Royal Liaison · Brighton, East Sussex
Royal Pavilion, Brighton (George IV & Maria Fitzherbert)
George IV built his fantastical pleasure-palace at Brighton while conducting his relationship with Maria Fitzherbert, whom he had secretly and illegally married in 1785 — 'the wife of my heart and soul'. Brighton, then and now, is a hot spot of romance and scandal.
The story
On a memorial in a Brighton church, the carved figure of a woman wears three wedding rings — one for each husband. The third was the King of England, and that marriage, in English law, never happened at all.
Maria Fitzherbert was a twice-widowed Catholic when George, Prince of Wales, fell violently in love with her in 1784. She refused to be his mistress, so he married her — secretly, on 15 December 1785, in her Mayfair drawing room, before two witnesses and a clergyman sprung from debtors' prison for the occasion.
It was doubly illegal. The Royal Marriages Act of 1772 voided any royal marriage made without the King's consent, and George III had not been asked. The Act of Settlement of 1701 stripped the succession from any heir who married a Catholic. So the wedding couldn't be valid — and had it been, it would have cost George the throne.
The secret leaked. In 1787, with the Prince's debts before Parliament, his ally Charles James Fox stood in the Commons and flatly denied the marriage. Maria, who held the ceremony sacred, was publicly declared never to have been a wife.
Brighton was their refuge. The Prince turned a farmhouse into the Marine Pavilion (Henry Holland, 1787), kept Maria nearby at Steine House, and later had John Nash transform the villa into the fantastical Royal Pavilion (1815–23). But in 1795, debt forced him into a legal, Protestant marriage to Caroline of Brunswick — a catastrophe. The union the law allowed failed; the one it forbade was the one he wanted. Around 1800 the Pope ruled that, to the Catholic Church, Maria was his lawful wife all along.
She died at Steine House in 1837. George had died in 1830 — and was buried, at his own request, wearing a miniature of her around his neck.
More stories at this spot
Sources
- Brighton Dome
- Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Historic England (The Royal Pavilion, listing 1380680)
- Wikipedia (Steine House)
- Regency History (Mrs Fitzherbert)
- Brighton & Hove Museums (Royal Pavilion history)
Nearby on the map
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Documented historySpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.