A Bennet of Royal Blood
Prologue
London 1787
His Royal Highness, Prince Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany, Earl of Ulster, had just returned to London—he hoped permanently—after having lived abroad, primarily in Hanover, since 1781. The Prince was the second son born to King George III and Queen Charlotte of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1763.
His father the King had decided early on that his second son would pursue an army career and had him gazetted a Colonel in 1780. The Prince was appointed Colonel of the Second Horse Grenadier Guards in 1782, then was promoted to Major-General in November of that same year. He was next promoted to Lieutenant General in October 1784 and was appointed Colonel of the Coldstream Guards that same month.
His title, Duke of York and Albany, Earl of Ulster, was created in November 1784, and he became a member of the Privy Council at that time. On his return to Great Britain, the Duke took his seat in the House of Lords, where, on fifteen December 1788 during the Regency crisis, he opposed William Pitt's Regency Bill in full-throated support of his father, which caused the bill to fail. The bill had been tacitly supported by his older brother and heir to the throne, George, Prince of Wales.
In November of 1787, the Duke of York met a lady who took his breath away and quickly captured his heart. Lady Priscilla De Melville was almost twenty and the eldest daughter of Lord Cyril and Lady Sarah De Melville, the Earl and Countess of Jersey. She was petite with wavy dark mahogany tresses, and the greenest eyes he had seen. The next daughter, Marie, was more than ten years her sister’s junior, and their son Wesley, Viscount Westmore, was only three at the time.
By early 1788, the two were ardently in love. Lady Priscilla turned one and twenty in April of that year when, despite warnings from her parents—mainly her father—to think better of it without royal sanction, Lady Priscilla married her Prince in a quiet ceremony in Essex during May 1788.
The Duke had demanded there be no announcements in the papers. He was fairly certain his father would attempt to arrange a marriage for him just as he had for many of his sons and daughters. Given that their new son-in-law was a son of the King, Priscilla’s father begrudgingly agreed, although he warned his daughter no good would come of the subterfuge.
Shortly after the wedding, the couple moved to Lady Priscilla’s estate of Netherfield Park in Hertfordshire. Her maternal grandmother, Beth, had willed the estate to her eldest granddaughter; it was to become hers upon her reaching her majority—which it did the day Priscilla turned one and twenty.
Because the Duke was sure some of his servants at Oatlands Park, his estatenear Weybridge in Surrey, reported to his father, residing there was not an option for the couple. For their limited contacts with neighbours in the area where Netherfield Park was situated, Frederick introduced them as Mr. and Mrs. Oatland.
A Mr. Bennet visited to introduce himself, and not long after they moved in. Soon after Lady Priscilla made the acquaintance of Mrs. Francine Bennet, called Fanny, and her daughter Jane, who was yet an infant. The two ladies were drawn to each other and soon were calling one another Priscilla, or Cilla, and Fanny. Their husbands were friendly as well, but not near to the same level of intimacy as their wives. In the early days, Priscilla did not disclose the truth of who they were to any in the neighbourhood, not even Fanny.
The Prince would be gone for lengthy periods as he attended to his military and Privy Council duties, and to his parents from time to time. When he was home, he spent as much time with his beloved wife as he could. While in residence, Bennet, the only man he was close to in the neighbourhood, would join him in a game of chess and drinks after dinner now and again.
Their wives, on the other hand, were to be found in one another’s company almost daily. An unintended, if welcome, consequence of their friendship was the amendment of Fanny Bennet’s behaviour.
Fanny was the youngest daughter of a local solicitor, Mr. Elias Gardiner, and her looks and vivacity had attracted the prime catch in the neighbourhood—the heir of Longbourn—Thomas Bennet. He was blinded by her beauty, and in the first throes of love did not see that they seemed intellectually incompatible.
Fanny was not lacking in intelligence, but her late mother had drummed into her head men were not interested in or looking for intelligence in a woman. The result was both of her daughters, Hattie, the older, and Fanny, became more interested in fashion and gossip and repressed their innate intelligence.
Too late, Bennet realised that she seemed to be of mean understanding, spending her time talking of fashion and inconsequential gossip. He decided there was naught he could do to change things, so he never let her know how much he would have appreciated intelligence in his wife. Things continued in this vein until Fanny met and became friendly with Mrs. Priscilla Oatland. As their friendship deepened, Fanny clearly saw the deficiency in her own behaviour as she observed that of her friend. She noted in the interactions between her friend and her husband how much—in direct contradiction of what her mother taught her daughter—he appreciated and respected Priscilla’s intelligence.
One day, not long after the two had decided to use familiar names to address one another, Fanny took a deep breath, “Cilla, I have a request,” Fanny told her friend nervously.
“Fanny, you may ask anything; and if I am able, I will grant it,” Priscilla averred.
“As you know, I was not raised as a gentlewoman. I have been following the teachings of my late mother which I now see were completely wrongheaded. Observing you, I have begun to see the deficiencies in my behaviour.” Fanny raised her hand to kill the protest her friend was about to make. “My husband probably believes that I am of mean understanding, for that is the consequence hiding my intelligence. I am not deficient of mind, but the way I was taught to behave has led Thomas to believe so. What I hope is that you, my friend, will teach me how to behave as a gentlewoman should. Please say you will assist me in this, Cilla,” Fanny beseeched.
“Fanny, it will be my absolute pleasure to help you in every way that I am able,” Priscilla had returned emphatically, inwardly relieved that Fanny had asked.
And so, it began. Between observing how her friend behaved and instruction, within six months no trace remained of the wife Thomas Bennet thought to be crass, vulgar, and of mean understanding—very much to his delight. She had become a gentlewoman in every sense of the word and allowed him to see the intelligence she had been hiding from him.
There was no more gossip; she read and discussed books with him insightfully; she spoke calmly, hardly ever raising her voice as she had been wont to do in the past; and her nerves, which had begun to trouble her soon after their marriage, were never in evidence again. Never again did she ask the housekeeper at Longbourn, Mrs. Hill, to come running with the salts.
An unintended and welcome consequence of Fanny’s changed behaviour was that her sister, Hattie Phillips, changed in her behaviour as well, as Fanny convinced her of the falsity of their mother’s teachings. Hattie was married to Frank Phillips, who had taken over the Gardiner law practice when Mr. Elias Gardiner had passed soon after his youngest daughter’s wedding to the heir of Longbourn.
Hattie had always followed her younger sister’s lead, and when she saw the way her sister had changed, and accepted what Fanny told her about their mother’s lessons as nothing but the truth, she emulated the behaviour, much to her husband’s pleasure. No more gossip was heard from the former Gardiner girls again, which had an additional and beneficial effect of increasing their local circle of friends.
Many of the ladies in Hertfordshire had avoided Fanny initially, as she tended to boast relentlessly after her marriage. It took the ladies of the neighbourhood some time to trust the changes in Fanny and Hattie were real when they first became evident. It did not take long for them to see the changes were permanent, which led to Fanny quietly becoming one of the leading voices in the area.
The middle Gardiner son, Edward, had no interest in the law. He worked first in another’s import-export concern; when he felt he had garnered enough experience, he struck out on his own. He founded Gardiner and Associates with the money he had saved plus about a fifth of the needed funds which had been invested by his brother Bennet.
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The Prince and his beloved Cilla had been married a for a little more than a year in September 1789, when Frederick made the agonising decision that he had no choice but to inform his father—the King—of his marriage. He hoped, because his marriage was of more than a year's duration, his father would not separate him from his wife like he had with his older brother, the Prince of Wales. He knew that without royal sanction his father could declare his marriage invalid, but he hoped he could convince his father not to do that and sanction his marriage.
Lady Priscilla believed she was with child—she had missed three months of courses—but she did not share her suspicion with her husband before he departed for London to see the King. Fanny, too, had recently shared with her friend the belief she was carrying her second child.
