Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/177

Fitzherbert think, Maria? Charles declared in the House of Commons last night that you and I were not man and wife.' As the prince was now approaching the age at which he could make a legal marriage, the curiosity of parliament on the subject is perfectly intelligible. But after a lame kind of explanation from Sheridan, who tried to explain away Fox's statement, without contradicting it, the subject dropped, and the prince and the lady seem to have lived happily together till the appearance of the Princess Caroline [see, 1768-1821]. At the trial of Warren Hastings in 1788 Mrs. Fitzherbert, then in the full bloom of womanly beauty, attracted more attention than the queen or the princesses. On the prince's marriage (8 April 1795) to Caroline she ceased for a time to live with him. But being advised by her confessor, who had received his instructions from Rome, that she might do so without blame, she returned to him; and oddly enough gave a public breakfast to all the fashionable world to celebrate the event. She and the prince were in constant pecuniary difficulties, and once on their return from Brighton to London they had not money enough to pay for the post-horses, and were obliged to borrow of an old servant, yet these, she used to say, were the happiest years of her life. As years passed on, however, the prince appears to have fallen under other influences; and at last at a dinner given to Louis XVIII at Carlton House, in or about 1803, she received an affront which she could not overlook, and parted from the prince for ever. She was told that she had no fixed place at the dinner-table, and must sit 'according to her rank,' that is as plain Mrs. Fitzherbert. She was not perhaps sorry for the excuse to break off a connection which the prince's new ties had already made irksome to her; and resisting all further importunities she retired from court on an annuity of 6,000l. a year, which, as she had no children, was perhaps a sufficient maintenance. She was probably the only woman to whom George IV was ever sincerely attached. He inquired for her in his last illness, and he died with her portrait round his neck.

Mrs. Fitzherbert survived him seven years, dying at Brighton on 29 March 1837. From George III and Queen Charlotte, the Duke of York, William IV, and Queen Adelaide she had always experienced the greatest kindness and attention, and seems never to have been made to feel sensible of her equivocal position. The true facts of the case were long unknown to the public.

 FITZHERBERT, NICHOLAS (1550–1612), secretary to Cardinal Allen, second son of John Fitzherbert of Podley, Derbyshire, by the daughter of Edward Fleetwood of Vache, was grandson of Sir [q. v.], and first cousin to [q. v.], the jesuit. He became a student in Exeter College, Oxford, and was 'exhibited to by Sir Will Petre, about 1568, but what continuance he made there,' says Wood, 'I know not.' His name appears in the matriculation register as a member of Exeter College in 1571 and 1572, he being then the senior undergraduate of that college. About that time he went abroad in order that he might freely profess the catholic religion. He matriculated in the university of Douay during the rectorship of George Prielius (Douay Diaries, p. 275). He studied the civil law at Bologna, where he was residing in 1580. During his absence from England he was attainted of treason, 1 Jan. 1580, on account of his zeal for the catholic cause, and especially for his activity in raising funds for the English College at Rheims. Afterwards he settled in Rome, and received from Pope Gregory XIII an allowance of ten golden scudi a month. When Dr. Allen was raised to the purple in 1587, Fitzherbert became his secretary, and continued to reside in his 