Hannah Regina:
Britain's Quaker Queen
Whilst still Prince of Wales, King George III is alleged to have married secretly, on 17th April 1759, a Quaker named Hannah Lightfoot by whom he had three children (‘two princes and a princess’). Eighteen months later, on 25th October 1760 his grandfather King George II died and he became King George III. A year after that, on 8th September 1761 he officially married Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburgh-Strelitz, by whom he had 15 children; his direct descendants from this marriage include Queen Elizabeth II, her son Charles Prince of Wales, and his son Prince William. However, when King George married Princess Charlotte he had not divorced Hannah Lightfoot who was now of course, according to the stories, his legitimate queen.
In June 1866 there was a trial in an Appeal Court which was supposed to be examining an alleged bigamous marriage of King George’s youngest brother, the Duke of Cumberland; but it effectively considered the documentary evidence of the King’s own alleged marriage to Hannah Lightfoot. The early marital affairs of these two royal brothers were so closely intertwined (for instance the claimed first marriage of Cumberland’s had been to the daughter of the cleric who had conducted George’s marriage to Hannah Lightfoot) that it was not possible to examine one without exposing the other. Documents were produced testifying, amongst other things, to the marriage of George to Hannah, but the constitutional consequences of allowing any evidence of the Duke of Cumberland’s alleged first marriage to impugn the legitimacy of the King’s marriage to Queen Charlotte were of course enormous. Therefore against the very considerable weight of these documents, many of which, including a Certificate of Marriage to Hannah, bore George’s signature and all of which were supported by signed affidavits and expert testimony as to the legitimacy of these signatures, the Judges (who included the Lord Chief Justice) denounced them all as forgeries. The Attorney General called the plaintiff (who claimed to be Cumberland’s granddaughter by this alleged first marriage) insane; and Hannah Lightfoot’s very existence was initially denied. The Special Jury, without even retiring, agreed with the Judges and found against the plaintiff; the case was then dismissed and it was ordered that the documents be impounded for 100 years. However since 1966 they been available for inspection at the Public Records Office, and together with other documents, including the account of the trial itself, they make a compelling case to query the legitimacy of King George’s marriage to Queen Charlotte because of his earlier supposed clandestine marriage to Hannah Lightfoot.
The Hannah Lightfoot ‘affair’ is of course very familiar in UK Quaker circles; and there has been sufficient interest over the intervening years for the Society of Friends to have made available to interested parties copies of certain of their own papers. The case is also well-known to historians, one of whom noted about the documents in the trial that ‘Learned opinion at the time leaned to the view that these documents were genuine’ and that ‘If George III did make such a marriage when he was Prince of Wales…then his subsequent marriage to Queen Charlotte was bigamous and every monarch of Britain since has been a usurper, the rightful heirs being his children by Hannah Lightfoot, if they ever existed.’
Some of the principal characters in the affair have strong US connections. The Rev. Dr Wilmot -- who performed George’s marriage to Hannah, and whose daughter was the Duke of Cumberland’s legitimate wife -- is commemorated in New Hampshire by having the town of Wilmot named after him for his support for the Colonists’ cause. Hannah Lightfoot herself is, according to the well-regarded records in these matters of the Society of Mormons, buried in Pennsylvania where presumably she was sent when King George eventually abandoned her. An American family claims direct descent, with a well-researched family tree to back up the claim, from one of the favourite ‘contenders’ to have been one of Hannah’s sons. William Pitt, First Earl of Chatham, who witnessed Prince George’s marriage to Hannah Lightfoot and whose signature also appears on many others of the relevant documents, is recalled by his prominent statue in Pittsburgh, the city named after him
Even after almost two hundred and fifty years the story simply refuses to die and seems to demand a full and open investigation. Yet although the whole affair has from time to time been taken up by the media, including at least two TV programmes in recent times, it remains an unresolved mystery that the authorities are, perhaps understandably, content to leave that way
“Fascinating…much in the book that I simply didn’t know.” Quaker Journal review
“George III -- a right royal bigamist. Have any of his successors been legitimate sovereigns?” Newspaper comment
“Is the Queen simply Mrs Betty Windsor?” Newspaper headline
Paperback, 174pp. ISBN: 0 9533505 1 7
First published 2002, revised & expanded 2003
Recommended retail price: £14.99/US$19.99
First published 2005
Publisher-direct and ebook prices: see order page
