Maria Fitzherbert - Possible Children By The Prince

Possible Children By The Prince

Some scholars have suggested that Maria Fitzherbert had one, possibly two, children by her marriage to the future king. "In 1833, after the King's death, one of executors, Lord Stourton, asked her to sign a declaration he had written on the back of her marriage certificate. It read: 'I Mary Fitzherbert ... testify that my Union with George P. of Wales was without issue.' According to Stourton, she, smiling, objected, on the score of delicacy." Indeed, during her early days in Brighton with the Prince of Wales, his uncle the Duke of Gloucester and other friends believed Mrs. Fitzherbert to be pregnant.

A claim to being a descendant of George IV is by the Wyatt family. On Fitzherbert's death it is stated that her children were adopted by a Scottish family, named Wyatt, whose name they assumed. Afterwards they came south settling in Erith, Kent. The Wyatt family, in the person of J.G. Wyatt, a former Erith man who later moved to Moose Fair, Saskatchewan, Canada and Isabella Annie Wyatt claimed title to a portion of the Fitzherbert estate in 1931. Genetic testing has been proposed to test this claim.

One suggested child of the Prince and his longtime paramour was James Ord (born 1786), whose curious history of assisted relocations and encouragement has been chronicled; Ord eventually moved to the United States and became a Jesuit priest (but appears later to have married, see article on American Civil War General Edward Ord).

In addition to James Ord, the longterm relationship between George, as prince and king, appears to have led to more than a dozen claims of children conceived out of wedlock; is a more substantive one of these. These join the many additional catalogued cases of George's liaisons(>75 by A.J. Camp, ibid.), some of which have received further discussion vis-a-vis largely inexplicable financial care given the immediate purported descendant by King George IV or his peers. These lineages include the Herveys (from 1786 liaison with Lady Anne Lindsay, subsequently Barnard), the Croles (from 1798 liaison Eliza Crole, which the generally skeptical A.J. Camp considers "fact"), and the Hampshires (from 15 year mistress Sarah Brown).

The second codicil to Maria Fitzherbert's will outlines her two principal beneficiaries, and includes a personal note, "...this paper is addressed to my two dear children... I have loved them both with the affection any mother could do, and I have done the utmost in my power for their interests and comfort..."

Their married names were Mary Ann Stafford-Jerningham and Mary Georgina Emma Dawson-Damer. Stafford-Jerningham was nominally Fitzherbert's 'niece', and was raised as Mary Ann Smythe. Dawson-Damer was nominally the daughter of Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour and Lady Anna Horatia Waldegrave. Seymour had been a close associate of George IV since their youth, and Seymour's son George was an executor and minor beneficiary of Fitzherbert's will. There is no evidence that either of these women were the natural children of Maria Fitzherbert - indeed the reference to 'the affection any mother could do' (with stress on mother) could indicate she only saw herself as a mother-figure to them, and no more. The will makes no reference to any sons, though this observation must be seen its historic context; of the ten illegitimate children of Dorothea Jordan, Irish actress and mistress of 20 years to the Duke of Clarence, care for the five boys was initially assumed by their father and his households, and custody and care for the girls given to Jordan.

Notably, any such historical claim of descent is accompanied by controversy, and many of the preceding have been challenged. Given the death of Princess Charlotte without surviving children, should the Ord or Lowe links be substantiated, the line descended through them would join a large number of claimed surviving descendants of King George IV.