September 17, 2019 • 23 mins
When King George IV died, his obituary in The Times read: “There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased king." But even George IV once fell in love.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Minkey listener discretion advised just a few
years ago. In two thousand and seventeen, the esteemed British
auction house Christie's put up for sale a golden pendant
encrusted with diamonds with a tiny portrait of George the
Fourth inside. It was George the Fourth's bad luck to
(00:23):
have lived during the peak of British political cartooning. He
didn't actually become king until he was nearly sixty, and
in his years as a printon waiting and then as regent,
satirical papers became ubiquitous, depicting him as a grotesquely overweight
and heavy drinking clown wearing a military costume that never
actually saw a battlefield. But the portrait in the locket
(00:46):
that Christie's put up for auction looked very different. It
was unrecognizable from the buffoon that George would come to
be seen as this. George the Fourth is young and gallant,
almost nightlike. His light brown hair is swept across his forehead,
his lips are faintly red, and his blue eyes are
clear and bright. The locket had been passed down through
(01:10):
descendants of Maria fitz Herbert, the strikingly beautiful woman who
captivated George the Fourth so completely that, even though it
risked his position in the line of succession, he married
her in secret. It's ironic that the period of history
that bears George the Fourth's name, the Regency, is synonymous
(01:31):
with refinement and social constraint. When George himself was such
a figure of gluttony and excess. He was a drinker,
a gambler, a womanizer, and when he finally ate himself
to death by rupturing his stomach, his subjects had a
little sympathy for him. But it's his love story with
Maria fitz Herbert that maybe comes the closest to anything
(01:51):
in George's life to resembling a Jane Austen romance. The
problem with Jane Austen novels, though, as they end with
a wedding, they don't tell you about what happens afterward,
when Prince Charming's nation status and miserable fatal flaws forced
the star crossed couple apart to grow old alone with
loneliness and resentments. Now, when Maria fits Herbert is mentioned
(02:17):
in histories of George the fourth. It's usually a side note,
and rarely even by name. She's the quote divorced Catholic
that the rebellious prince legally married before his real marriage
to his cousin Caroline of Brunswick. Maria is less of
a person than just one of the many examples of
Georgia's youthful peccadillos and early scandal that would soon be
(02:40):
buried under many, many more. The Christie's pendant sold for
three hundred and forty one thousand pounds, nearly three times
the auction house is highest estimate, but the piece was incomplete.
You see miniatures and lockets at the time, we're usually
produced in pairs, and this pendant was no exception. It's
(03:00):
mate was equally diamond and crested, featured inside a small
portrait of Maria fitz Herbert. But it would have been
impossible for Christie's to have sold the matching set. When
George the fourth died, he still had Maria fitz Herbert's
locket with him, and when the king was buried, it
was buried with him, held close beneath his crossed hands.
(03:22):
I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The love
story between George the Fourth and Maria fitz Herbert began
with him seeing her from afar and deciding instantly that
he was madly in love with her. He was eighteen
(03:42):
years old at the time and the Prince of Wales.
She was six years older and married. George was walking
down the street with a friend when the carriage containing
Maria and her husband, Thomas fitz Herbert, came ambling up
the avenue. Maria noticed the prince right away and pointed
him out to her husband, who seemed uninterested. But Maria
(04:03):
looked back again, and when she did, she saw that
Prince George had run into the middle of the street
to chase the carriage. He had fallen behind by then,
but he was still looking straight at her as he
faded into the distance. Maria had not married for love,
but who does. Thomas fitz Herbert was actually her second husband.
(04:23):
She had married for the first time when she was
just a teenager, to a man twice her age named
Edward Weld, a wealthy landowner who resided at Lulworth Castle.
Edward could afford Maria a life of comfort and stability,
or at least he could have if he hadn't fallen
off his horse three months after their wedding and died.
(04:44):
In fact, he died so suddenly after their marriage that
he hadn't even managed to sign a new will to
provide for his young bride. All of his possessions were
instead transferred to his brother, and Maria was left with
absolutely nothing. If she was going to survive, she needed
to marry again and quickly. Thomas fitz Herbert, her second husband,
(05:10):
was only ten years older than her. He was another landed,
wealthy Catholic, a tall, athletic, energetic man, but his health
was less robust than it seemed. A year into their marriage,
his coughing began. Two years into their marriage, he could
barely leave the house without heaving over in violent spasms
(05:30):
to try to get enough air. A year after that,
he was dead at twenty four years old. Maria fitz
Herbert was twice widowed, and that was when she met
George the Fourth face to face for the first time.
Maria had been persuaded by her family to leave her
morning behind and go to the opera in London, just
(05:52):
for one night. Her uncle, Lord Sefton, had urged her,
it's time you get back out into society. George could
hardly believe his luck when he saw the woman from
the carriage sitting across from him at the opera house.
She had been so beautiful that day on the street
that he had half convinced himself that she was a dream.
While the opera was still going, he turned to his
(06:14):
companion and in his full voice, demanded an introduction to
her from that meeting, a deep curtsy, a kiss on
the hand. George was a man completely obsessed. He wrote
letters to Maria and sent couriers to her apartments every day.
He asked her to join him at dinners and parties.
(06:34):
The woman graciously deferred. Even as a young man, George
already had a reputation for his womanizing, but that wasn't
even really the problem here. The problem was that Maria
was Catholic, and there were no fewer than three laws
in England at the time that explicitly prevented the heir
to the throne from marrying someone like her. For George,
(06:56):
that was unacceptable. He had not stopped thinking about this
woman since he saw her in the carriage, and he
had been in love with her from the moment he
touched her hand. At the opera and brought it to
his lips, and so the impulsive young prince took one
of his daggers and stabbed it deep into his side.
(07:16):
A surgeon was rushed to the scene and instantly patched
the wound to prevent its continued bleeding. But that wasn't
what George wanted. Hey. He told the surgeon, go find
Mrs Maria fitz Herbert. Tell her I've stabbed myself. Also
tell her that if she does not come to my side,
I'm going to pull off my bandages. You can't pull
(07:38):
off your bandages, the surgeon said, you'll bleed to death. Exactly.
George said, Chop, chop, And so the surgeon got into
his carriage and went to Maria fitz Herbert's house at
the end of Park Street and delivered his message to
the bewildered widow. Maria knew that getting into a carriage
with the male surgeon to go visit the prince would
(07:59):
be enough to call a scandal, and so she agreed,
but only as long as they made a stop along
the way to pick up a friend of hers, the
Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Cavendish. Georgiana would be something of
an escort to ensure that the visit was beyond reproach.
Marian the Surgeon caught Georgiana just as she was leaving
her home to go on another social visit, But as
(08:21):
soon as she heard the dramatic circumstances of why she
was being summoned, she immediately abandoned her plans and joined them.
When they made it to Prince George's palace, they discovered
that the stabbing wasn't just a made up story to
entice Maria to his presence, as she had been half
convinced it was. He had blood oozing out of his side,
dried streaks of it coming down his shirt, a small
(08:44):
pool at his feet. Say you'll marry me, the Prince said,
or I'll rip off my bandages and I'll bleed to death.
Georgiana and Maria looked at one another. George, grimacing, began
pulling the dressing out of his wound. Okay, Maria said,
on my are you. George's pain was instantly forgotten. He
bounded down onto one knee and pressed a ring onto
(09:06):
Maria's finger. But just as a reminder, Maria had agreed
to that marriage under the threat of imminent suicide. As
soon as she and Georgiana were back in their carriage
on the way home, the two immediately agreed that a
proposal under those circumstances was definitely not binding. The Prince
wanted to marry her, Maria knew she couldn't marry him,
(09:27):
and so without leaving a forwarding address, Maria packed her
things and fled the country. If you thought a little
thing like Maria living across the English Channel in France
was going to stop George the Fourth from pursuing her,
it feels like you might have forgotten the whole stab
(09:48):
himself to get her attention thing. George was a man obsessed,
although Maria had not given him any information as to
where she would be living or even what city she
would be in, the and sent countless envoys along to
try to find her. As she traveled throughout France and Switzerland.
George sent so many couriers from England to France and
(10:09):
so often that the French government became suspicious. In fact,
couriers were arrested and imprisoned in France on three separate
occasions on suspicion of espionage. But in truth, there's was
just a mission of love. George sent letters, tokens, trinkets.
He promised marriage. He said his father's silly rule against
(10:31):
Catholics didn't matter at all. All that mattered was being
with the woman he loved. By this time, Maria had
lived abroad for a year. She was lonely, missing her
friends and her life in London. Besides, she was being
plagued by proposals from the French scoundrel Marquis de Belois,
a sort of regency Eira a Gustan from Beauty and
(10:53):
the Beast. For twelve months, George had sent her letters
bearing his heart, telling her that he loved her so
truly that he would refuse any marriage as his father
set him up with. His promises were silly, but still
he made his point. For Maria fitz Herbert, a year
in exile was long enough. Maria wrote to the Prince
(11:15):
and said that she would consent to be with him
as long as they were married in secret, if not
under the eyes of the law, then at least under
the eyes of her God. Delirious with joy, George accepted.
The two were married at Maria's home on Park Street
in a small ceremony attended by Maria's brother and uncle.
No priest would be willing to officiate to marry George
(11:37):
the Fourth against the orders of his father, the King
was tantamount to treason, and so George found a clergyman
in Fleet Street prison and paid off his debts of
five hundred pounds in exchange for his willingness to perform
the ceremony. For the next few years, the pair lived
in relative harmony together in Brighton, living in two separate
(11:59):
houses which share airing a view of the sea. The
pair became the center of high society, holding intimate small
parties for only the most selective guest lists. Things were
relatively easy for them. With George's father still on the throne,
the Prince could more or less behave exactly as he
wanted to, and he did. He drank, gambled, he ate excess,
(12:23):
and obviously that took its toll on him. Once, at
a masked ball, the Prince's friend, the dandy and famous
fashion plate Beau Brummel, didn't recognize George. Brummel turned to
their friend, Lord Avonlea and asked Alvin Lee, who's your
fat friend. That's the sort of comment that's embarrassing under
the best of circumstances, but when it's a royal you're insulting,
(12:46):
it tends to end in exile. George did love Maria,
but he loved gambling too, and less than a decade
into their marriage, the Prince was out in the humiliating
position of needing to ask his father to help him
pay off his exorbitant debts. George owed an excess of
six hundred thousand pounds what would be tens of millions today.
(13:08):
His father, George the Third, agreed to pay off what
his son owed, but on one condition. The prince needed
to get married properly, this time to a Protestant who
could give England an heir to the throne. Parliament agreed
George the Fourth would marry his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick,
and in exchange, his debts would be paid. Almost exactly
(13:32):
ten years after she had wed the prince in secret,
Maria fitz Herbert received a letter informing her in curt
cold language that her relationship with George was terminated. George's
allies in Parliament gave passionate speeches claiming that the rumors
that he had ever been married to a Catholic were
scandalous lies. The marriage disappeared like smoke on a cold day,
(13:57):
evaporating into nothingness, and for the third time in her life,
Maria fitz Herbert was abandoned by the man she had married.
George met his future bride, Caroline for the first time
on their wedding day. He was not impressed. He saw
(14:20):
her face and then turned to his manservant and said,
I am not well. Pray get me a glass of brandy.
He spent their entire wedding ceremony drunk out of his mind,
and their wedding night passed out in the great in
front of a fireplace. The next morning, he roused himself,
brought himself to her bed, and consummated their marriage for
(14:40):
the first and only time. Nine months later, their daughter,
Princess Charlotte, was born, and from that time on, George
the Fourth wanted nothing to do with his wife. He
all but explicitly bribed her to leave England and go
travel the continent, which she did. They both acknowledged that
their marriage would be forever list and that the best
(15:01):
they could do under the circumstances was to live separate lives.
Only days after his daughter was born and his wife
had left the country, George began dreaming yet again of
the woman he had lost, Maria fitz Herbert. He wrote
a new will, bequeathing all worldly property to my Maria
fitz Herbert, my wife, the wife of my heart and soul.
(15:24):
Though she cannot avail herself publicly of that name, still
such she is in the eyes of Heaven, was is,
and ever will such be in mine. But Maria was
not entirely convinced. She had married him. Yes, but now
technically wasn't he married to someone else? And George had
become famous for as many many mistresses, actresses and duchesses,
(15:48):
whose caricatures frequently joined his and the popular satirical cartoons
of the day, And so Maria turned to the highest
authority she could, the Pope. The Pope advised her to
reconcile with her husband, and he also made it clear
to her that he and the Catholic Church still believed
her marriage to be legitimate, And so, with the Pope's blessing,
(16:11):
Maria and George came together once more for what you
would later describe as the happiest days of their lives.
But this was also the period in which George's father,
George the Third, was losing more and more of his faculties.
(16:32):
Though contemporaries called it madness, historians now believe he was
suffering from a nervous system disease called porforia. But whatever
you called it, the result was that George the Third
became blind and deaf, speaking nonsense, and suffering from increasingly
severe dementia until he completely lost track of reality. George
(16:53):
the Fourth had been acting as an unofficial regent for
his father for many years, but the severity of his
fathers decline led Parliament to making that role official. To
celebrate his new position, George through a party at Carlton
House for the most esteemed guests in the country. Maria
entered the dining room to find that she had not
(17:15):
been set a place at the table. Prompted by his
royal peers, the laughing George the Fourth called her Mrs
fitz Herbert and said that she would have to sit
according to her rank. She had tolerated the affairs and
the drinking, the gambling and the excessive eating, but that
night she had reached the point at which you could
(17:35):
take no more humiliation. Maria fitz Herbert left the party
and never returned to George the Fourth's home. Eventually, King
George the Third died and the Prince ascended to his
throne in earnest. When he spoke of Maria, it was
with biting, malice and hatred, repeating the claims that had
(17:56):
been made in front of Parliament that their marriage was
just a sham, all along on his feelings for Caroline, though, were,
if anything, worse. When George was being coronated, Caroline had
traveled back from the continent in order to be crowned Queen,
only to have the doors of Westminster Abbey literally shut
in her face. The queen stood fuming against a line
(18:18):
of soldiers holding bayonets under her chin, refusing her entry.
Though the population tended to side with her in the
press over her lush of a husband, The scene left
them laughing and jeering. The uncrowned queen, humiliated, retreated, and
died three weeks later. She was buried under the inscription
(18:41):
Here lies Caroline, the Injured Queen of England. For the
rest of his life, George the Fourth lived alone with
his mistresses and his demons. His weight reached nearly three
hundred pounds, and he enlisted a thick corset to try
to contain his fifty inch waist. When ever, he was
getting his portrait taken, the king became addicted to laudanum
(19:04):
opium drops, an alcohol after it was prescribed for bladder pain.
By the end of his life, George was taking over
a hundred drops of laudanum per day in order to
get through his state duties. He suffered from gout and dropsy,
but he continued to eat, gorging himself on breakfast that
consisted of a pigeon and beef steak pie, a bottle
of mozzelle, a glass of dry champagne, two glasses of port,
(19:29):
and a glass of brandy, and then, of course came
his doses of laudanum. In short, he was approaching the end,
and that was when he wrote to Maria fitz Herbert
with the same message he had sent so many years ago.
Please come to me. Death is near. But in Maria's
(19:49):
life there had been far too many messages from George
threatening death. She didn't believe that the king was really dying,
and so even though she wrote him a letter and
treating him to get well soon, she was truth be
told a little bit insulted that he hadn't bothered to
write back. She didn't know that while the king had
been dying, he had her unanswered letter clutched under his pillow.
(20:12):
King George the Fourth received an infamous obituary in the
Times of the Unpopular King. They wrote, there never was
an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this
deceased king. What I has wept for him? What heart
has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow. If he ever
had a friend, a devoted friend, in any rank of life,
(20:35):
we protest that the name of him or her never
reached us. But the Times was wrong when it came
to their claim that no one cried for him, unpopular
as he was among his people. When the executor of
the king's will, the Duke of Wellington, informed Maria that
the king requested he be buried with her miniature diamond
(20:56):
portrait around his neck, she did what the Time had
assumed was impossible. She wept. That's it for this episode
of Noble Blood, but stick around after a brief sponsor
break to learn more about Maria fitz Herbert and George
(21:17):
of the Fourth. There are a number of claims that
George the Fourth and Maria fitz Herbert had a secret
child together, although the proof is scarce and circumstantial. The
most compelling theory is that Maria Bora's son, who was
(21:38):
known as James Ord, born a year after Maria and
George's wedding. Baby, James Ord never knew who his parents were.
As an infant, he was whisked away to Spain, where
he was raised by the British ambassador, Maria's cousin John
and the man he called his uncle. Later moved to America,
where he was brought under the wing of the Catholic
(21:59):
Archbishop of Baltimore, who also just happened to be a
close friend of Maria's. James Ord got married to a
woman named Rebecca, and they had a son, Edward Ord.
Edward was one of the heroes of the American Civil War.
It was his corps of soldiers that led the march
down to the Appomattox Courthouse to force the surrender of
(22:21):
Southern General Robert Italy. When ulysses Us Grant shook hands
with Lee at the Mcleanhouse to end the war, Edward
Ord was by his side for generations. The Ord family
has passed along the story of how they might be
the mysterious descendants of an illicit marriage between a future
king and his Catholic wife. One such Ord, today, also
(22:43):
named James, is an ex Mormon lawyer living in Utah.
Like his apocryphal great great ancestor, this modern Ord knew
what it meant to not be able to marry the
person he loved, but times and laws change for the better.
The day that you Top began legally permitting same sex marriage,
James Ord and his partner, Steve Hempel were one of
(23:06):
the first couples in the state to legally become husbands.
Noble Blood is a co production of I Heart Radio
and Aaron Minkey. The show was written and hosted by
Dani Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
(23:26):
and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at
Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the
show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Minkey listener discretion advised just a few
years ago. In two thousand and seventeen, the esteemed British
auction house Christie's put up for sale a golden pendant
encrusted with diamonds with a tiny portrait of George the
Fourth inside. It was George the Fourth's bad luck to
(00:23):
have lived during the peak of British political cartooning. He
didn't actually become king until he was nearly sixty, and
in his years as a printon waiting and then as regent,
satirical papers became ubiquitous, depicting him as a grotesquely overweight
and heavy drinking clown wearing a military costume that never
actually saw a battlefield. But the portrait in the locket
(00:46):
that Christie's put up for auction looked very different. It
was unrecognizable from the buffoon that George would come to
be seen as this. George the Fourth is young and gallant,
almost nightlike. His light brown hair is swept across his forehead,
his lips are faintly red, and his blue eyes are
clear and bright. The locket had been passed down through
(01:10):
descendants of Maria fitz Herbert, the strikingly beautiful woman who
captivated George the Fourth so completely that, even though it
risked his position in the line of succession, he married
her in secret. It's ironic that the period of history
that bears George the Fourth's name, the Regency, is synonymous
(01:31):
with refinement and social constraint. When George himself was such
a figure of gluttony and excess. He was a drinker,
a gambler, a womanizer, and when he finally ate himself
to death by rupturing his stomach, his subjects had a
little sympathy for him. But it's his love story with
Maria fitz Herbert that maybe comes the closest to anything
(01:51):
in George's life to resembling a Jane Austen romance. The
problem with Jane Austen novels, though, as they end with
a wedding, they don't tell you about what happens afterward,
when Prince Charming's nation status and miserable fatal flaws forced
the star crossed couple apart to grow old alone with
loneliness and resentments. Now, when Maria fits Herbert is mentioned
(02:17):
in histories of George the fourth. It's usually a side note,
and rarely even by name. She's the quote divorced Catholic
that the rebellious prince legally married before his real marriage
to his cousin Caroline of Brunswick. Maria is less of
a person than just one of the many examples of
Georgia's youthful peccadillos and early scandal that would soon be
(02:40):
buried under many, many more. The Christie's pendant sold for
three hundred and forty one thousand pounds, nearly three times
the auction house is highest estimate, but the piece was incomplete.
You see miniatures and lockets at the time, we're usually
produced in pairs, and this pendant was no exception. It's
(03:00):
mate was equally diamond and crested, featured inside a small
portrait of Maria fitz Herbert. But it would have been
impossible for Christie's to have sold the matching set. When
George the fourth died, he still had Maria fitz Herbert's
locket with him, and when the king was buried, it
was buried with him, held close beneath his crossed hands.
(03:22):
I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The love
story between George the Fourth and Maria fitz Herbert began
with him seeing her from afar and deciding instantly that
he was madly in love with her. He was eighteen
(03:42):
years old at the time and the Prince of Wales.
She was six years older and married. George was walking
down the street with a friend when the carriage containing
Maria and her husband, Thomas fitz Herbert, came ambling up
the avenue. Maria noticed the prince right away and pointed
him out to her husband, who seemed uninterested. But Maria
(04:03):
looked back again, and when she did, she saw that
Prince George had run into the middle of the street
to chase the carriage. He had fallen behind by then,
but he was still looking straight at her as he
faded into the distance. Maria had not married for love,
but who does. Thomas fitz Herbert was actually her second husband.
(04:23):
She had married for the first time when she was
just a teenager, to a man twice her age named
Edward Weld, a wealthy landowner who resided at Lulworth Castle.
Edward could afford Maria a life of comfort and stability,
or at least he could have if he hadn't fallen
off his horse three months after their wedding and died.
(04:44):
In fact, he died so suddenly after their marriage that
he hadn't even managed to sign a new will to
provide for his young bride. All of his possessions were
instead transferred to his brother, and Maria was left with
absolutely nothing. If she was going to survive, she needed
to marry again and quickly. Thomas fitz Herbert, her second husband,
(05:10):
was only ten years older than her. He was another landed,
wealthy Catholic, a tall, athletic, energetic man, but his health
was less robust than it seemed. A year into their marriage,
his coughing began. Two years into their marriage, he could
barely leave the house without heaving over in violent spasms
(05:30):
to try to get enough air. A year after that,
he was dead at twenty four years old. Maria fitz
Herbert was twice widowed, and that was when she met
George the Fourth face to face for the first time.
Maria had been persuaded by her family to leave her
morning behind and go to the opera in London, just
(05:52):
for one night. Her uncle, Lord Sefton, had urged her,
it's time you get back out into society. George could
hardly believe his luck when he saw the woman from
the carriage sitting across from him at the opera house.
She had been so beautiful that day on the street
that he had half convinced himself that she was a dream.
While the opera was still going, he turned to his
(06:14):
companion and in his full voice, demanded an introduction to
her from that meeting, a deep curtsy, a kiss on
the hand. George was a man completely obsessed. He wrote
letters to Maria and sent couriers to her apartments every day.
He asked her to join him at dinners and parties.
(06:34):
The woman graciously deferred. Even as a young man, George
already had a reputation for his womanizing, but that wasn't
even really the problem here. The problem was that Maria
was Catholic, and there were no fewer than three laws
in England at the time that explicitly prevented the heir
to the throne from marrying someone like her. For George,
(06:56):
that was unacceptable. He had not stopped thinking about this
woman since he saw her in the carriage, and he
had been in love with her from the moment he
touched her hand. At the opera and brought it to
his lips, and so the impulsive young prince took one
of his daggers and stabbed it deep into his side.
(07:16):
A surgeon was rushed to the scene and instantly patched
the wound to prevent its continued bleeding. But that wasn't
what George wanted. Hey. He told the surgeon, go find
Mrs Maria fitz Herbert. Tell her I've stabbed myself. Also
tell her that if she does not come to my side,
I'm going to pull off my bandages. You can't pull
(07:38):
off your bandages, the surgeon said, you'll bleed to death. Exactly.
George said, Chop, chop, And so the surgeon got into
his carriage and went to Maria fitz Herbert's house at
the end of Park Street and delivered his message to
the bewildered widow. Maria knew that getting into a carriage
with the male surgeon to go visit the prince would
(07:59):
be enough to call a scandal, and so she agreed,
but only as long as they made a stop along
the way to pick up a friend of hers, the
Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Cavendish. Georgiana would be something of
an escort to ensure that the visit was beyond reproach.
Marian the Surgeon caught Georgiana just as she was leaving
her home to go on another social visit, But as
(08:21):
soon as she heard the dramatic circumstances of why she
was being summoned, she immediately abandoned her plans and joined them.
When they made it to Prince George's palace, they discovered
that the stabbing wasn't just a made up story to
entice Maria to his presence, as she had been half
convinced it was. He had blood oozing out of his side,
dried streaks of it coming down his shirt, a small
(08:44):
pool at his feet. Say you'll marry me, the Prince said,
or I'll rip off my bandages and I'll bleed to death.
Georgiana and Maria looked at one another. George, grimacing, began
pulling the dressing out of his wound. Okay, Maria said,
on my are you. George's pain was instantly forgotten. He
bounded down onto one knee and pressed a ring onto
(09:06):
Maria's finger. But just as a reminder, Maria had agreed
to that marriage under the threat of imminent suicide. As
soon as she and Georgiana were back in their carriage
on the way home, the two immediately agreed that a
proposal under those circumstances was definitely not binding. The Prince
wanted to marry her, Maria knew she couldn't marry him,
(09:27):
and so without leaving a forwarding address, Maria packed her
things and fled the country. If you thought a little
thing like Maria living across the English Channel in France
was going to stop George the Fourth from pursuing her,
it feels like you might have forgotten the whole stab
(09:48):
himself to get her attention thing. George was a man obsessed,
although Maria had not given him any information as to
where she would be living or even what city she
would be in, the and sent countless envoys along to
try to find her. As she traveled throughout France and Switzerland.
George sent so many couriers from England to France and
(10:09):
so often that the French government became suspicious. In fact,
couriers were arrested and imprisoned in France on three separate
occasions on suspicion of espionage. But in truth, there's was
just a mission of love. George sent letters, tokens, trinkets.
He promised marriage. He said his father's silly rule against
(10:31):
Catholics didn't matter at all. All that mattered was being
with the woman he loved. By this time, Maria had
lived abroad for a year. She was lonely, missing her
friends and her life in London. Besides, she was being
plagued by proposals from the French scoundrel Marquis de Belois,
a sort of regency Eira a Gustan from Beauty and
(10:53):
the Beast. For twelve months, George had sent her letters
bearing his heart, telling her that he loved her so
truly that he would refuse any marriage as his father
set him up with. His promises were silly, but still
he made his point. For Maria fitz Herbert, a year
in exile was long enough. Maria wrote to the Prince
(11:15):
and said that she would consent to be with him
as long as they were married in secret, if not
under the eyes of the law, then at least under
the eyes of her God. Delirious with joy, George accepted.
The two were married at Maria's home on Park Street
in a small ceremony attended by Maria's brother and uncle.
No priest would be willing to officiate to marry George
(11:37):
the Fourth against the orders of his father, the King
was tantamount to treason, and so George found a clergyman
in Fleet Street prison and paid off his debts of
five hundred pounds in exchange for his willingness to perform
the ceremony. For the next few years, the pair lived
in relative harmony together in Brighton, living in two separate
(11:59):
houses which share airing a view of the sea. The
pair became the center of high society, holding intimate small
parties for only the most selective guest lists. Things were
relatively easy for them. With George's father still on the throne,
the Prince could more or less behave exactly as he
wanted to, and he did. He drank, gambled, he ate excess,
(12:23):
and obviously that took its toll on him. Once, at
a masked ball, the Prince's friend, the dandy and famous
fashion plate Beau Brummel, didn't recognize George. Brummel turned to
their friend, Lord Avonlea and asked Alvin Lee, who's your
fat friend. That's the sort of comment that's embarrassing under
the best of circumstances, but when it's a royal you're insulting,
(12:46):
it tends to end in exile. George did love Maria,
but he loved gambling too, and less than a decade
into their marriage, the Prince was out in the humiliating
position of needing to ask his father to help him
pay off his exorbitant debts. George owed an excess of
six hundred thousand pounds what would be tens of millions today.
(13:08):
His father, George the Third, agreed to pay off what
his son owed, but on one condition. The prince needed
to get married properly, this time to a Protestant who
could give England an heir to the throne. Parliament agreed
George the Fourth would marry his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick,
and in exchange, his debts would be paid. Almost exactly
(13:32):
ten years after she had wed the prince in secret,
Maria fitz Herbert received a letter informing her in curt
cold language that her relationship with George was terminated. George's
allies in Parliament gave passionate speeches claiming that the rumors
that he had ever been married to a Catholic were
scandalous lies. The marriage disappeared like smoke on a cold day,
(13:57):
evaporating into nothingness, and for the third time in her life,
Maria fitz Herbert was abandoned by the man she had married.
George met his future bride, Caroline for the first time
on their wedding day. He was not impressed. He saw
(14:20):
her face and then turned to his manservant and said,
I am not well. Pray get me a glass of brandy.
He spent their entire wedding ceremony drunk out of his mind,
and their wedding night passed out in the great in
front of a fireplace. The next morning, he roused himself,
brought himself to her bed, and consummated their marriage for
(14:40):
the first and only time. Nine months later, their daughter,
Princess Charlotte, was born, and from that time on, George
the Fourth wanted nothing to do with his wife. He
all but explicitly bribed her to leave England and go
travel the continent, which she did. They both acknowledged that
their marriage would be forever list and that the best
(15:01):
they could do under the circumstances was to live separate lives.
Only days after his daughter was born and his wife
had left the country, George began dreaming yet again of
the woman he had lost, Maria fitz Herbert. He wrote
a new will, bequeathing all worldly property to my Maria
fitz Herbert, my wife, the wife of my heart and soul.
(15:24):
Though she cannot avail herself publicly of that name, still
such she is in the eyes of Heaven, was is,
and ever will such be in mine. But Maria was
not entirely convinced. She had married him. Yes, but now
technically wasn't he married to someone else? And George had
become famous for as many many mistresses, actresses and duchesses,
(15:48):
whose caricatures frequently joined his and the popular satirical cartoons
of the day, And so Maria turned to the highest
authority she could, the Pope. The Pope advised her to
reconcile with her husband, and he also made it clear
to her that he and the Catholic Church still believed
her marriage to be legitimate, And so, with the Pope's blessing,
(16:11):
Maria and George came together once more for what you
would later describe as the happiest days of their lives.
But this was also the period in which George's father,
George the Third, was losing more and more of his faculties.
(16:32):
Though contemporaries called it madness, historians now believe he was
suffering from a nervous system disease called porforia. But whatever
you called it, the result was that George the Third
became blind and deaf, speaking nonsense, and suffering from increasingly
severe dementia until he completely lost track of reality. George
(16:53):
the Fourth had been acting as an unofficial regent for
his father for many years, but the severity of his
fathers decline led Parliament to making that role official. To
celebrate his new position, George through a party at Carlton
House for the most esteemed guests in the country. Maria
entered the dining room to find that she had not
(17:15):
been set a place at the table. Prompted by his
royal peers, the laughing George the Fourth called her Mrs
fitz Herbert and said that she would have to sit
according to her rank. She had tolerated the affairs and
the drinking, the gambling and the excessive eating, but that
night she had reached the point at which you could
(17:35):
take no more humiliation. Maria fitz Herbert left the party
and never returned to George the Fourth's home. Eventually, King
George the Third died and the Prince ascended to his
throne in earnest. When he spoke of Maria, it was
with biting, malice and hatred, repeating the claims that had
(17:56):
been made in front of Parliament that their marriage was
just a sham, all along on his feelings for Caroline, though, were,
if anything, worse. When George was being coronated, Caroline had
traveled back from the continent in order to be crowned Queen,
only to have the doors of Westminster Abbey literally shut
in her face. The queen stood fuming against a line
(18:18):
of soldiers holding bayonets under her chin, refusing her entry.
Though the population tended to side with her in the
press over her lush of a husband, The scene left
them laughing and jeering. The uncrowned queen, humiliated, retreated, and
died three weeks later. She was buried under the inscription
(18:41):
Here lies Caroline, the Injured Queen of England. For the
rest of his life, George the Fourth lived alone with
his mistresses and his demons. His weight reached nearly three
hundred pounds, and he enlisted a thick corset to try
to contain his fifty inch waist. When ever, he was
getting his portrait taken, the king became addicted to laudanum
(19:04):
opium drops, an alcohol after it was prescribed for bladder pain.
By the end of his life, George was taking over
a hundred drops of laudanum per day in order to
get through his state duties. He suffered from gout and dropsy,
but he continued to eat, gorging himself on breakfast that
consisted of a pigeon and beef steak pie, a bottle
of mozzelle, a glass of dry champagne, two glasses of port,
(19:29):
and a glass of brandy, and then, of course came
his doses of laudanum. In short, he was approaching the end,
and that was when he wrote to Maria fitz Herbert
with the same message he had sent so many years ago.
Please come to me. Death is near. But in Maria's
(19:49):
life there had been far too many messages from George
threatening death. She didn't believe that the king was really dying,
and so even though she wrote him a letter and
treating him to get well soon, she was truth be
told a little bit insulted that he hadn't bothered to
write back. She didn't know that while the king had
been dying, he had her unanswered letter clutched under his pillow.
(20:12):
King George the Fourth received an infamous obituary in the
Times of the Unpopular King. They wrote, there never was
an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this
deceased king. What I has wept for him? What heart
has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow. If he ever
had a friend, a devoted friend, in any rank of life,
(20:35):
we protest that the name of him or her never
reached us. But the Times was wrong when it came
to their claim that no one cried for him, unpopular
as he was among his people. When the executor of
the king's will, the Duke of Wellington, informed Maria that
the king requested he be buried with her miniature diamond
(20:56):
portrait around his neck, she did what the Time had
assumed was impossible. She wept. That's it for this episode
of Noble Blood, but stick around after a brief sponsor
break to learn more about Maria fitz Herbert and George
(21:17):
of the Fourth. There are a number of claims that
George the Fourth and Maria fitz Herbert had a secret
child together, although the proof is scarce and circumstantial. The
most compelling theory is that Maria Bora's son, who was
(21:38):
known as James Ord, born a year after Maria and
George's wedding. Baby, James Ord never knew who his parents were.
As an infant, he was whisked away to Spain, where
he was raised by the British ambassador, Maria's cousin John
and the man he called his uncle. Later moved to America,
where he was brought under the wing of the Catholic
(21:59):
Archbishop of Baltimore, who also just happened to be a
close friend of Maria's. James Ord got married to a
woman named Rebecca, and they had a son, Edward Ord.
Edward was one of the heroes of the American Civil War.
It was his corps of soldiers that led the march
down to the Appomattox Courthouse to force the surrender of
(22:21):
Southern General Robert Italy. When ulysses Us Grant shook hands
with Lee at the Mcleanhouse to end the war, Edward
Ord was by his side for generations. The Ord family
has passed along the story of how they might be
the mysterious descendants of an illicit marriage between a future
king and his Catholic wife. One such Ord, today, also
(22:43):
named James, is an ex Mormon lawyer living in Utah.
Like his apocryphal great great ancestor, this modern Ord knew
what it meant to not be able to marry the
person he loved, but times and laws change for the better.
The day that you Top began legally permitting same sex marriage,
James Ord and his partner, Steve Hempel were one of
(23:06):
the first couples in the state to legally become husbands.
Noble Blood is a co production of I Heart Radio
and Aaron Minkey. The show was written and hosted by
Dani Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
(23:26):
and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at
Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the
show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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