Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 5.djvu/20

 6 name of the linendraper was Wheeler. "As the prince," says Beckford, in his "Conversations," published in the "New Monthly Magazine," "could not obtain her affections exactly in the way he most desired, he persuaded Dr. Wilmot to marry them, which he did at Kew Chapel, in 1759; William Pitt, afterwards lord Chatham, and Ann Taylor, being the parties witnessing, and, for aught I know, the document is still in existence."

We have always understood that the documentary evidence of this marriage was carefully preserved in the family of the descendants, a highly respectable family of the name of G—l—n.



We have often been informed by a quakeress, who resided in London at the time, that the friends of Hannah Lightfoot, aware of the attentions of the prince, were extremely anxious to get her married to a young man of her own society, who was passionately attached to her. The day was fixed—nay, it is asserted that the marriage had actually taken place—when, soon after the return of the bridal party from the ceremony, Hannah Lightfoot was observed to be restless, went to the window several times, and appeared to be in an absent state, as if listening for something. A pipe and tabor appeared in the street, stopped and played awhile before the house, and scarcely had it ceased, when Hannah Lightfoot was found to have disappeared. On making search for her, her friends learned that she had left the house and been seen to enter a close carriage, which stood in the next street, which then drove rapidly away. The suspicion fell immediately upon the prince. The distracted husband gave chase; and, over-taking the prince, I believe, at Kew Palace, demanded, it is said, on his knees, and with the most passionate pleading, the restoration of his wife, but in vain.

Now, if it was the fact that George actually thus carried off the wife of another man on his wedding-day, it is a black stain on his memory which no panegyric can wash out. If Hannah Lightfoot was thus married previously, she was not his legal wife, otherwise she had as fair a claim to the queenly crown as Elizabeth Woodville, Anna Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Jane Seymour, Catherine Parr, and Anne Hyde; for it is remarkable that the law forbidding royal marriages with subjects was not then made, but was afterwards passed by George himself. Of his marriage with