Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/489

 10 s. vm. NOV. 23, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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told that this defence will speedily be followed by a new Publication, entitled, ' The Letters of an Elder Brother to a Fair Quaker,' which will entirely retrieve the Literary Fame of an illus- trious family, which has been lately endangered by a hasty and incorrect writer belonging to it."

Only two months previously the Duke of Cumberland, the brother of George III., had been the defendant in an action for crim. con. brought against him by Lord Grosvenor, and had been mulcted in damages to the extent of 10,OOOZ. Thus the reference to a connexion between the King and a " Fair Quaker " has much significance.

II. In The Citizen newspaper, Saturday, 24 Feb., 1776, the following advertisement appears :

" Court Fragments. Which will be published by the Citizen for the Use, Instruction, and Amuse- ment of Royal Infants, and Young Promising Noblemen.

" 1. The History and Adventures of Miss Lhtft, the Fair Quaker, wherein will be faithfully por- trayed some striking pictures of female constancy and princely gratitude, which terminated in the untimely death of that lady, and the sudden death of her disconsolate mother."

In the light of this statement it is well to remember that Mary Lightfoot, the mother of Hannah, died in St. James's, parish, 16 May, 1760. As I shall show later, there is a tradition, based upon a tombstone in Islington Churchyard, that the " Fair Quaker " died in 1759.

III. ' The Royal Register,' by William Combe, published in 1779, speaks openly of the scandal in a note on pp. 139-41 of the third volume :

" It is not believed even at this time by many

persons that he [George III.] had a mistress

previous to his marriage. Such a circumstance was reported by many, believed by some, disputed by others, but proved by none : and with such suitable caution was the intrigue conducted, that if the body of people called Quakers, of which this young lady in question was a member, had not divulged the fact by the public proceedings of their meeting concerning it it would, in all probability, have remained a matter of doubt to this day."

As we have seen, the researches of MB. THOMS at Devonshire House have proved the truth of the latter portion of this narra- tive.

IV. In Sir Nathaniel Wraxall's ' His- torical Memoirs of his Own Time,' under date January, 1781, further particulars are given in a review of the character of George III. :

" Stories were generally circulated of hi

attachment to a young woman, a Quaker, about this time of his life, just as scandal many years afterwards whispered that he distinguished Lady Bridget Tollemache by his particular attentions

The former report was probably well founded, and the latter assertion was unquestionably true, but those persons who have enjoyed most opportunities of studying the King's character will most incline to believe that in neither instance did he pass the- limits of innocent gallantry and occasional fami- liarity." Bickers, i. 305-6.

V. In Daunt's ' Personal Recollections- of Daniel O'Connell ' it is said that the Irish statesman in his youth conceived the notion of writing a novel about George III. and his Quaker mistress ; and Mr. Jesse, in The Athenceum, 20 July, 1867, argues very plausibly that O'Connell's idea must have- occurred to him before the year 1800.

VI. In ' Stories of the Streets of London,' 1899, p. 361, Mr. H. Barton Baker informs us that he has found a passage in The Gentleman's Magazine " of about a century back, to which I have lost the reference," which indicates that the story of George III.. and his Fair Quaker was generally accepted before the close of the eighteenth century. The loss of the note is unfortunate, but the assertion of an author of Mr. Baker's; eminence may be trusted implicitly.

What, then, does the evidence amount to setting aside the letters in The Monthly Magazine of 1821 and 1822 in deference to- the scepticism of the late MB. THOMS ? According to the notes I have cited, there 1 appears to have been a well-defined sus- picion during the last thirty years of the eighteenth century that King George III., in the days of his youth, had been engaged in an amour, either innocent or otherwise, with a pretty Quakeress, whose name i& given by The Citizen, 24 Feb., 1776, as Miss L htf t. This fact in itself would have little significance, but for the consistent and straightforward story reiterated so often by the Wheeler family that the Prince of Wales's inamorata was their kinswoman Hannah Lightfoot, and this family tradition, taken in conjunction with the records pre- served by the Society of Friends, seems to be conclusive in fixing the identity of the- " Fair Quaker."

The registers preserved at Devonshire House afford innumerable details of her family. Hannah Lightfoot, born 12 Oct., 1730, was the daughter of Mathew Light- foot, shoemaker or cordwainer, of the parish of St. John, Wapping, who was married at the Savoy in the Strand to Mary Wheeler (his second wife) on 13 Aug., 1728, and who died at Wapping of asthma, aged forty-three, on 1 Feb., 1732/3. Hannah was the only daughter of the marriage, and her younger brother followed his father to the grave in a few months. The early death