Dangerous Liaisons: The Wicked Earl of Berkeley

Elizabeth Craven's elder brother, Frederick, 5th Earl of Berkeley, was one of the most eligible men in England. Clever, cultivated and well-travelled, owner of vast estates that included Berkeley Square in London and an ancestral castle, he was often busy running the Gloucester militia, which played an essential role in the defence of the kingdom during the Napoleonic Wars. He loved to wear the scarlet coat that proclaimed him colonel of this militia, the coat he is wearing in this portrait painted of him as a young man by Pompeo Batoni. And what a handsome young man he is.

The 5th Earl was also an infamous Georgian rake, one of the most dastardly libertines who ever ensnared an innocent female. He could have added lustre to his family name, but instead he made it notorious for all the wrong reasons. The scandal lingered on long after his death and had immense repercussions. 

He really deserves to be classed along with the Lovelaces, Valmonts, Squire Thornhills, Willoughbys and Wickhams who scatter the pages of Georgian literature, an ever-present danger to the virtue of innocent young women.

Squire Thornhill, by E.J. Sullivan for an edition of Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. London : Constable & Co., 1914

Elizabeth Craven was already aware in the 1770s of Frederick's somewhat self-indulgent behaviour. When she published her translation of the Italian satirical poem A Fashionable Day, she dedicated it to Frederick. It is a satire that deplores the lifestyle of idle young noblemen who had no other occupation but pleasure. The world was at their disposal and whoring was a favourite sport along with gambling and horse-racing.

Frederick had many mistresses and remained stubbornly unmarried. At one time he kept a certain Mrs Bailey at Cranford, his house in Middlesex. She was bundled out of the way when he was tired of her. And when in London he would drop in at the houses of courtesans and bawds. He seemed indifferent to his duty to find a suitable bride and beget heirs to inherit the Berkeley estates and all the rest of his property. If he died without an heir the title would pass to his younger brother and that brother's children. Why should he care?

Berkeley Castle

In 1783, the Earl was in Gloucester, mustering the county militia, when his roving eye spied Mary Cole, the daughter of a local tradesman. She was, as everybody agreed, remarkably pretty. He asked who she was, tracked her to her father's shop and then pursued her with the skill and determination of an expert sexual predator. Mary, who was aged sixteen or seventeen, sometimes could not avoid meeting him but had no intention of yielding to his dishonourable advances. On her father's death, a few months later, she and her unmarried sister Susan were sent to be maids to Lady Talbot, in Kent.

 Mary Cole c. 1790.

          This did not throw the Earl off her trail. He found out where she was. "Wherever I was, Lord Berkeley found me out or followed me," as she later said. He wrote her letters and for some time she answered them, for she had learned to read and write at a dame-school in Gloucester. Still she was resolute she would not stray into paths of iniquity. Her sister Susan was of quite a different mind. A beauty, like Mary, she stayed only two weeks in service, before deciding that long hours of washing, scrubbing and making fires were no life for her. She moved to London where she became the mistress of a series of rich men. Their mother discovered this and warned Mary to have nothing to do with Susan. They had a third sister, Anne, whose husband Mr Farren was in prison for debt, leaving her struggling with several children to support.

         The wily Frederick decided to make use of Susan to advance his schemes. Susan, probably acting on his instructions, wrote to Mary and implored her to come to London as she needed help. There Mary found her sister dressed in expensive, fashionable clothes and hosting groups of fine gentlemen - including Lord Berkeley - at a house in the West End every evening. She called herself Mrs Turner and offered to help Mary get into the same line of business. Mary still refused.

           So Frederick, with Susan's connivance, set up a cunning little piece of theatre. One evening four ruffians burst into Susan's house and seized her, threatening to carry her off to prison for debt. She tearfully appealed to Mary to save her. At that very moment, who should turn up but Lord Berkeley, who offered to settle the whole debt if Mary would enter his protection, as it was called. His carriage was waiting outside to take her away, and she had only to get in it, putting herself in  his power, and her sister would be released. Mary, in great distress, somewhat reluctantly, agreed. The earl produced a hundred guineas and the bargain was struck. Even so, Mary did not just give in on any terms. She extracted a promise from the earl that he would marry her, sooner or later. And at some point, a wedding ceremony took place in secret.

            What made Susan play such a cynical role in the seduction of her own sister? It was not just that she needed the hundred guineas, which ended up in her own pocket. She was probably envious of Mary for having attracted such a wealthy admirer. Susan used to go to the opera and theatre to attract clients and was known successively as Mrs Wright, Mrs Turner, Mrs Bolton and Mrs Edge. But she never had an earl angling and dangling after her, and possibly felt a bit impatient, or resentful, that Mary, who did, would not seize her opportunity to escape from poverty.

             A few months later, in the summer of 1785, Mary was living in Gloucester at the house of Anne Farren. Mary still passed as a single woman and did not wear a wedding ring. The earl was seen to be visiting her late at night, then returning to the nearby Castle. In October, the earl was back in London and so was Mary. He took his close friend, Admiral Prescott, to Susan's house to have tea with her and Mary, describing them as "two very pretty women" but saying nothing about his relationship with Mary.

Olivia in The Vicar of Wakefield returns to her father having been seduced by Squire Thornhill by means of a sham marriage. It later turns out to be legal.

        In 1786, Mary moved into an apartment in Park-street in London, paid for by Frederick. She became pregnant, and wrote to her mother asking her to be present at the birth. Her mother came to London, but refused to help her, because Mary had no wedding ring and no married name, so it appeared the child was out of wedlock. Mary made her a solemn declaration that she was in fact, despite all appearances, married. Sobbing, she asked her mother to come with her to communion the following day, and she would swear to it in church, after taking the sacrament. They did so, and after that Mrs Cole accepted Mary's word that she was an honest woman. The explanation must be that some sort of marriage ceremony had been conducted between her and Frederick, either sham or legal, and she believed it to be valid.

      Frederick told her that it was necessary to keep their marriage a secret. The reason he gave was that her sister Susan was living with a man who was not her husband. Mary accepted that it was better for the earl to be seen as living in sin, than to be married to a woman whose sister was doing so. She was young and inexperienced, and he took advantage of her naiveté.

     The child was born on 26th December 1786, and Frederick asked his friend the Rev. John Chapeau to conduct the baptism, telling him it was a "natural son". He wrote this in the baptismal register too, and entered the parents' names as Lord Berkeley and Mary Tudor. Gradually, Mary grew more worldly-wise, and realized that the earl had duped her. Her children were treated as bastards, and she was regarded as the earl's mistress, not his wife.  In October 1787, Mary spilled out to the Rev. Chapeau the whole story of how the earl and her sister had tricked her. She concluded bitterly, "I have been as much sold as any lamb that goes to the shambles."

        Once a child was born, Mary had little option but to stay with Frederick. He was able to support their offspring and she was not. And moreover, she regarded herself as bound to her unscrupulous spouse by marital vows. She lived with him at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire and in London and gave birth to eleven children. Eight lived to grow up. They had a governess to teach them, and were at first given the surname Fitz-Berkeley, not Berkeley.

She never gave up hope that he would acknowledge their marriage. In 1794, Susan married her latest protector, Mr Edge and they left England. Mary then demanded why Frederick would still not acknowledge her as his wife. He was running out of excuses. They often quarrelled and she was frequently in tears. The governess remembered Mary's fears of Frederick marrying someone else. Every time she left Berkeley Castle, she and her children would pack up every single possession, in case Frederick died and his brother inherited the castle. When she implored him to marry her, "Why will you not marry me, my lord?" he would repeatedly reply "I cannot." Finally he said "I cannot yet."

5th Earl of Berkeley, small sketch by Richard Cosway.

          From time to time, Frederick considered discarding Mary. Once at Cranford, he told Admiral Prescott he was determined to do this and be rid of her. They had been quarrelling and she was as usual in tears. The Admiral and Mary shared a carriage back to London, while Frederick remained behind. The Admiral told Mary with regret what Frederick had said to him, to which Mary replied "He dare not".
         What did she mean by this? It seems that she had some hold over him, some power that gave her the upper hand. She had an ace that she could play if he tried any more dastardly behaviour on her. What was it?
         Frederick was the first to admit that Mary was a devoted mother. She was also good at managing his households, and gradually came to handle not only the running of the castle, but that of the whole Berkeley estate, with the help of the steward. She understood the accounts and business he had with tenants, dependants and employees. This was something that the earl had always found irksome, and he was glad to pass it over to her. She directed the restoration of parts of the castle, and had it refurbished tastefully to provide comfortable apartments for themselves and their growing family. She had a sweet disposition, behaved with dignity and decorum, kindness and consideration to all and won universal respect. He had got a good bargain for his 100 guineas.

          Their friends observed the couple behaving with affection much of the time but one of them observed that Frederick was "a cold man". That certainly seems to be true. He more or less boasted to his brother-in-law, Lord Buckingham, that he had "got hold of " Mary in London for ready money, and told him that the children were not legitimate.

The 5th Earl by Mrs Bell. Frederick had this portrait painted of himself and his eldest son William, an unusual thing to do if the child was not legitimate.

           Mary had reason to be very grateful to Elizabeth Craven for one thing. When Frederick considered marrying some other, well-born woman, it was Elizabeth who dissuaded him from doing so. She was staying at Cranford once when Frederick talked of it seriously, mentioning names, and the Rev. Chapeau remembered her entreating him not to take such a step. Evidently he had told her that Mary was just his mistress and could be dropped at any time.

         After years of nagging and cajoling, weeping and begging, reminding him of how much their children had to gain or lose by being legitimate or not, Mary finally gained her point and married Frederick quietly in London in May 1796. Of that there is no doubt as the documents were signed and preserved. Frederick was described as a "bachelor" and Mary as a "spinster". Frederick was almost as ambivalent about this second marriage as he had been about the first. There was no announcement, and the rumour of his marriage only spread gradually among his friends. His brother was the last to know. Captain John West recalled how in 1797 at Weymouth, Frederick had admitted to him "the secret" that Mary was "the Countess of Berkeley" and told him she had long been so and that his eldest son was legitimate. By 1798 Mary was telling the eldest son to sign letters as Lord Dursley, the official title of the heir to the earldom, and regardless of Frederick's objections, she gained her point.

            In February 1799, Mary's younger brother William, who had adopted the name Tudor to match hers, came to Berkeley Castle and held a deep conference with Frederick and Mary. She said she would "Raise Heaven and Hell to gain her point" and that "they should all sink or swim together". With the best of motives, Frederick forged an entry in the registry of Berkeley church saying that he and Mary had been married there in 1785. Later that year, 1799, Frederick told Parliament his eldest son was legitimate, and should be his heir. But when he died in 1810, the claim to succession was not upheld, mainly because the registry entry dated 1785 was judged to be a forgery. It was an obvious forgery, not only because one of the witnesses could never be traced or proved to have existed, but also because the page it was written on had been cut out of the back of the registry and pasted into place. A paper maker was called as an expert witness and testified that this alteration could be proved from watermarks.
           If one page had been inserted, then clearly another page had been cut out. It may even be that this page was the one where Mary's first marriage in 1785 had been registered, and it had been cut out to destroy the record. Only one person had the motive to do that, or to give orders for it to be done - Frederick. And if Mary had investigated it at some point in the 1790s, this may explain what she meant when she told Admiral Prescott that Frederick dared not try to cast her off. She could bring charges against him that could be very damaging. To destroy a certificate of marriage, was a criminal offence, and in fact by Georgian law it was a capital offence. It carried the death penalty.

William Fitzhardinge Berkeley, Mary's eldest son.

        Mary did not want to see him hang, but she could not let him discard her or disgrace their children. Their relationship was one long, agonizing power struggle that ended only with his death in 1810. Neither can be said to have won outright.

The full story only emerged after his death in 1810, when the House of Lords held an official enquiry into the legitimacy of his eldest son, by that time known as Captain William Fitzhardinge Berkeley.

         Frederick's widow was called to testify and claimed that she had been married to the late Earl secretly in March 1785. She told the committee of the House of Lords, "My husband on his deathbed told me that he married me at the time to get possession of my person; it never having been the intention of him, at the time he married me, to acknowledge me as his wife." The confession was superfluous - she had worked that out more than twenty years earlier.

      The House of Lords rejected the claim of Captain William Fitzhardinge Berkeley to inherit the earldom, awarding it instead to their fourth son, Thomas. William however inherited Berkeley Castle, and eventually was created Baron Segrave and Viscount Fitzhardinge. His brothers became admirals, MPs and privy councillors. Mary, who was known in later life as Countess of Berkeley, lived in seclusion from society until she died in 1844, at the age of seventy-seven.

To find out more about Elizabeth Craven's family and her circle read

Elizabeth Craven: Writer, Feminist and European

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Elizabeth-Craven-Writer-Feminist-and-European-hardback-NEW-Vernon-Press-2017/202540437722?hash=item2f2859d0da:g:bccAAOSw8OFcF3-k:rk:1:pf:0

https://vernonpress.com/book/334

1.A Narrative of the Minutes of Evidence respecting the Claim of the Berkeley Peerage as taken before the Committee of Privileges in 1811. Together with the entire evidence of the persons principally concerned. To which are added facsimiles of the banns, and register of the marriage [of Frederick Augustus, Earl of Berkeley, and Mary Cole], etc London, 1811.
2. The Literary Panorama and National Register, Volume 10 . Cox, Son, and Baylis, 1811
3. https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/berkeley-william-fitzhardinge-1786-1857.