Lady Hertford - Prinny's intimate friend

Lady Beauchamp, later 2nd Marchioness of Hertford
by John Hoppner (1784) from John Hoppner RA
by WD McKay and W Roberts (1909)

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Isabella Ingram Seymour Conway, Marchioness of Hertford (10 June 1759 – 12 April 1834), was the intimate friend and possibly mistress of George, Prince of Wales, later George IV, from 1807 to 1819/20.

Family

Isabella Anne Ingram was born on 10 June 1759, the daughter of Charles Ingram, 9th Viscount Irvine (1727-1778), and his wife, Frances Shepheard (1733-1807). She had a younger sister Frances, but no brothers, and was consequently the joint heir of her father’s estate.

Wraxall described Isabella as one ‘of the riches heiresses of high birth to be found in England.’1

Marriage

On 20 May 1776, the 16-year-old Isabella became the second wife of Francis Seymour Conway, Viscount Beauchamp, later 2nd Marquess of Hertford (1743-1822), who was twice her age. They had one son, Francis, who was born on 11 March 1777. When Isabella’s mother died on 20 November 1807, Isabella and her husband took the additional surname Ingram in acknowledgement of the fortune they inherited.

In 1797, Isabella’s husband became 2nd Marquess of Hertford on the death of his father, with an income in excess of £70,000 a year. His estates included Ragley Hall in Alcester, Warwickshire, and Sudbourne Hall in Suffolk as well as large estates in Ireland. 

He bought the lease of Manchester House in 1797 and this became the Hertfords’ main London residence. Later renamed Hertford House, it now houses The Wallace Collection. Isabella inherited Temple Newsam in Leeds from her mother in 1807.

The Ladies’ Monthly Museum (1816) judged the marriage a success. It wrote:

It is pleasing to record, after a matrimonial union of forty years, that the domestic felicity of Lord and Lady Hertford continues unimpaired; and the same cordiality and esteem still exists, which have ever marked the noble family as worthy of emulation.2

Hertford House, previously Manchester House, in Manchester Square,
London. Once the main London residence of Lord Hertford,
it is now home to The Wallace Collection

The charms of Lady Hertford

The Ladies’ Monthly Museum (1816) wrote:

The Marchioness of Hertford inherited from her father considerable personal property, and by nature was endowed with much personal beauty, which, with uncommon mental acquirements, have ever rendered her the ornament and admiration of the higher circles of society, where her birth and alliance entitle her to associate.

It continued:

The Marchioness is in her person, although tending to the embonpoint, at once graceful and elegant, her manners are uncommonly fascinating, and notwithstanding she has passed, what is usually called, the meridian of life, being now in the fifty-eighth year of her age, it must be confessed, that her ladyship still possesses the charms of attraction, very superior to many of greater juvenility.3

Not everyone thought her so engaging. Lord Holland wrote:

Her character was as timid as her manners were stately, formal and insipid.4

Marchioness of Hertford
from The Ladies' Monthly Museum (1816)

Prinny in love

Lady Hertford first started to attract the young George IV in 1806. The Prince was fighting a battle for the guardianship of Minney Seymour, the ward of his secret wife, Maria Fitzherbert. In an appeal to the House of Lords, the Prince used his influence to have Lord and Lady Hertford appointed Minney’s guardians, having been assured that they would not remove her from Maria Fitzherbert’s care.

What Mrs Fitzherbert perhaps did not foresee was that once the appeal was won, the Prince would lose interest in her. He fell in love with the beautiful Lady Hertford instead.

That same year, the Prince visited Lady Hertford at Temple Newsam and gave her some Chinese wallpaper and the Moses tapestries. He wrote to her repeatedly and made himself ill trying to win her affections.

Lord Hertford tried to avert the Prince’s attentions by taking his wife to Ireland, but this just increased the Prince’s passion. By the summer of 1807, the Prince was regularly visiting Lady Hertford, at both Ragley Hall and Manchester House.

Wraxall wrote that Lady Hertford

… besides the gifts of fortune, had received from nature such a degree of beauty as rarely bestowed upon woman. Lady Beauchamp, in 1785, though even then no longer in her first youth, possessed extraordinary charms. At the present time, in 1818, when she numbers over her head nearly sixty winters, she is still capable of inspiring passion. That she does indeed inspire passion in some sense of the word, must be assumed from the empire which she maintains at this hour over the regent; - an empire depending, however, from the first moment of its origin, more on intellectual and moral endowments, than on corporeal quantities, and reposing principally on admiration or esteem. We may reasonably doubt whether Diana de Poitiers, Ninon de l’Enclos, or Marion de l’Orme, three women who preserved their powers of captivating mankind even in the evening of life, could exhibit at her age finer remains of female grace than the Marchioness of Hertford retains at the present day.5

There is some debate as to whether Lady Hertford was the Prince’s mistress or just his intimate friend. TJ Hochstrasser believed that the relationship was platonic; Saul David, on the other hand, found it hard to believe that a man with such a voracious sexual appetite as the Prince would not have made Lady Hertford his mistress.

George IV as Prince of Wales by John Hoppner
© The Wallace Collection

Lady Hertford’s influence

Lord and Lady Hertford were loyal Tories. When William Pitt the Younger began his second term as Prime Minister in 1804, Lord Hertford was appointed Master of the Horse. When he lost his position on Pitt’s death in 1806, he was compensated with the Order of the Garter.

During the time whilst Lady Hertford was the Prince’s favourite, she heavily influenced his politics and drew him away from his Whig friends.

Lady Hertford was very ambitious to advance her family’s position. She used her influence with the Prince of Wales to obtain the position of Lord Chamberlain of the Household for her husband in 1812 and her son Francis, Lord Yarmouth, who had become a member of the Prince’s set, was made Vice Chamberlain. She failed, however, to obtain the dukedom for her husband that she so desired.

The Ladies’ Monthly Museum (1816) wrote: 

The Royal Family, in particular, have always shown great favour and partiality to the Marchioness of Hertford, and the confidence and honours bestowed on the Marquis and the Earl of Yarmouth, have been, we presume, in a great measure the consequences of the Marchioness’s influence.6

Francis Ingram Seymour Conway,
3rd Marquess of Hertford by Thomas
Lawrence (c1822-3) at The Wallace
Collection (2015) on loan from National
Gallery of Art, Washington

Decline and death

Lady Hertford was ousted as the Prince’s favourite by another grandmother, Elizabeth, Marchioness of Conyngham, around 1819.

Lord Hertford died on 17 June 1822 at Manchester House and his wife died 12 years later, on 12 April 1834.

Rachel Knowles writes clean/Christian Regency era romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

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Notes

1. Wraxall, Sir Nathaniel William, Posthumous Memoirs of his own time (1836) Volume I.

2. The Ladies’ Monthly Museum (1816).

3. Ibid.

4. Lord Holland quoted in David, Saul, The Prince of Pleasure (Little, Brown & co., 1998).

5. Wraxall op cit.

6. The Ladies’ Monthly Museum (1816).

Sources used include:

David, Saul, The Prince of Pleasure (Little, Brown & co., 1998)

Hochstrasser, TJ, Conway, Francis Ingram-Seymour, 2nd Marquess of Hertford (1743-1822), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004, updated 2008)

The Ladies’ Monthly Museum (1816)

Wraxall, Sir Nathaniel William, Posthumous Memoirs of his own time (1836) Volume I

All photographs © RegencyHistory

Edward Smith Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby, after whom the Epsom Derby is named

Edward Smith Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby, by George Keating
published by William Austin, after Thomas Gainsborough
mezzotint, published 20 May 1785
© NPG D35034

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Edward Smith Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby (12 September 1752 – 21 October 1834) is best remembered for his passion for sport. Two of the British classic horse races still commemorate that passion – the Epsom Derby, named after him, and the Epsom Oaks, named after his hunting lodge, The Oaks, where both races were conceived.

You can read about The Oaks here.

Early years

Edward Smith Stanley was born in Preston, Lancashire, on 12 September 1752, the eldest son of James Stanley, Lord Strange, (1716-71) and Lucy Smith, the co-heir of Hugh Smith of Weald Hall, Essex , and the grandson of Edward Stanley, 11th Earl of Derby (1689-1776). Lord Strange added the name Smith to his own in 1749 by Act of Parliament. 

Edward was educated at Preston Grammar School and then Eton College before going up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1771, where he was awarded a degree of Master of Arts in 1773. 

Becoming Lord Stanley

Confusingly, on the death of his father on 1 June 1771, Edward assumed the title of Lord Stanley and not Lord Strange. The Gentleman’s Magazine for 1834 explained that he assumed the title of Lord Stanley

… it having been ascertained, after the title of Strange had been first adopted for his father, that that barony was really vested in the Duke of Atholl, the heir-general of James 7th Earl of Derby, and not in the junior male line of Stanley, to which the Earldom had devolved.1

Edward became the 12th Earl of Derby on the death of his grandfather on 22 February 1776.

An illustrious but disastrous marriage

Elizabeth Stanley (née Hamilton), Countess of Derby
by George Romney (1776-8)
DP162156 from Metropolitan Museum of Art

On 23 June 1774 , Edward married Lady Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Hamilton, only daughter of James Hamilton, 6th Duke of Hamilton, and sister to the current Duke - Douglas Hamilton, the 8th Duke of Hamilton. 

To celebrate the occasion, a superb outdoor entertainment – known as a fête champêtre - was held at his country residence, The Oaks, on 9 June. An elaborate temporary pavilion designed by Robert Adam was built in the grounds for the celebration. 

You can read more about the fête champêtre in my post on The Oaks. 

Edward and Betty had three children: Edward, 13th Earl of Derby (1775), Charlotte (1776) and Elizabeth Henrietta (1778). 

The marriage was not a happy one and in the late 1770s, Betty embarked upon a scandalous affair with John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset. After the birth of her daughter Elizabeth, who may have been fathered by the Duke, Betty left her husband and children for her lover. The Earl, however, refused to divorce his wife.

Edward Smith Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby, with his wife,
Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, and their son Edward
by Angelica Kauffmann (c1776)
DP169403 from Metropolitan Museum of Art

In time, the philandering Duke’s interest waned, and the disgraced Countess was left socially ostracised for the rest of her life. She died on 14 March 1797.

A happy second marriage

'Derby & Joan or the platonic lovers, a farce' (Elizabeth, Countess of Derby;

Edward Smith Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby) by and published by Robert Dighton
hand-coloured etching, published 6 November 1795
7 7/8 in. x 8 7/8 in. (199 mm x 226 mm) paper size
Purchased with help from the Friends of the National Libraries
 and the Pilgrim Trust, 1966 Reference Collection © NPG D9306

After his wife’s desertion, Edward fell in love with the celebrated actress, Elizabeth Farren. Elizabeth was closely guarded by her mother and it is generally believed that their relationship was not intimate until after their marriage on 1 May 1797, less than 2 months after the death of Edward’s first wife. This is supported by the fact that after their marriage, Elizabeth became pregnant almost immediately. Sadly, that child was stillborn, but she went on to have three others: Lucy (1799-1809), James (1800-1817) and Mary (1801-1858).

Elizabeth Farren, later Countess of Derby
by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1790)
from Metropolitan Museum of Art

Politics

Edward was MP for Lancashire from 1774 until he was elevated to the House of Lords in 1776 on inheriting the earldom.

Influenced by his uncle, John Burgoyne, and his close friend Charles James Fox, he switched political allegiance to the Whig opposition in 1778. He had two brief periods of office as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1783 and again in 1806-7.

He was made Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire in 1776 – a role which he reportedly did well and held until his death.

Gambling and sport

Edward was an inveterate gambler who was obsessed with sport. He was ‘a devotee of cricket and hunting as well as racing and cockfighting.’2

His obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine (1834) said:

It was, however, in the character of a sportsman that the late Earl made himself most conspicuous; and a passion for horse-racing and cock-fighting was the absorbing one of his life. He possessed the reputation of having the best breed of cocks in England. For some years past, indeed ever since Liverpool has had a race-course, he personally attended the meetings, and took the most lively interest in the matches of his horses and cocks, more especially the latter. General Yates, whose breed of cocks was also celebrated, was his invariable opponent, and they annually decided the question of their respective game by a match of a thousand guineas aside. So strong was the Earl’s addiction of his favourite sport, that cocks have been introduced into his drawing-room, armed and spurred, even during the latter days of his life.3

The Derby and the Oaks

The Oaks from London by D Hughson Volume V (1808)

Edward bought The Oaks, a hunting lodge in Carshalton, Surrey, from his uncle John Burgoyne and it was here, in 1779, whilst at dinner with the Duke of Richmond and Sir Charles Bunbury that the Oaks Stakes horse race was devised – a new race to be run at Epsom for three-year-old fillies. Edward’s mare Bridget was the first winner.

The following year, he and Sir Charles Bunbury conceived another race for three-year-olds to be run at Epsom. Reportedly, they tossed for the name and Edward won, so it was named for him – the Derby Stakes. Bunbury’s Diomed was the first winner; Edward’s Sir Peter Teazle won in 1787.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on the 12th Earl of Derby stated:

His influence on the development and organisation of English horse-racing, as well as its annual social calendar, was of great and lasting significance.4

Death

In later years, Edward extended his estates in Liverpool, Bootle and Bury, and made improvements to the stables and park at his ancestral home of Knowsley Hall, in Lancashire. He died at Knowsley on 21 October 1834 and was buried at Ormskirk, next to his second wife, who had died previously, on 23 April 1829.

Knowsley Hall, Lancashire (2011) CC 2.0 Jack via Flickr

Notes

1. Gentleman’s Magazine (1834).

2. Crosby, Alan G, Stanley, Edward Smith, 12th Earl of Derby (1752-1834), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).

3. Gentleman’s Magazine (1834).

4. Crosby op cit.

Sources used include:

Burgoyne, John, The Maid of the Oaks: A new dramatic entertainment. As it is performed at the Theatre-Royal, in Drury-Lane (1775)

Crosby, Alan G, Stanley, Edward Smith, 12th Earl of Derby (1752-1834), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn Sept 2004, accessed 29 May 2018)

Debrett, John, The Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1820)

Draper, P, The House of Stanley (1864)

Gentleman’s Magazine (1834)

Hughson, David, London; being an accurate history and description of the British Metropolis and its neighbourhood Volume V (1808)

Prosser, George Frederick, Select Illustrations of the County of Surrey (1828)

Parliament online