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Chapter Four

Politics, Intrigues and
Royal Romance at Weymouth

For local architects such as James Hamilton, the work they carried out in Weymouth must have been heavily dependent on the patronage of wealthy and powerful personalities in the community. Apart from the presence of King George III - "Farmer George" as he was sometimes referred to by the locals - who visited the town with his numerous family some ten summers in succession, there were also several influential men whom history suggests were not averse to political intrigue - particularly if they felt that they could influence the Corporation to find in their favour during the sale of the leasehold of valuable plots of land.
Political intrigue was almost inevitable in the Borough because ever since the time of their union in 1571, the twin towns of Weymouth and Melcome had been allowed to return four Members to Parliament and thus, during the eighteenth century in particular, the Borough became notorious for its civic fraudulence and corruption. Actual control of the town was exercised by the Mayor, Bailiffs, Aldermen, Capital Burgesses and Freeholders - and they were susceptible to corruption because they were the only ones allowed to vote during the Parliamentary elections.
One of the first major figures on the scene was George Bubb Dodington (1691-1762), later created 1st Baron Melcome Regis. He was an MP for Melcome between 1727 and 1754 and he was not above graft and corruption to protect his interests. Perhaps the Pulteney family from Bath were the most notorious to be associated with Weymouth. Sir William Pulteney seems to have been the leading member of the family and he was elected Mayor in 1796. By the use of bribery and corruption he controlled who was selected to represent Weymouth at Westminster. In 1790 Sir William purchased part of the Manor of Melcome from Gabriel Steward for £30,000, on the condition that Steward’s two sons should be returned as MP’s. Sir James Pulteney represented the town as MP for a period from 1796. The delightful terrace of Georgian buildings at the southern end of the Esplanade, next to the harbour, is named after the Pulteney family.
Sir William Pulteny's family name was Johnstone but he agreed to change his name as a condition of marrying into the very wealthy Pulteney family. A relation, Sir John Lowther Johnstone, became an MP for the Borough in 1810 and the Johnstone family eventually owned large tracts of Weymouth and Melcome. Even as late as 1874 Sir Frederick Johnstone was returned as the Conservative MP for Weymouth. One of the seafront Georgian terraces near the King's Statue - Johnstone Row - is named after the Johnstone family.

After the 1802 Parliamentary elections John Arbuthnot, the defeated candidate (and a former Mayor of Weymouth) petitioned that his opponent Charles Adams had been unjustly returned because of the Mayor’s partiality. A similar complaint was made in 1806 and 1812. On the latter occasion three electors petitioned to claim that ".....divers persons holding office under the crown did intervene, meat and drink given and other present gifts contrary to the standing orders ....". As the arguments went on through 1813 it was reported that "....Sir William Pulteney had been very active in appropriating to himself the greater part of the freehold of the Borough". In a petition to the Commons it was stated that the Pulteney property in Weymouth was vested in Trustees - the Duke of Cumberland, Lord Newcastle, David Cathcart and Masterton Ure - and that Cumberland "...has ever since directly interfered in the management of the Borough, has nominated members ....thus adding the influence of his high and exalted rank to the corrupt system.....the petitioners can prove that persons sent to the House during the last twenty years.....have in reality been the representatives of an individual and that many were perfect strangers...". Despite the complaints nothing changed very much, because the election of 1826 was reported as the most "...violent in character and terrific in appearance that was ever known ...numerous gangs of desperate individuals, lawless bodies of smugglers and whole families of Portlanders were hired to assist in securing the introduction of voters...the introduction of the military was requested ...who rode into town ...took their stations in close proximity to the Guildhall.....During the melee the Chief Magistrate was knocked down, the hall taken by storm, polling books destroyed and the poll closed". One of the candidates elected was Masterton Ure - trustee of the Pulteney interests - he had sat as MP since 1812.
King George III came to the throne in 1760 but he did not pay his first visit to Weymouth until 1789. Eventually, in 1801, he purchased the Royal Lodge from his brother the Duke of Gloucester, as well as three of the four adjacent houses (Gloucester Row 1 to 4) built by Hamilton, which were used to accommodate the servants of the Royal household.
In the course of the King’s many visits to Weymouth he played host to some very important national figures, including the Prime Minister (Pitt the Younger). Fanny Burney was part of the King’s entourage on that first visit in 1789 and she was lodged in one of the tiny attic rooms in Gloucester Lodge.

Fanny wrote that the King was in delightful health and much improved spirits. She also said that "the loyalty of this place is excessive; they have dressed out every street with labels of God Save The King; all shops have it over their doors; all the children wear it in their caps ......The bathing machines make it their motto over all their windows; and those bathers that belong to the royal dippers wear it in their bandeaus on their bonnets..... and have it in large letters round their waists to encounter the waves ......Nor is this all. Think but of the surprise of his Majesty when the first time of his bathing he had no sooner popped his royal head underwater than a band of music, concealed in a neighbouring machine, struck up "God Save Great George Our King". In late June, Fanny noted that "Not a child could we meet that had not a Bandeau round its Head, Cap or Hat, of God Save the King; all the Bargemen wore it…and even the Bathing Women had it in large coarse Girdles around their waists. It is printed in Golden Letters upon most of the Bathing Machines, and ….adorns every shop, and almost every House in the two Towns of Weymouth and Dorchester".

Much of the King’s time was spent visiting the surrounding countryside and taking trips in the Royal yacht. The King would embark on to his barge from the King’s Stairs on the stone pier about 11 o’clock. The barge took him aboard Royal Sovereign and then there would be a cruise around the bay. In the evening there would be a stroll on the Esplanade from where they would usually visit the Royal Theatre or go to Stacie’s Public Rooms. Master of Ceremonies of the Balls and Assemblies in the Public Rooms was a Mr. Rodber who enforced some very strict rules of behaviour and etiquette. Regular Ball Nights were on Tuesdays and Fridays with Public Tea Drinking every Sunday evening and cards every evening, Sundays excepted.
The King remained in reasonable health for many years after his first visit, but during the period from 1801 to 1804 it was evident that ‘his mind rocked’. Normally King George was a dull and dour sovereign, but during one of his visits to Weymouth around that time he dismayed his entourage by cracking jokes concerning the Queen’s abrupt retirement from the royal box in the little Theatre Royal.

In another of his "mad" moments in 1802 the King overheard one of the fashionable but corpulent ladies of court bestowing pats and kind words on one of Weymouth’s seaside donkeys – evidently she cooed ‘you pretty little ass - let me pat you, you pretty little ass’ in an affected manner. Later in the day the King repeated her words to her, at the same time administering a resounding slap to her rump - to the consternation of the Queen, Princesses and bystanders.
Mr. Wood’s Weymouth Guide tells us more about the little Theatre Royal ".....the many improvements the theatre has undergone, by Mr. Hamilton the Architect, which is under the management of Mr. Hughes the owner, who at vast expense has enlarged and ornamented it in an excellent and elegant style. The boxes and gallery are on a circular construction; the boxes in particular are rendered so commodious that they will contain nearly 400 people; and the manner in which they are fitted up are equal to the Theatres Royal in London". Kay’s Weymouth Guide of 1824 noted that the theatre was small but neatly fitted up, with the box door in Augusta Place and the pit and gallery door in New Street.
The opportunities for the members of the royal court to become involved in secret romances during their stays at Weymouth were numerous. The women in particular found the routine boring in the extreme - but they were rarely allowed to decide their own pleasures. It has to be remembered that women in the eighteen century had very little status - they could be deported or hanged for stealing a handkerchief; or burned at the stake (1790). Until they were married, women were the chattel of their father, then their husbands. They had around one child a year and the husband had sole rights over the person and property of his wife. Those women that did not marry and became poor spinsters had to eke out a living by teaching in Amateur or Dame Schools for girls.
Arranged marriages were normal and nobody expected the man to be faithful - or even the women - as long as there was no scandal. Illegitimate children were happily farmed out and forgotten. Because there was so little for the well off to do there were constant leisure pursuits such as visits to libraries, the keeping of diaries, playing billiards, practising dancing and singing, driving in carriages or riding or walking in the country. There was hunting and visits to exhibitions. In the evening they stayed up late at balls and theatres. The result was that there was plenty of time and opportunity for illicit romances to occur for even the most public of figures. In London Admiral Nelson's lover, the beautiful Emma Hamilton, gave birth to twins in 1801 but few were aware of her condition. Lady Elizebeth Foster became pregnant by the Duke of Devonshire and she went off abroad to give birth.
Of course, the period between 1780 to 1820 was also a time of great social change. Abroad, the American colonies were being lost by George III in the 1780's, but this was offset by gaining the West Indies and India. At home the court of George III and Queen Charlotte was considered the pinnacle of English society. As a child the future George III was sickly and backward and his parents preferred their second son, Edward, later the Duke of York. George was shy whilst Edward was outgoing but they still liked each other. Their father Frederick, died in 1751 when George was only thirteen and so he became the Prince of Wales to his grandfather, King George II. George II had had several mistresses and his Queen was reputed to be the lover of Lord Bute. On coming to the throne George III decided that he would be a moral ruler - but despite his good intentions he was highly sexed - like all the family. He was alleged to have had a secret marriage to Hannah Lightfoot. At eighteen he fell in love with the Duke of Marlborough's daughter Lady Elizabeth Spencer but she married the Earl of Pembroke. At 21 he fell in love with the daughter of Lord March - the Lady Sarah Lennox who was just fifteen. However, that did not stop him investigating a possible marriage to a German princess and when George II died in 1760 the newly crowned George III decided in 1761 to marry Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz.

George III was always scared that he may have inherited a "mad" or nervous condition which nowadays would be called porphyria. From 1762 to 1783 George and Charlotte had fifteen children - nine sons and six daughters, but two died in infancy. George was very strict with his wife and children but even so most of them also grew up to be highly sexed. The eldest son, George (Prince of Wales), later to become George IV, was considered a bad son and he became a worse husband and father. He loved and reputedly married Mrs Maria Fitzherbert but still went on to marry a German Princess. He rarely came to Weymouth but he did spent a great deal of time at Brighton, where he went on to build Brighton Pavilion. 
George III never enjoyed a robust health and he was ill in 1762 and 1765, but his first serious bout of "madness" did not happen until the winter of 1788/89. The King had just recovered from his first "madness" when the French revolution broke out in the autumn of 1789. War was declared by the French on England in 1793 and the war, the industrial revolution and the French Revolution all combined to make the 1790's a period of extreme social unrest. The flagrant extravagance of the Royal Princes did not help the reputation of the royal family and did not make them very popular. In politics George was a supporter of the Tories, whilst his son the Prince of Wales was with the Whigs. Pitt The Younger and the Tories had been in office since 1783 but trouble over Ireland eventually led to Pitt's resignation in 1801. Although there was a brief peace with France it was probably all the stress associated with these events that in 1805 finally drove George III into his almost permanent "madness". Because of this madness, in 1811 George IV was appointed as the Regent. The war with France continued on and off until 1814. Napoleon then escaped from the Isle of Elba but he was finally defeated in 1815. George III was by now old, blind and mad although he lived on at Windsor until his death in 1820. George IV then became King in his own right and reigned until his death in 1830.

Much that is known about the royal family and their summer visits to Weymouth was recorded in the journals of Fanny Burney. She had been born in 1752 and first achieved success as an author. She was still unmarried when, in 1786, she was approached by the Queen and asked if she would be the Second Keeper of the Royal Robes. Eventually she was persuaded to accept and was plunged into the court life of George III and Queen Charlotte. She found that she was subject to the whims of the Queen and stuck it out for five years until she became so ill that she was allowed to leave. She took with her in her diaries a fascinating account of her experiences. She left the court in 1791 with a small pension and then she met General d'Arblay, a French refugee who was a forty year old professional soldier. They fell in love and in 1794, at the age of 42 Fanny gave birth to a boy. In 1802 she went to France with her husband but in 1815 they returned to England where he died in 1818.
It was during the latter part of her time working for the Queen that Fanny came to Weymouth and lodged in the Gloucester Lodge. The Queens daughters usually accompanied their mother and father to Weymouth and despite being bored for much of the time they did on occasions try to enjoy themselves, and they were generally allowed much more freedom once they were away from London. The Princess Royal (Charlotte) was 30 before, in 1797, she married the Prince of Wurttemberg and went to live in Germany. She never saw her father again and died in 1818.

The second daughter Princess Elizabeth remained a spinster but had a long love affair with an Army officer because the Prince of Wales resisted her getting married. She was 48 before in 1818 she surprisingly married a German Prince from Hesse-Homburg and the couple went to live in Germany.
The third daughter was Mary "the beauty" (Minny). When the youngest sister, Amelia, was dying in 1809 Mary was chosen to go with her to stay at Weymouth, a place she did not like. Mary eventually married her cousin, William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester when she was 39 and he was 38. They had no children and she lived to be 80 years of age.
Princess Sophia was almost as beautiful as her sister Mary and a great deal more intelligent and of all the Princesses she tended to be the people's favourite. Gossip points to Sophia having given birth to an illegitimate son in the summer of 1800, the father being General Garth, one of the King's Equerries. The affair probably flourished during their time at Weymouth and the court was certainly at Weymouth when the Princess was carrying the child but evidently the King never knew the truth. The Princess was said to be "dropsical" and then she suddenly recovered - with the King being told that she had been cured by roast beef!
Sophia was evidently taken so ill on the journey from Windsor to Weymouth that she and the party had to stop overnight at Andover. When she reached Weymouth she had to be carried upstairs to her lodgings but soon afterwards she suddenly recovered and at the same time a baby mysteriously appeared at the house of a Weymouth man called Taylor, whose wife had just had a son of her own. The child was brought up as Mrs Taylor's until he was four or five years old, when he was swiftly removed and brought up as his own child by General Garth. Garth had an unpleasant dark red coloured birth mark on his face and was 33 years older than Sophia but it was said that the Princess was so violently in love with him that it became obvious to everyone. Garth was rich and had already completed a many years in the Army and Fanny Burney described his as a man of real worth - religious, principled and with an unaffected honour, along with a strong share of wit and a great knowledge of literature. He was evidently devoted to George III.

General Garth's young son was named Tom Garth and his father doted on him and spoilt him. Tom eventually joined the army but unlike his father he had an unsuccessful career and ended up in debt. It was he who became involved in the publication of the sensitive story of his birth, which reached the papers in 1829. At that time it was suggested that he was really the son of Sophia and her brother, the Duke of Cumberland. An even more lurid rumour was that Sophia had been raped by her father George III in one of his "mad" moments. Sophia's niece, Charlotte, the Prince Regent's daughter described her as a true friend "...she is a very sweet dear being so true to me so sensible so right on all subjects". But Sophia had inherited the family malady and suffered like her father from the spasms of "madness" together with the bouts of depression and a throat problem that at times made it hard for her to swallow. The doctors feared for her life and her reason, but she lived to be seventy one. Her's is an extraordinary story and much of it still remains a mystery.

Princess Amelia was the last of the Princesses. She was never very healthy and in 1801, at seventeen, she was left behind at Weymouth so that she could benefit from the more healthy sea air. One of her companions was the King's Equerry, Colonel The Honourable Sir Charles Fitzroy, a handsome descendant of Charles II. Fitzroy was single, a successful soldier of 39 and well travelled. Amelia fell in love with him. The relationship led to a row with the Queen but George III did not find out. Amelia investigated ways that she could marry Fitzroy, but this proved impossible whilst her father was alive, although there were rumours that the couple had married in secret. By 1809 the strain was telling and Amelia was so ill because of a pain in her side that she was sent to Weymouth to recuperate. Sadly she was slowly dying and eventually she went back to Windsor where, in 1810, at the age of 27 she died.

It was in 1784 that the attractive Maria Fitzherbert, who was already a double widow at the age of 28, caught the eye of George III's son, the 22 year old Prince of Wales. After the Prince had done all the chasing there is little doubt that they were married in December 1785. Because of concerns over the King's health a Bill with limited Regent powers was passes in 1789 but the King then recovered.
Because of his debts the Prince Regent was forced to leave Maria Fitzherbert and marry Caroline of Brunswick, a German Princess. The wedding took place in 1795 and a daughter, Princess Charlotte Augusta, was born in 1796. Maria Fitzherbert retired quietly to live alone at Richmond. Eventually the Prince told his German wife that the marriage was over and in 1800 he resumed his affair with Maria, but by 1809 the relationship had broken down. In 1811, because of his father's illness, he was appointed Prince Regent, and became King George IV in 1820. He died in 1830 and Maria Fitzherbert died in 1837.

George III's second son, William, Duke of Clarence, was 25 in 1790 when he moved Dora Jordan, an Irish actress with three illegitimate children, into his house in Richmond. They spent 20 happy domestic years together and had ten children. In June 1811 they separated as the Duke needed to marry a wealthy woman. In 1812 Dora returned to the stage at the age of 51 and she eventually went abroad to avoid debts and died almost a pauper in France in 1816. The Duke became King William IV in 1830 after the death of his elder brother and he married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.

When her parents separated, Princess Charlotte Augusta was brought up by her father and a Governess. Her mother gained a reputation of being free with her favours when entertaining and even King George III was thought to be involved occasionally. As the Princess grew to her teens she became more popular than her father, who, when he was appointed Regent, became very protective of his daughter. Charlotte reluctantly became engaged to Prince William of Orange (Holland) but she eventually broke it off and as a consequence she was virtually imprisoned by her father. She suffered from the family ailment of a pain in the side, for which sea bathing was a recommended remedy. Eventually in 1814 she was sent down to Weymouth and was warmly welcomed by the town. She carried on her bathing in the sea waters well into October. The next summer she was beginning to pine for a young soldier she had met called Leopold, Prince of Coburg. She was twenty in 1816 when they married. In 1817 she became pregnant and in November a boy was born dead and Charlotte died soon afterwards. Later Prince Leopold married a French princess and founded a dynasty.

When William IV died in 1837 it was Queen Victoria, born in 1819, who succeeded to the throne. She was the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, who had married Victoria, Leopold's widowed sister. Edward died soon after Victoria was born and Victoria herself went on to marry Leopold's nephew Prince Albert.
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