Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 3.djvu/594

 574 CUMBERLAND 26 Jan. 1789. He w.,(*) 2 Oct. 1771, in Hertford Str., Mayfair, Midx., Anne, widow of Christopher Horton, of Catton Hall, co. Derby, ist da. of Simon (Luttrell), ist Earl of Carhampton [I.], by Maria, da. of Sir Nicholas Lawes. He d. s.p.^ of an ulcer, at his house in Pall Mall, in his 45th year, 18, and was bur. 28 Sep. 1790, in Westm. Abbey, when all his honours became extinct.{^) "Will dat. 26 Sep. 1777, pr. 13 Oct. 1790, by the widow and universal legatee. She, who was />. 24 Jan., and bap. 17 Feb. 1742/3, at St. Marylebone, d. at Trieste, 28 Dec. 1808. Will dat. 15 Feb. to 4 Oct. 1808, pr. 18 Apr. 1809. (^) This marriage (following that of his br. the Duke of Gloucester, 5 years previously, with the Dowager Countess Waldegrave) was the occasion of the Royal Marriage Act of (12 Geo. Ill, Cap. xi) 1772, whereby, before the age of 25, "no descendant of the body of George II, male or female (other than the issue of Princesses who have married, or may hereafter marry into foreign families) shall be capable of contracting matrimony without the previous consent of his Majesty, his heirs, or successors," and the consent of Parliament. This high handed measure, which bastardizes the issue of such marriage instead of, as it might well have done, merely declaring them incapable of succeeding to the throne, or even to any titles of honour, was very clumsily drawn by Mansfield, Thurlow, and Wedderburn; it makes "all parties present at the marriage, guilty of felony," and as no one is bound to admit his own guilt, it follows that it is impossible to prove such a marriage, or to convict any of the parties concerned. It was in this fashion that those engaged in the marriage of the Duke of Sussex in Hanover Sq. escaped when cited before the Privy Council. (See N. i^ Q., 9th series, vol. xi, p. 130). A previous marriage of the Duke, 4 Mar. 1767, with Olive, da. of D. J. Wilmot (said to have d. 5 Dec. 1774), and the birth of one child, Olive, 3 Apr. 1772, sw ^/jfl«/i' "Princess Olive of Cumberland, was alleged by a Mrs. Ryves and her eldest son, in a case, called Ryves and Ryves v. the Attorney General," tried in 1866 under the Legitimacy Declaration Act, the said Mrs. Ryves being the only child of John Thomas Serres by the said Olive, who was bur. 3 Dec. 1834 at St. James's, Westm., as "Olive Cumberland." The jury (naturally enough) were not satisfied with the proofs for the marriage of 1767, nor with those of the legitimacy of the said Olive. See a very full account of this trial in the Annual Register for 1866. G.E.C. and V.G. C") Probably the most foolish of Frederick's sons. He and the Countess of DunhofFappear, in i 769, as " Nauticus and the Countess of D . . h . fF," in the notorious tete-a-tete portraits in Town and Country Mag., vol. i, p. 449, for an account of which see Appendix B in the last volume of this work. In 1770 he was defendant in an action for crim. con. with Countess Grosvenor. Lord Melbourne described him to the Queen in 184O as "a little man and gay," a great Whig and hating the clergy. Lady Louisa Stuart calls him "an idiot prince," his wife "vulgar, noisy, indelicate, and intrepid, though not accused of gallantry, one who set modesty and decency at defiance in cold blood," and she repeats the remark of Lady Anne Fordyce, that after hearing her talk one ought to go home and wash one's ears. A lovely portrait of her, by Gainsborough, belongs (19 13) to Lord Wenlock. Elizabeth, Countess Harcourt, writes of her in her Memoirs, "The widow of a private gentleman, without either beauty, fortune, or respectable connections to support her, and with a very equivocal character, had persuaded the Duke, who was a remarkably silly man, to marry her," as another writer remarks, "by means of some stern hints from a resolute brother." Her appearance and character are well described by Horace Walpole in a letter to Mann, 7 Nov. 1 77 1. V.G.