What The Valet Overheard (28 January 1977)

Continuing my last week’s jottings on interesting old men who lived locally, I am reminded of Mr Ernest Margetson Coe, who for many years was butler to Sir Herbert and Lady Leon at Bletchley Park.  He entered their service when only an old farmhouse stood on the site of the present mansion and was still living in Church Green Road in 1950 when in his 80s.

At that time there were still many old Leon employees around the town.  Sir Herbert had died in 1926 and his wife as recently as 1936, so the Leon regime was not then as newsworthy as it has since become.

What took me to Mr Coe was something entirely different, namely, a hint that he could tell me something about the famous affair of the Prince Regent and Mrs Fitzherbert that I might find interesting.  Naturally, my ears twitched, though I could not see what possible connection there could be between a man living in the 20^th century and a course of events that began in the 18^th.

The Prince Regent was the eldest son of George III and was created Prince of Wales shortly after his birth in 1762.  He came into prominence in 1788 when, owing to the insanity of his father, he was first made Prince Regent.  That regency did not last long, as his father’s sanity soon returned.  In 1811, however, the king finally lost his sanity, the prince took up the regency again, and on his father’s death in 1820, he became George IV, reigning until his own death in 1830.

The prince was a handsome, courtly and not unintelligent man, but he was also a notorious gambler, drunkard and womaniser.  He had a succession of mistresses – actress Mary Robinson, Lady Jersey, Lady Hertford, Lady Conyngham and others – but his most lasting union was with Mrs Fitzherbert.

This lady was six years older than the prince and had already seen two husbands to their graves when she met and married the prince secretly in 1785 as a 29-year-old widow.  According to the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, this marriage was illegal and some people – but not the prince – thought it was invalid.  Part of the trouble was that the lady was a Roman Catholic.  The couple more or less lived together until 1795 when the prince entered into a legal but appaerntly (sic) loveless marriage with Caroline of Brunswick.  George and Caroline soon separated and George went back to Mrs Fitzherbert for quite a number of years before they finally parted.

The discords between George and Caroline were were (sic) the subject of a public enquiry in 1806 and of great public excitement when he became king in 1820.  A bill was introduced depriving Caroline of her royal position, but by that time the public were mostly on Caroline’s side and it failed to pass.

Mrs Fitzherbert, always George’s true wife in Catholic eyes, spent many years abroad but finally died at Brighton in 1837.  George seems to have retained some affection for her to the end, for she always had an allowance of £6,000 a year from him while he lived.

But what could Mr Coe have to tell me about all that in Bletchley in 1950?  Only this:

As a young man he had been first footman and travelling valet to Col Haygarth, a Crimean veteran who had been severely wounded at Inkerman and had paraded before Queen Victoria in a bath chair.  The colonel’s wife, Lady Blanche Haygarth, when she was Miss Dawson-Damer, had lived with the ageing Mrs Fitzherbert in Paris and whenever she went to court she wore a magnificent diamond necklace which Mrs Fitzherbert had given her as a parting present.

“I heard Lady Blanche assure a gathering of old friends in her drawing room that there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt about the marriage of the prince and Mrs Fitzherbert having taken place,” was the gist of what he had to tell me.

He also showed me his last remaining copy of a book he had once written on the subject.  It was a light blue hardback about half to three quarters of an inch thick, but it was too precious to him for me to borrow.

And all the time he was talking he toyed with a silver paper knife Lady Blanche had given him on his leaving her service to enter that of the Duke of Somerset.

An ephemeral and pathetic little story told by an old man re-living his life?  Probably.  But it does show how we are not so widely separated from events of over 150 to 200 years ago as we might think.