The verdict rang through Westminster Hall, and Elizabeth Chudleigh, the woman who had clawed her way to the top of British society, crumpled to the ground, lifeless. She had been convicted of bigamy. The Duchess Countess, as the gossips now called her, lay in a heap of black silk and despair before the assembled peers of the realm, Queen Charlotte, and the future kings of England. The greatest scandal of the century had reached its climax, and the woman at its center had just lost everything.
But Elizabeth had one last trick left. And she was about to use it. To understand how Elizabeth Chudleigh arrived at that moment of collapse, one must begin at the beginning, with a childhood marked by tragedy and a fall from grace. When she was only five years old, her father, having squandered the family money, met a sudden end.
The death left young Elizabeth in a sort of genteel limbo, neither starving nor enjoying the luxuries of the extremely wealthy. It was an uncertain footing for a girl who would one day become embroiled in the British royal court, and it would only lead to notoriety and scandal. At the age of fifteen, a threat to Elizabeth’s health and well-being darkened her doorstep. She survived a dangerous bout of smallpox, but in a stroke of luck, recovered without any lasting scars.
She was known to be both beautiful and exceedingly charming and witty, and before long, she caught the eye of a much older gentleman. Her very first foray into romance was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl. Still a child in many ways, she became the object of affection for William Pulteney, a powerful politician with a seat in the House of Commons. Even more unsettling, he had a wife.
But despite all this, Pulteney couldn’t resist the temptation of a defenseless teenage girl. For all his pomp and circumstance, William Pulteney was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. With his beady eyes on Elizabeth, he showed a disturbingly strong interest in her education and began spending long hours alone with her. According to her first biographer, and to nobody’s surprise, their intimacy wasn’t always platonic.
With a favorable eye cast upon her daughter, Elizabeth’s mother only encouraged the close connection. After spending much time with her, Pulteney made a suggestion that changed the course of Elizabeth’s life forever. He advised her to move to London and ingratiate herself in the royal court. The king had smiled on William Pulteney, making him the Earl of Bath, and this opened a whole new world for Elizabeth.
But little did she know, it would turn out to be more dangerous than she could have ever imagined. Elizabeth left her childhood struggles in the dust when she arrived on the glittering threshold of the British royal court. Not only did she find herself with an income of four hundred pounds, but she also snagged the role of maid of honor for the wife of the Prince of Wales, Augusta Saxe-Gotha. To her credit, Elizabeth became incredibly popular, so much so that she wowed the likes of the king himself.
Elizabeth certainly knew how to make an impression. On one notorious occasion, she attended a masquerade in the Haymarket. When she made her entrance, jaws dropped. Elizabeth had transformed herself into the likeness of the Greek princess Iphigenia, swathed in a stunning dress that was incredibly sheer and flesh-colored.
In the warm candlelight, Elizabeth appeared as if she was wearing nothing at all. King George II took immediate notice, and instead of being offended, he was delighted. He was so enraptured by Elizabeth that he outwardly voiced his approval for his son’s wife’s lady and even ordered another masquerade in her honor. With every eye in the room on her, Elizabeth could only hope to make a prosperous match.
But of course, her heart got in the way. The royal court was not all prim and proper; it teemed with vice and ravenous suitors. And this was where Elizabeth met the most eligible bachelor of her time. Entranced by her beauty and charms, James, Duke of Hamilton, made a proposal of marriage.
But there was one hiccup in his plan: before they could marry, James had to leave her side and embark on a grand tour of the continent. Unfortunately for James, this gave Elizabeth ample time to turn her gaze towards another suitor. Although James was quite the catch, that didn’t stop Elizabeth from tapping into her more rebellious side. While attending a horse race, she came face-to-face with Augustus John Hervey, an incredibly dashing suitor.
Only Augustus was not cut from the same cloth. He was a poor and lowly naval officer. But this did not stop Elizabeth from making the most reckless decision of her life. Elizabeth fell head over heels for Augustus, and as a result, she didn’t think twice about dealing the Duke of Hamilton a vicious betrayal.
In 1744, a secret marriage came to pass. She and Augustus met at a quiet Hampshire church, and at ten o’clock at night, the illicit ceremony began. Only a handful of friends and servants attended. If anybody found out, the consequences would be utterly severe.
Most shockingly, Elizabeth kept her marriage a secret from her own mother. If anyone close to her exposed the truth, she’d risk losing her status at court and everything she had worked for. Her quick marriage had been brash, spontaneous, and most of all doomed from the very beginning. Not long after saying I do, the couple had a sudden falling out, and the reason was surprisingly sinister.
There’s a good chance that Elizabeth’s marriage to Augustus imploded due to aggression and mistreatment, particularly in the bedroom. They went from hot to cold in an instant. And when Augustus returned to his fleet, Elizabeth extinguished their romance. She never wanted to lay eyes on him again.
However, this horrifying experience would come around to haunt her in a terrible way. Despite her disappointment with her twisted first love, Elizabeth continued to bat her eyes in court. She was incredibly skilled at flirting and became linked to more than one notorious courtier. Even King George II had a soft spot for her.
While rumors hinted at a potential affair, Elizabeth for once steered clear of that kind of entanglement. However, she did take advantage of his keen favor. Under the appreciative gaze of the king, Elizabeth bestowed some of her perks on her own mother. The king gave her mother a role as a housekeeper at Windsor Castle.
Now both mother and daughter were brushing shoulders with royalty and enjoyed their hefty incomes. Everything seemed to be going well for Elizabeth, until her pesky husband returned home to England and ruined everything. By this time, Elizabeth acknowledged that marrying Augustus Hervey had been a disastrous mistake. When he made his presence known, she refused to see him.
And that’s when the threats began. Augustus used their secret marriage as leverage, threatening to reveal their relationship to the world. Elizabeth had no choice but to go to him. Once Augustus had Elizabeth alone, he reportedly forced himself on her.
This chilling interlude wasn’t bad enough. When Elizabeth discovered that she was later pregnant, her courtly agendas took a backseat. She had no choice but to withdraw from court until her child was born. Her absence went unexplained, and there was no shortage of nasty rumors told behind her back.
Elizabeth’s tormented road to motherhood only ended in sadness. After the child arrived, a wet nurse took over, and in the end, the baby didn’t survive very long. When she returned to court, Elizabeth tried to put the whole debacle behind her, but that was much easier said than done. She fought the rumors with complete exaggeration in order to make them seem less believable.
Desperate to obliterate the pregnancy rumors, Elizabeth once jested with Lord Chesterfield, “The world says I have had twins. ” His response was brutal and oh so telling. He replied, “Well, I’ll make a point of believing only one half of what the world says. ”
Despite this deranged setback, Elizabeth returned to court with her head held high.
But drama followed her wherever she went, and she was about to shake things up like never before. Elizabeth had certainly learned from her past mistakes. When it came to her next romantic conquest, she did not aim low. The Duke of Kingston, Evelyn Pierpont, was just the kind of man to turn her life around.
He came from a wealthy family with sprawling estates, not to mention a delicious income of seventeen thousand pounds per year. But there was just one thing standing in her way. In order to ingratiate herself with the Duke of Kingston, Elizabeth had to break some hearts along the way. The Duke already had a concubine, but once he met Elizabeth, the other girls stood no chance.
To Elizabeth’s delight, he ruthlessly dumped his French mistress for her. Oh, but this jilted lover did not respond well to being replaced, and she sought her revenge on Elizabeth in a vicious way. The Duke’s ex-mistress fled to Paris, where she wrote a hostile book about Elizabeth. Elizabeth, meanwhile, had won.
She’d come out on top and shamelessly enjoyed her new lover’s constant attention. At thirty years old, she wanted nothing more than to keep her man in check. And while she didn’t completely abandon her flirtations, she adored basking in the glory of her Duke’s wealth most of all. Little did she know her greed would one day become her Achilles’ heel.
For Elizabeth, slipping beneath the Duke of Kingston’s sheets paid off in a big way. With one hand in his pocketbook and the other holding his heart, she spent his money like water. She filled his estates, as well as the homes he’d gifted her, with shiny baubles and expensive ornaments. The Duke kept her dressed up in the latest styles and provided every luxury she desired.
Her life was a dream at this point, and above all, it afforded her protection from the fickle tongues of her peers, those that would otherwise tear her apart. By this time, Elizabeth’s reputation had received quite a lot of damage. But even so, she remained a magnetic force within society. Who could resist her lavish parties plucked straight out of a fairy tale?
There were fireworks and mountains of strawberries, tableaus, and endless entertainment. High society was more than happy to turn a blind eye to the dark rumors that cast a shadow upon her character. But this would not last forever. Elizabeth had bagged the handsomest man in England and enjoyed her spoils to no end.
But it was all about to take a very messy turn. In 1764, the Duke went behind her back and had a brief affair with a hatmaker. The betrayal caused Elizabeth to take a step back from their ongoing affair, and she used her freedom to kick up her skirts. During their time apart, she traveled to Europe where she graced the court of King Frederick II of Prussia.
There, she let her party girl nature soar. At one of the dances, she drank far too much and ended up completely intoxicated. But wild nights aside, she still yearned for the Duke. So when he asked her to come back to him, she didn’t hesitate.
But just when her love life seemed to write itself, her past came back to ambush her from behind. Elizabeth just couldn’t escape the blight of her first marriage. Her husband, Augustus, reared his head again, this time with threats in tow. He wanted to sue her for a divorce so that he could marry another woman.
Sure, Elizabeth wanted nothing more than to divorce him, but she had her reputation to worry about. A scandal like this could destroy her hopes of marrying her very wealthy Duke. She had no choice but to negotiate with her husband, the man she despised the most. In response to Augustus’s nasty threat, Elizabeth quipped back with a chilling warning.
If Augustus exposed their marriage, he’d have to take responsibility for her staggering sixteen thousand pounds in debts, a burden that Augustus had no desire to take on. So they put their heads together and came up with an underhanded scheme. To get both of them out of this mess, she would sue him. In many ways, Elizabeth and Augustus came up with the perfect plan.
She sued him on grounds of his “jactitation of marriage. ” Jactitation is when one claims to be married when they are not. During the trial, Augustus purposely made his defense as weak as possible. Simple, cunning, and absolutely brilliant.
In 1768, the court sided with Elizabeth and declared that the couple had never been married. Problem solved, right? Well, if you thought that this was over, you’d be wrong. This win seemed great and all, but there’s an ironic twist to this story.
Years before, in 1759, Elizabeth’s greed caused her to make the silliest decision imaginable. She’d heard that Augustus’s older brother, the Earl of Bristol, was on death’s doorstep. If he passed, then Augustus would inherit the title and the fortune, effectively making Elizabeth a countess. This was a prize that she just couldn’t resist.
And so, she wanted proof that the marriage had occurred. Spurred on by the promise of fortune, Elizabeth rounded up the surviving witnesses of her marriage and asked them to sign an oath, providing the legitimacy of her marriage to Augustus. But the joke was on her. The Earl of Bristol did not succumb to illness as planned.
And Elizabeth had to scuttle back into her hole. Nine years later, her two-faced nature bubbled to the surface at the worst moment. At this point, she had publicly reaffirmed that she had never been married to Augustus. Elizabeth was a cunning opportunist, but it was only a matter of time before karma came calling.
Now freed from the shackles of her first marriage, Elizabeth could freely marry the Duke of Kingston. In 1770, she finally captured her happily ever after. But a dark current ran beneath their blissful facade. Society letters from that time revealed some unsettling truths about this marriage.
Some reports alleged that Elizabeth was a controlling spouse over her husband. Within society, Elizabeth was the boss of her home and husband. One account even claimed that she required the Duke to ask for her permission if he wanted to step outside for fresh air. However, in the end, their time together was heartbreakingly short-lived.
Only three years after marrying, the Duke of Kingston passed away. This meant that Elizabeth, now a Duchess, would inherit her husband’s entire fortune. This was a hard pill to swallow for the Duke’s nephew, Evelyn Meadows, who didn’t stand to see a cent until Elizabeth herself would pass. All he needed was a reason to go after the Duchess for bigamy.
And luckily for him, the opportunity presented itself in a shocking way. Elizabeth’s sordid unraveling began with a play. One of Elizabeth’s servants had been in contact with the writer Samuel Foote, and he didn’t hesitate to use the Duchess’s fascinating life story as the basis for his play, A Trip to Calais. It’s safe to say he did not paint her in the most flattering light.
When Elizabeth found out, her reaction was nothing short of diabolical. Elizabeth certainly didn’t appreciate being represented as Lady Kitty Crocodile, and that was exactly what Samuel Foote hoped for. He had an inkling that Elizabeth would be willing to pay an exorbitant amount of money just to squash the play entirely. Unsurprisingly, she summoned him, and he answered her call.
When she asked him to read some of the play’s passages to her, he watched as her expression morphed into one of horror. Elizabeth knew she had a problem on her hands. Seething with rage, she asked Foote how much it would cost to suppress the incriminating script. Samuel Foote was no fool.
He had his desired price ready in his mind. A stunning two thousand pounds could buy his silence, and no less. Elizabeth was scandalized by the amount and offered only to pay sixteen hundred pounds. But Foote wouldn’t budge.
Her stinginess would be her downfall. Elizabeth Chudleigh did what she did best and went on the attack. But it backfired terribly. She ran to a member of the Whig party spouting accusations of blackmail.
Meanwhile, Foote also had friends in high places. He took the story of Elizabeth’s bigamy to Lord Hertford and insisted that there was evidence of her deception. To make matters worse for Elizabeth, the Duke’s disinherited nephew, Evelyn Meadows, also backed the claims of bigamy against the Duchess. She had no allies.
Faced with mounting evidence, the grand jury decided that a trial was indeed in order. Elizabeth’s worst nightmare was finally coming true. She had no choice but to answer the summons. If she didn’t, she would be branded an outlaw.
Little did Elizabeth know this case was about to blow up in her face even more. It went to the House of Lords and caused an unprecedented sensation. Trial spectators flocked to Westminster Hall to watch the drama unfold. In fact, the stands were completely full.
But that wasn’t the worst part. There were huge names in attendance: Queen Charlotte and her children, including the future kings. Elizabeth’s story ignited the interest of the entire nation. A rags-to-riches tale led by a manipulative protagonist who had clawed her way to the top, becoming one of the richest women in Britain.
What’s more entertaining than watching the high and mighty fall back down to Earth? The gossip made this case infamous, and before long, it raged out of control. Elizabeth Chudleigh earned herself a humiliating nickname: the Duchess Countess. Her first husband had recently become an Earl, and so, in a way, she was both a Duchess and a Countess.
Things were not looking good for Elizabeth. For her, the trial was a harrowing experience. Even her attire was as dramatic as this whole debacle. Elizabeth attended her trial draped head-to-toe in black, even wearing a black hood.
There was something eerily familiar about her appearance. She looked just like Mary Queen of Scots facing down her impending execution. What’s more, the fifty-six-year-old Elizabeth had lost the blushing beauty of her youth. One witness recalled her looking “large and ill-shaped.
” But although she lacked her physical graces, Elizabeth still had a penchant for manipulation. The only question was, would it be enough to save her? Elizabeth, known for throwing outrageous tantrums, reined her selfishness in. She put her best foot forward and tried to appear as pleasing as possible.
She spent a long time testifying in her own defense, but it just wasn’t enough. She’d sorely underestimated the power of her servants. One in particular held the key to her ruination. The entire trial went south for Elizabeth when her old servant, Ann Craddock, presented some chilling evidence.
Simply put, she threw the Duchess under the bus, not sparing her an inch of mercy. When the guilty verdict rang through the air, Elizabeth reportedly collapsed lifeless to the ground. She was convicted of bigamy. But for Elizabeth, the fight was still far from over.
If Elizabeth wanted to escape with her fortune, she had to act quickly. She knew that her husband’s disinherited nephew, Evelyn Meadows, would want to sue her for the will to be overturned. He was also likely to bar her from leaving the country. Well, Elizabeth had one last laugh in her yet.
She decided to trick him, and it was infuriatingly brilliant. Elizabeth’s coach was very recognizable, and so she had her driver spirited all over town. Meanwhile, her home would be alive with a raucous party. To any outsiders, including Meadows, it would seem that she was very busy entertaining.
This would give her ample time to escape. She liquidated as many assets as she could, and then fled the country entirely, landing in France with infamy at her back. Elizabeth had successfully slipped through the fingers of not only Meadows, but also her husband, Augustus. He’d wanted to divorce his wild wife once and for all, but because of their past transgressions, he was advised not to pursue it.
As for Elizabeth, life was never really the same again. However, she still managed to wheedle her way into the favor of new high-class societies. Despite the trial, Elizabeth managed to overcome her spoiled reputation. And for the next twelve years, she enjoyed her life and traveled through Europe.
She even fell into the good graces of the Russian royal family, and even the Pope himself. Although she became stingier with age, she was as healthy as ever. In fact, Elizabeth wanted for nothing. She was still a wealthy woman and owned multiple estates.
On the day before her passing, Elizabeth Chudleigh didn’t seem ill at all. And then, in a single moment, it was all over. As the historian Lewis Melville wrote, “According to one account, the immediate cause of death was of a blood vessel as the result of a violent outburst of rage on hearing that a lawsuit in Paris had gone against her. ”
The woman who had survived smallpox, scandal, and the greatest trial of the century was finally undone by her own temper.
Elizabeth Chudleigh, the Duchess Countess, who had lied her way to the very top of British society, met her end in a fit of fury over a lawsuit in a foreign land. The girl who had once dazzled King George II in a sheer dress at a masquerade, who had married in secret at a quiet Hampshire church, who had sued her own husband to erase the evidence of that marriage, who had married a Duke and inherited his fortune, who had been convicted of bigamy before the House of Lords and Queen Charlotte herself, had finally run out of tricks. Greedy and cunning to the very end, Lady Elizabeth Chudleigh spent her entire life trying to bury the greatest secret of her youth, an illicit marriage gone terribly wrong. And when the smoke finally cleared, she was a chilling shell of the beautiful woman she once was.
There’s a reason history wants us to forget the scandalous story of Lady Elizabeth Chudleigh.
