The Maid of Buttermere & the Bigamist 'Colonel'

The Maid of Buttermere: A Beauty, a Bigamist and a Hanging

Walk into Buttermere today and the Fish Inn still stands — the very inn where, in 1792, a passing travel-writer named Joseph Budworth "discovered" a fifteen-year-old girl with, he wrote, "lips as red as vermilion" and cheeks with "more of the lily than the rose." He put her in his guidebook A Fortnight's Ramble to the Lakes as a tourist attraction, and so began the strange public life of Mary Robinson, the Maid of Buttermere.

For a decade she was a sight to tick off — a beauty the Lakeland tourists came to gawp at, praised by Wordsworth, the Coleridges and the Lambs alike. Then, in the summer of 1802, into this remote valley drove a handsome gentleman in a fine travelling carriage, calling himself the Honourable Colonel Alexander Augustus Hope, MP for Linlithgow, brother of the Earl of Hopetoun. He courted Mary with polished manners and forged letters of credit, and on 2 October 1802 they married at Lorton church.

It was a sham built on sand. The groom's real name was John Hatfield — an undischarged bankrupt, serial impostor and forger, who had already abandoned wives and children and served years in gaol for debt. And here is the delicious twist of literary history: the marriage was reported in the London papers through the Keswick correspondent of the Morning Post — none other than Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who deemed the union of "the Beauty of Buttermere" and a brother of an earl a "Romantic Marriage." That report, dated 11 October 1802, reached people in Scotland who knew the real Colonel Hope was abroad. By 6 November the London Sun had unmasked the impostor.

Hatfield, "if nothing else a smooth operator," borrowed money and fled — to Ravenglass to hide on a ship, then via Chester into Wales, where the Bow Street Runners took him near Swansea. He was tried at Carlisle not for bigamy but for forgery — a capital offence — and hanged at the Sands in Carlisle on 3 September 1803. Reports dwell on his composure: he reputedly corrected the rope himself when the hangman fumbled.

And Mary? She had been left pregnant; the child was stillborn in 1803. But the nation's sympathy was total. Wordsworth, who had known her, wrote her into The Prelude as one "unspoiled by commendation and the excess of public notice." She married a Caldbeck farmer, Richard Harrison, in 1807, had four children, and is buried in St Kentigern's churchyard at Caldbeck — the same churchyard, incidentally, that holds the huntsman John Peel. In 1987 Melvyn Bragg turned the whole affair into his novel The Maid of Buttermere.

Was the Maid of Buttermere a real person?

Yes — Mary Robinson (1778–1837) was entirely real, the daughter of the Fish Inn's landlord at Buttermere. Her beauty, the 1802 bigamous marriage to John Hatfield, and his execution are all documented in contemporary newspapers, Wordsworth's The Prelude, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

What was John Hatfield's real crime?

He was hanged for forgery (specifically franking letters as an MP and passing forged bills), which was a capital offence in 1803 — not, technically, for the bigamy that made him infamous. He was already married when he wed Mary.

What survives at Buttermere today?

The Fish Inn (now the Bridge/Fish Hotel) still trades in Buttermere village and marks Mary's story; a plaque commemorates her. Lorton church (where she married) and St Kentigern's, Caldbeck (where she is buried) both survive and are visitable.

• Who: Mary Robinson (1778–1837); John Hatfield (c.1758–1803)
• Where: Fish Inn, Buttermere; Lorton church; Caldbeck churchyard
• When: married 2 Oct 1802; Hatfield hanged 3 Sep 1803
• Chronicler: S. T. Coleridge, Morning Post; Wordsworth, The Prelude
• Access: Fish Inn open (pub/hotel); churches freely visitable

PHOTOGRAPHY NOTE: The Fish Inn at Buttermere is a working pub/hotel — freely photographable from the road and lakeside; ask before interior shots. Combine with Buttermere lake itself (National Trust valley) for golden-hour reflections. Lorton church and St Kentigern's, Caldbeck, are open churches with free access and parking. Strongest visual: the Fish Inn with the Buttermere fells behind. A public-domain Gillray-after engraving of "Mary of Buttermere" exists via the British Museum.

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