons, that when he should be dead they
should recognise this lady as Duchess of Cumberland. These papers bore
the strongest internal evidence of their spuriousness. The evidence as
to the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland with Olive Wilmot could not
be separated from that part of the evidence which struck at the
legitimacy of the Royal Family, by purporting to establish the
marriage of George III. to a person named Hannah Lightfoot. Could any
one believe that the documents on which that marriage was attested by
W. Pitt and Dunning were genuine? But the petitioner could not help
putting forward the certificates of that marriage, because two of them
were written on the back of the certificate of the marriage of the
Duke of Cumberland with Olive Wilmot. Men of intelligence could not
fail to see the motive for writing the certificates of those two
marriages on the same piece of paper. The first claim to the
consideration of the royal family put forward by Mrs. Serres was, that
she was the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Cumberland by Mrs.
Payne--a married woman. Her next claim was, that she was his daughter
by an unmarried sister of Dr. Wilmot. She lastly put forward her
present claim, that she was the offspring of a lawful marriage between
the duke and Olive, the daughter of Dr. Wilmot. At the time when the
claim was put forward in its last shape, it was accompanied by an
attempt at intimidation, not only on the score of the injustice that
would be done if George IV. refused to recognise the claim, but also
on the score that she was in possession of documents showing that
George III., at the time he was married to Queen Charlotte, had a wife
living, and had issue by her; and consequently that George IV., who
had just then ascended the throne, was illegitimate, and was not the
lawful sovereign of the realm. And the documents having reference to
George III.'s first marriage were inseparably attached to the
documents by which the legitimacy of Mrs. Serres was supposed to be
established, with the view, no doubt, of impressing on the king's mind
the fact that she could not put forward her claims, as she intended to
do, without at the same time making public the fact that the marriage
between George III. and Queen Charlotte was invalid. Could any one
believe in the authenticity of certificates like these; or was it
possible to imagine that, even if Hannah Lightfoot had existed, and
asserted her claim, great officers of state like Chatham and Dunning
should have recognised her as "Hannah Regina," as they were said to
have done?
In another document the Duke of Kent gave the guardianship of his
daughter to the Princess Olive. Remembering the way in which that lady
had been brought up, and the society in which she had moved, could the
Duke of Kent ever have dreamed of superseding his own wife, the mother
of the infant princess, and passing by all the other distinguished
members of his family, and conferring on Mrs. Serres, the landscape
painter, the sole guardianship of the future Queen of England? They
must also bear in mind the way in which the claim had been brought
forward. The irresistible inference from the different tales told was,
that the documents were from time to time prepared to meet the form
which her claims from time to time assumed. A great deal had been said
about different members of the royal family having countenanced and
supported this lady. He could quite understand, if an appeal was made
on her behalf as an illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Cumberland,
that a generous-minded prince might say, "As you have our blood
flowing in your veins, you shall not be left in want;" and, very
likely, papers might have been shown to some members of the royal
family in support of that claim which they believed to be genuine. It
was just as easy to fabricate papers showing her illegitimacy as to
fabricate those produced; and probably such papers would not be very
rigorously scrutinized. But it was not possible to believe that the
documents now produced (including the Hannah Lightfoot certificates)
had been shown to members of the royal family, and pronounced by them
to be genuine. He could not understand why the secret was to be kept
after the Duke of Cumberland's death, when there was no longer any
danger that he would incur the risk of punishment for bigamy; and why
the death of George III. should be fixed upon as the time for
disclosing it. The death of George III. was the very time when it
would become important to keep the secret, for if it had been then
disclosed, it would have shown that neither George IV. nor the Duke of
Kent were entitled to succeed to the throne. Why then should the Duke
of Kent stipulate for the keeping of the secret until George III.
died? They must look at all the circumstances of the case, and say
whether they believed the documents produced by the petitioner to be
genuine.
The jury at once found that they were _not_ satisfied that Olive
Serres, the mother of Mrs. Ryves, was the legitimate daughter of Henry
Frederick Duke of Cumberland, and Olive his wife; that they were _not_
satisfied that Henry Frederick Duke of Cumberland was lawfully married
to Olive Wilmot on the 4th of March, 1767. On the other issues--that
Mrs. Ryves was the legitimate daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Serres, and that
the younger petitioner, W.H. Ryves, was the legitimate son of Mr. and
Mrs. Ryves--they found for the petitioner.
On the motion of the Attorney-General, the judges ordered the
documents produced by the petitioners to be impounded.
It may be noted, in conclusion, that if Mrs. Ryves had succeeded in
proving that her mother was a princess of the blood royal, she would
at the same time have established her own illegitimacy. The alleged
marriage of the Duke of Cumberland took place before the passing of
the Royal Marriage Act; and, therefore, if Mrs. Serres had been the
duke's daughter, she would have been a princess of the blood royal.
But that Act had been passed before the marriage of Mrs. Serres to her
husband, and would have rendered it invalid, and consequently her
issue would have been illegitimate. As it was, Mrs. Ryves obtained a
declaration of her legitimacy; but in so doing she sacrificed all her
pretensions to royal descent.