The Trials of the King of Hampshire

Madness, Secrecy and Betrayal in Georgian England

Elizabeth Foyster

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781780749617
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

A Guardian best history book of 2016

Eccentric, shy aristocrat … or mad, bad and dangerous to know?

Neighbour Jane Austen found the 3rd earl of Portsmouth a model gentleman and Lord Byron maintained that, while the man was a fool, he was certainly no madman. Behind closed doors, though, Portsmouth delighted in pinching his servants so that they screamed, asked dairy-maids to bleed him with lancets and was obsessed with attending funerals. After he’d lived this way for years, in 1823 his own family set out to have him declared insane. Still reeling from the madness of King George, society could not tear itself away from what would become the longest, costliest and most controversial insanity trial in British history.

Heir

The gift

THE DAY-LONG JOURNEY from his Hampstead home to the village of Hurstbourne Priors in Hampshire gave a busy man like Coulson Fellowes a rare opportunity to stop and think. He set out on 14 January 1768, accompanied by his wife, Urania. Now aged seventy-one, he had owned Mulys House on the Belsize estate in Hampstead for the last forty years or so, and, like so many of his wealthy neighbours, he prized its location. Below him lay London, an ever-expanding urban sprawl, where he had made his fortune as a merchant. He had a home there too, in St James’s Street, but in Hampstead he was removed from the pressures of trade, and the hubbub of city living. Here he could watch the prices and the duties to be paid on the goods he imported, from coffee, tea, and chocolate, to fabrics, brandy, candles, and paper, and reach London easily when decisions and deals had to be made. But he and his wife could also enjoy the benefits of the fresh air and open countryside that Hampstead offered, and socialize with their like-minded neighbours. He told himself that he had the best of both worlds.

Coulson was enough of a businessman to know that the safest investment in the eighteenth century was land. The commercial world was an unpredictable one, in which fortunes could be as easily lost as made. Coulson had been in his twenties when the South Sea Bubble, that gamble in stocks, shares, and overseas trade, had so spectacularly burst. His father’s older brother had been involved rather too closely, becoming Deputy Governor of the South Sea Company in 1718. The scars were still felt, and Coulson’s father, William, had played it safe, rejecting the world of commerce for that of the law to make his living. He had been successful, rising to the position of Senior Master in Chancery. William’s marriage to an heiress was another shrewd move, for when her father died in 1718 he was left with sixty thousand pounds, with the stipulation that he should invest the inheritance in Devon. It was in this way that the Fellowes family had come to own the Eggesford estate in mid-Devon. The house that William rebuilt there was in red-brick and in Palladian style. It was a bold statement to society: we have arrived.

Inheriting Eggesford from his father, Coulson became a member of the new landed elite, whose wealth and good fortune was so vital in shaping Georgian England. Not only did he play a role in the expanding commercial economy, Coulson could also afford to participate in the many pleasures of eighteenth-century society. ‘True’ gentility, Coulson knew, was about polite manners and conduct. A man had to prove himself a gentleman; this was not something that could be inherited or bought. Coulson needed to demonstrate that he belonged. He set about this task with enthusiasm. He bought tickets to see plays and hear concerts. He read newspapers, purchased expensive volumes of maps and history books, and established a friendship with John Pridden, a bookseller based in Fleet Street. Relishing the opportunities on offer in Enlightenment London, he joined one of the most successful of learned societies, the Society of Arts. Once the new building of St John’s Church in Hampstead was completed, he attended services and paid fees for a pew. In adjacent pews sat other successful city merchants, as well as respected physicians and leading lawyers.

Like his father, Coulson made a very good marriage. In April 1725, he married Urania, the daughter of Francis Herbert of Oakley Park. At seventeen years old, she was under-age, but, with a fortune of ten thousand pounds, quite a catch. They had two sons, William and Henry Arthur, and three daughters, Mary, Urania, and Dorothea. Coulson gave his wife a regular clothes allowance, with which she purchased silk and velvet gowns and coats. He bought her treats such as jars of raisins, and the couple enjoyed his purchases of venison and wine. Improvements were made to the house at Eggesford, and the family began to spend more time there after the birth of Mary in August 1729. Additional land was bought by Coulson in West Ham, Essex, and by 1731 he was paying for the expenses of stables and a coachmaker. In 1737, Coulson acquired the Ramsey Abbey and Abbots Ripton estates near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire. Landed wealth brought political position; Coulson was MP for Huntingdonshire from 1741 to 1761, and was a sheriff in Devon for two years. With a growing family and so much responsibility, Coulson needed to take care of himself. Once or twice a year, he paid Mr Arnold Langley ‘for bleeding’ him, a fashionable practice that was thought to bring health benefits. He never neglected his appearance, and made payments to a barber for shaving, and for wigs and breeches. He looked and acted the eighteenth-century gentleman.¹

Now on this long journey to Hampshire, Coulson could sit back in his coach (perhaps the one he had lined with a ‘rich crimson Genoa velvet’), and reflect on his achievements. The greatest of them was the reason for this journey: the marriage of the daughter who shared his wife’s name, Urania. On 27 August 1763, more than four years earlier, Urania had married John Wallop, the 2nd earl of Portsmouth. Their wedding had taken place at St George’s Church in Hanover Square, and as a wedding present the groom had presented his wife with a pair of three-drop diamond earrings and a diamond pin. But his most important gift was his family’s title: Urania Fellowes had become Lady Portsmouth, the 2nd countess of Portsmouth.

Despite all his business successes and landed wealth, it was Urania who had taken the Fellowes family to the very top of the eighteenth-century social ladder. Her marriage opened the door to the exclusive world of the aristocracy.

With Urania’s title came all important lineage: the means of tracing power and status far back in time. The Wallops boasted that their family line descended from pre-Norman times, and certainly they had been landowners in Hampshire since at least the thirteenth century. But what interested Coulson most was their more recent family history. It was a story of prudent political choices, good fortune, and chance meetings. Coulson learned that the 2nd earl’s grandfather was a loyal Whig supporter, who had been appointed a Lord of the Treasury in 1717. In the 1730s, he had been rewarded by Robert Walpole with a series of positions in Hampshire, including Lord Lieutenant and Vice-Admiral. A ‘grand tour’ of Europe led him to the court of Hanover, where he met and befriended the Elector of Hanover, later George I. Royal support for Wallop continued with George II and George III, and he was first elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Wallop and Viscount Lymington in 1720, and then made the 1st earl of Portsmouth on 11 April 1743.

Coulson and his wife knew from the experience of their own family that position and wealth could not guarantee good health and personal happiness. Sickness and death were never far away, especially for the young. The 1st earl had been married twice, but, of the ten children born to his first wife, only one had survived into adulthood. That child, a son, also called John, became Viscount Lymington, and in 1740 had married Catherine Conduitt, great-niece and co-heiress of Sir Isaac Newton. Lymington and Catherine had five children, including Coulson’s son-in-law, John. Neither of John’s parents lived to see him marry Urania in 1763, and his grandfather had to endure the death of his tenth child before him. As the 1st earl outlived his son, Lymington never inherited the earldom. When the 1st earl died on 22 November 1762, his family recorded his many achievements on his memorial, but also chose to remark that ‘thro’ the several Chances and Changes of ye Concernments of this Life’ (surely a reference to the death of all of his children before him), he had ‘happily retained Tranquility of Mind’.²

A tranquil mind was a prized quality for the Wallops, but the significance of this was probably lost on Coulson, whose business brains were busy calculating how best to arrange a marriage between his daughter and the man who became the 2nd earl of Portsmouth on his grandfather’s death. The 2nd earl inherited a fortune, which Coulson knew was far greater than anything he could ever own. The earl had lands in Buckinghamshire, Somerset, and County Wexford in Ireland, as well as many thousands of acres in Hampshire. This vast estate generated tens of thousands of pounds in rent each year, and provided valuable pasture, arable, and woodlands. The earl had two homes in Hampshire, one at Marlow in Buckinghamshire, and a castle at Enniscorthy in Ireland. This was the stuff of which dreams were made.

Coulson congratulated himself for securing his daughter’s marriage to the 2nd earl in such a short period of time; the couple were married less than a year after the 1st earl’s death. Of course, the fact that the Wallops were prepared to consider the notion of Urania marrying into their family was a credit to Coulson. He was a father who had invested in his children’s education and upbringing, ensuring that Urania would not look or act out of place in the new social world she joined when she married. She was educated as a lady, which meant that she learned how to read, write, and conduct polite conversation with those she met. Coulson paid for his daughter to have dancing lessons, and she had the social skills and good manners that would be necessary as she crossed from her father’s commercial world to that of the nobility. An eighteenth-century woman of her social standing would never work in a formal sense, but she could not afford to be an idle observer. Urania knew how to manage a household of servants, and, from her time at Eggesford, had gained insights into the operation of an estate. Time would show that she had inherited her father’s business acumen, common sense, and financial competence. She had all the qualities to make her a perfect wife.

Urania had good looks on her side, and her beauty was long remembered. Both Urania and her husband were painted in later life by society artist John Hoppner. The painting of her husband, which unfortunately does not survive, showed ‘an enormous stout old gentleman painted without any disguisem[en]ts … in robes with a red nose and face’. It was said that two tables in the hall of his house had to be hollowed out so that he could sit comfortably at them. Good living had to be accommodated.³

Marriages like Urania’s were not intended to be love matches, although there was always the hope that affection would blossom after the knot had been tied. Instead, marriages at this level of society were business arrangements, negotiated between men, and involving significant transfers of property. Coulson secured the marriage of the 2nd earl of Portsmouth with his daughter because he offered a substantial dowry, which he paid as an annuity of four per cent, and, as he travelled to Hampshire that January in 1768, he may well have been calculating how to make the next payment that was due in February. Urania’s marriage was an expensive investment, but one that Coulson had taken to ensure the future security of his family.⁴

It was probably getting dark by the time Coulson’s coach reached the market town of Basingstoke in the north-east of Hampshire. Looking out of his window, he may have been able to catch glimpses of one of the earl’s properties, Farleigh House, standing on a hill high above the town. The house there had been visited by Elizabeth I in 1591, but had burned down following a fire at some point in the 1660s. The house that Coulson could see had been rebuilt by the 1st earl in 1731. It was a large rectangular building, with a pleasing symmetrical front, and had been constructed using locally sourced flint and stone. Beyond its gardens stood St Andrew’s Church, which the Wallop family used as their private chapel. Inside lay the remains and monument to the 1st earl of Portsmouth.⁵

It was around twelve miles from here to Coulson’s final destination. Travelling west on the Basingstoke to Andover road, he passed fields where sheep grazed, and had long been valued for their wool. Farming was flourishing in this area, and the fair held at Weyhill near Andover was heralded as the ‘greatest’ in England for the sale of sheep, hops, cheese, and other rural goods. Good-quality soil produced crops of corn and sainfoin, a nutritious crop used to feed livestock. Woodland provided plentiful timber. Chalk streams were swimming with trout, and held their rainwater for a long time, creating ideal conditions for working mills.

As he entered the town of Whitchurch, Coulson crossed the River Test, and saw the paper mill that since 1712 had been making the bank notes that he had so often handled. Whitchurch was a small place (its population at the first census in 1801 was 1275), where most men and many women were employed in agriculture or the woollen industry. The White Hart inn at the town’s crossroads, with its life-sized statue of a white deer above the doorway, had been providing weary travellers with welcome rest and sustenance since the fifteenth century. Coulson did not stop. Following the road out of town, his coach passed the Norman church of All Hallows, and travelled the short distance to his journey’s end, his daughter’s home at Hurstbourne Park.⁶

Hurstbourne Park was enough to make anyone gasp. In scale and grandeur it made Coulson’s Eggesford home pale into insignificance. It had been the Wallop family residence for generations, and was now the chief seat of the Portsmouths. It dominated the tiny village of Hurstbourne Priors, which consisted of a small number of estate workers’ thatched cottages. The mansion house stood just south of the church of St Andrew, and beside a stream of the river Bourne. The 1st earl had adapted the gardens to suit the fashions of landscape gardening in the early eighteenth century, using the water from the Bourne to create a rectangular canal, a grotto, and a small waterfall. Beyond the gardens the wooded park had eight avenues, and in the far distance lay hay fields and water meadows.

Coulson had visited Hurstbourne Park twice in 1766, so he knew what to expect. His daughter and her husband were keen to put their own stamp on the place, and had begun to discuss their plans. The house and gardens were thought old-fashioned by the 1760s, and the mansion’s close proximity both to the busy Basingstoke to Andover road, and to the homes of the villagers was undesirable. Aristocratic distance from everyday life and ordinary working people was the goal. Coulson, who on a daily basis looked down on London from the heights of his Hampstead home, could understand that aspiration.

For Urania, building the new Hurstbourne would become her project. She certainly did not lack ambition. The architect chosen was James Wyatt, designer of the assembly rooms in Oxford Street, London, and known for his classical architecture. Urania changed the location of the family home, moving it nearly a mile northwards, away from the church, stream, road, and cottages, to a hill-top. South-facing, the new house was more secluded than the last. Many materials were taken from the old house to build the new, which consisted of a large central section from which curved colonnades led to east and west wings. The east wing held the library, chapel, and bedrooms; the west wing, the servants’ quarters and estate offices.

Wyatt was an interior designer as well as an architect, and Urania was his ideal customer. No expense was spared. In the main wing, a great square hall was paved with white stone. Wyatt was commissioned to design the furniture for the drawing room, where guests were received, and Urania aimed to impress. There was red velvet furniture with gold painted legs, ‘some beautiful tables and chests of drawers painted with peacock feathers and medallions containing landscapes and some very graceful gilt lamp-stands’. The ceiling was decorated with Adams mouldings. In the dining room hung a number of family portraits, including one of the family’s ancestors, Colonel Henry Wallop, by Van Dyck. Dinners were to be grand affairs. Putting her name on the place, Urania commissioned a set of silver cutlery to be made with a mermaid (who appears on the Wallop coat of arms), and her initials, ‘U.P.’

The library at Hurstbourne held many of the books and manuscripts of Isaac Newton, inherited by Catherine Conduitt, the earl’s mother. This kind of legacy was reassuring to the educated Coulson. His daughter had married into a family, he told himself, that had respectable connections as well as money. Urania built a magnificent library in the new Hurstbourne to house Newton’s collection. Bookshelves were supported by marble columns, busts of different authors sat above each shelf, and green silk curtains latticed every case.

There was no flower garden at Hurstbourne; the parkland began immediately in front of the house. To the side there was a kitchen garden, and a number of substantial, 300-feet-long glasshouses. Sheltered from the elements, all sorts of exotic fruit were grown inside, including peaches, nectarines, grapes, and pineapples. Urania, who was known for her love of birds, planted cherry trees close to the house, so she could watch them feed from the windows. An engine house was constructed to supply water from the Bourne to the house. The landscape surrounding the house was in the style of Capability Brown, and a lake was created by widening the Bourne with a dam. Visitors entered the park passing one of two newly built lodges from either the Whitchurch or Andover direction. Their carriages slowly wound their way up along the drives, allowing full views of the park with its ancient trees and plentiful deer, before reaching the grandeur of the house.⁷

It was ten years’ work from start to finish, with the newspapers announcing in December 1788 that Lord Portsmouth’s ‘new superb house’ was completed, and a grand gala ball held in celebration for the house that was described as a ‘perfect palace’. Two years later, the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of characters
• The Wallop/Fellowes Family Tree
• The Norton Family Tree
• The making of a king
• An unsound mind?
• Heir
• Husband
• Cuckold
• King
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• List of illustrations
• Picture Section
• Copyright