Patrick Comerford
With my recent return visits to Rugeley, Brereton, Stafford, Wolseley, Lichfield, Tamworth and other parts of Staffordshire, I have written about the Chetwynd family, the supposed murder by Dorothy Chetwynd of Sir Walter Smyth, the elderly husband who was three times her age, and the complete lack of historical evidence or primary sources for the stories in local lore of that murder or of Dorothy’s alleged execution by being burned at the stake.
Those stories of the Chetwynd family also led me to further genealogical and historical research into other family stories, and I came across stories of one branch of the Chetwynd family in Rugeley who were direct descendants of the Comberford family of Comberford Hall and the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth.
This branch of the Chetwynd family included another Dorothy Chetwynd who was a nun in Bruges, a 17th century; a 17th century MP for Stafford; and an 18th century MP for Lichfield who ran up heavy debts and whose funeral was delayed for weeks by his creditors.
Another branch of the Talbot family were given the title Earl Talbot, donated land for Saint Michael’s Church in Brereton, and gave their name to many places in the Rugeley area, including the Talbot Arms, associated with the ‘Poisoner of Rugeley’ William Palmer. After one Earl Tabot also became Earl of Shrewsbury, the pub became the Shrewsbury Arms, and is now known as ‘The Shrew’.
When I was writing about these stories of the Chetwynd and Talbot families, I referred to another marriage involving the Chetwynd and Talbot families that resulted in a sensational divorce case in 1865, and promised then to tell that story another evening.
William Henry Chetwynd (1811-1890) is remembered as one of the parties in the sensational Chetwynd v Chetwynd divorce case in 1864-1865, a case that highlighted Victorian attitudes to marriage, divorce, morals scandal, women’s rights and roles, children’s protection and family law.
William lived at Longdon Hall, halfway between Lichfield and Rugeley, where his income came from his family’s large landed estates and farms and from horse trading. The family estates were centred on Brocton Hall, their ancestral seat with 700 acres in Staffordshire, but also included Grendon Hall in Warwickshire, and the Bishton Hall estate inherited through the Sparrow family.
William was born on 17 September 1811 at Brocton Hall, Staffordshire, the family seat of the Chetwynd baronets. He was the second son of Sir George Chetwynd (1783-1850), 2nd baronet, and his wife Hannah Maria Sparrow of Bishton Hall, Staffordshire. Sir George succeeded to his father’s title and estates in 1824, and William Henry Chetwynd’s elder brother, Sir George Chetwynd (1809-1869), succeeded as the third baronet when their father died in 1850.
William Henry Chetwynd spent his childhood at Brocton Hall, which was largely rebuilt around 1815. He married the aristocratic Blanche Mary Talbot (1836-1898) at Saint George’s Church, Hanover Square, then a fashionable venue for society weddings in London, on 15 August 1854.
Blanche was born on 14 November 1836, a daughter of the Revd Hon Arthur Chetwynd-Talbot (1805-1884) and Harriet Elizabeth Frances Hervey-Aston (1815-1845) and a niece of Henry Chetwynd-Talbot, 18th Earl of Shrewsbury, and a granddaughter of Charles Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot. She was baptised on 4 January 1837 in Ingestre by her father, who was the Rector of Ingestre, and later Rector of Church Eaton and a rural dean in the Diocese of Lichfield. Blanche and William were distantly related: a distant ancestor, Charles Talbot (1685-1737) had married Catherine Chetwynd, and inherited the estates of the Ingestre branch of the Chetwynd family.
At the time of their wedding, William was 42 and Blanche was 17, an age difference of 25 years. William later alleged that at the time of their marriage Blanche was two months pregnant by another man. He claimed in court during their divorce hearings that he knew this, but that he had gone ahead with the wedding regardless, claiming he had saved her from social disgrace.
Despite these repeated allegations, I have found no records of a child born within seven months of their marriage, although they were the parents of two children:
1, Florence Chetwynd (1856-1936), born in February 1856. She married her distant cousin Lord Berkeley Charles Sydney Paget, a son of Henry Paget 2nd Marquess Anglesey, on 5 June 1877.
2, Arthur Chetwynd (1857-1926), born on 22 July 1857, died on 15 August 1926.
As their relationship deteriorated , there were allegations of mutual infidelity, cruelty and financial mismanagement, exacerbated by Blanche’s secret decision to become a Roman Catholicism in 1862 and her independent dealings in horses and loans.
In December 1864, Blanche petitioned the Divorce Court for the dissolution of their marriage on grounds of her husband’s adultery with servants and cruelty, including claims that he forced her to perform menial tasks, used abusive language, and ill-treated animals and children in her presence.
William denied the charges and filed a recriminatory suit, accusing her of adultery with a prominent barrister Henry Matthews and a theology student named Nichols. The only evidence for these alleged infidelities were entries in her private diary revealing intimate feelings toward Matthews and criticisms of her husband.
Due to its complexity and the Christmas season, the trial lasted for many days, and because of its lurid details it attracted widespread press coverage. The evidence included anonymous insulting letters written by William Chetwynd and intercepted correspondence.
The judgment, delivered in Chetwynd v Chetwynd (1865), granted the divorce despite recrimination, finding William Chetwynd guilty of adultery and Blanche Chetwynd guilty of adultery based on the entries in her diary. In a landmark decision on child welfare, the court deemed both parents unfit and awarded custody of the children to third parties, reflecting shift in the Victorian era towards prioritising minors' moral protection over parental rights.
The case heard how early discord was reflected in petty arguments, such as a dispute in 1854 over Blanche's supposed tardiness at breakfast and another following her late return from a hunt at Beaudesert, where Chetwynd accused her of disrespecting him and suggested she find another place to live.
The rift to deepened by the late 1850s, with further financial pressures. Blanche was accumulating debts over £2,000 against William’s annual income of £1,200 through buying and selling horses at fairs, often borrowing from dealers at high interest rates secured by her family connections.
Rumours of mutual infidelities were supported by periods of separation and temporary relocation, including Blanche’s secretive departure from Longdon Hall. A pivotal escalation came in 1862, when Blanche became a Roman Catholic without her husband’s knowledge. She fled in distress to the home of the Revd James William Knight (1820-1878), Headmaster of Lichfield Grammar School (1859-1866).
Negotiations involving her family solicitor, Mr Nicholson, acting for the Talbot and Shrewsbury interests, facilitated a brief reconciliation, but trust was eroded once more by anonymous harassing letters, later shown to have been written by William. Blanche finally filed for divorce in late 1864 on grounds of her husband’s alleged adultery and cruelty. William countered with claims of his wife’s infidelity.
The case of Chetwynd v Chetwynd began in late 1864 in the Divorce Court, presided over by Sir James Wilde, and continued into February 1865. Evidence was heard over several days, drawing extensive media attention for their salacious details.
Blanche claimed her husband had been guilty of great cruelty, had taught their children to spit in her face and to call her foul names, had locked her out of the house or forced her to sleep on the stairs, threatened her with a horsewhip and a pitchfork, had been guilty of repeated acts of adultery with his female servants and had lived with the children’s governess, Helen Booth.
Servants who were called to court alleged William’s repeated adultery with female domestic staff at Longdon Hall, as well as acts of cruelty such as teaching the children to insult their mother and spit in her face, and locking her out of the house at night.
The witnesses who gave evidence on her behalf included the Revd James Knight, a family acquaintance and master of the Grammar School, Lichfield. He had known Blanche since she was a child and William since 1856. Knight recalled Blanche’s distressed state during visits to his home in 1863. She sought safety at night in Knight’s house in Lichfield before returning to Longdon Hall. But she returned to Lichfield to seek safety in Knight’s home a second time.
Detectives and hotel staff corroborated William’s extramarital liaisons, detailing a pattern of infidelity and domestic abuse.
William’s defence, was led by Sir Henry Hawkins, a prominent barrister and later a controversial judge. William sought to bar the divorce under the doctrine of recrimination. When he took the stand, he refuted allegations of violence, cruelty and neglect and claimed his wife had left home without notice for religious reasons and managed independent horse dealings that incurred debts exceeding his annual income.
He alleged Blanche was pregnant when they married, and that he was not the father of the child but that he ‘removed her from disgrace’. Excerpts from Blanche’s private diary were read into evidence, revealing her intimate feelings for Henry Matthews, a family friend. These including passages on unrequited love, passionate encounters, and moral turmoil, which Hawkins argued demonstrated her own adulterous intent.
Witnesses, including hotel proprietors, placed Blanche with Matthews, and separately with Nichols, in compromising situations, including sharing a bed at the Falcon Hotel in Birmingham in December 1863.
Cross-examinations highlighted inconsistencies in witness accounts, with William portraying himself as a victim of Blanche’s extravagance. He accused his wife of associating with what he saw as low company, including ‘horse dealers’ and ‘pig jobbers’ at fairs. Part of William’s evidence included claims that his wife had called him ‘Dear Old Billy.’ There was laughter in the court when lines were quoted from a ballad well-known in Staffordshire, ‘The Wednesbury Cock’ but that William had confused with Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.
The co-respondent in William Chetwynd's counter-petition, Henry Matthews, was implicated through letters and diary entries suggesting improper intimacy, although there was no direct testimony from him.
Despite the mutual accusations, the court found Chetwynd’s adultery proven beyond doubt, while his recriminatory claims against his wife were deemed insufficient to bar relief, as her journal was evidence of intent but not of consummated acts.
On 25 February 1865, Sir James Wilde granted a decree nisi to Blanche, awarding costs against her husband, and ordering alimony payments to Blanche. The court also deemed both parents unfit and awarded custody of their children to third parties, reflecting emerging child welfare principle. They were put in the care of William’s elder brother, Sir George Chetwynd.
Following the case, William Henry Chetwynd returned to live at Longdon Hall, between Lichfield and Rugeley. There he lived a more secluded lifestyle without his children, and was a Deputy Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace for Staffordshire. He married a second wife, Mary Parkin, on 7 December 1875 at Saint George’s Church, Hanover Square, the same church where William and Blanche were married 21 years earlier. William died at Longdon Hall on 5 July 1890, aged 78, and was buried at Saint Michael and All Angels Church, Colwich, near Longdon Hall.
The Chetwynd case was an early instance where the Divorce Court exercised broad discretion in fault-based proceedings. The finding of mutual culpability led to a rare outcome where neither party was deemed the ‘innocent spouse’, resulting in the denial of custody to both parents and placing their children with third-party guardians, illustrating an emphasis on marital fault extending to parental rights.
The case also reflects the privileges afforded to the upper classes in accessing the divorce court, while families with limited resources often endured marital discord without formal dissolution because of financial barriers. The case highlights entrenched gender and class norms, with women’s private thoughts subject to more rigorous scrutiny and questioning than men’s actions, and reinforcing the patriarchal double standards of the time in family law.
Because of the development of a popular media and cheaper newspapers, the case acquired popular notoriety and was a greater source of gossip not just in Staffordshire, but across the world, compared, for example with another divorce case in the same part of Staffordshire a century earlier, involving Sir William Wolseley who married Ann Whitby in 1752, a sad story I recounted in recent weeks.
Whatever happened to the principal characters in the Chetwynd divorce drama?
William Chetwynd died at home in Longdon Hall, in 1890, and was buried nearby in Colwich. His property, including Longdon Hall, passed to the children of Blanche and William, Florence and Arthur. Arthur Chetwynd continued to live at Longdon Hall and to manage the estate; Lord Berkeley Paget died at Longdon Hall on 25 November 1913, and Florence died there on 26 May 1936. The family title and Brocton Hall were eventually inherited in 1938 by Arthur’s son, Sir Arthur Henry Talbot Chetwynd (1877-1972).
Blanche never married again, and died on 15 July 1898. Her half-brother, Canon Arthur Henry Chetwynd-Talbot (1855-1927), was later a Prebendary of Lichfield, Provost of Denstone College, Uttoxeter, and the Rector of Edgmond, Newport, Shropshire. Her uncle, Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot (1803-1868), 3rd Earl Talbot, eventually succeeded as 18th Earl of Shrewsbury in 1856, and those titles have continued with his descendants. Those descendants included John George Chetwynd-Talbot (1914-1980), 21st Earl of Shrewsbury and 6th Earl Talbot. He sued for divorce in 1958, but Judge Charles A Collingwood refused the application in 1959, and he did not get a divorce until a subsequent case in 1963.
The Revd James William Knight, the kindly and concerned Master of Lichfield Grammar School who offered Blanche refuge on at least two occasions, was later Sub-Warden of Saint Paul’s College, Stony Stratford (1873-1875). He died on 26 August 1878, at Car-Colston Vicarage, Nottinghamshire. The Schoolmaster’s House at the old Grammar School on Saint John Street, Lichfield, where he lived is now home to the local history group Lichfield Discovered.
William Chetwynd’s counsel, Sir Henry Hawkins (1817-1907), later 1st Baron Brampton, became a controversial judge and was known as a severe ‘hanging judge’. His sisters included Susanna Hawkins who married William Comerford Casey of Cork and Liverpool. He was a cousin of the Revd Edwards Comerford Hawkins (1827-1906), of Saint Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London, father of the writer Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, author of The Prisoner of Zenda.
I have yet to identify the theology student or seminarian named as a theology student named simply as Nichols.
The co-respondent, Henry Matthews (1826-1913), was a prominent Roman Catholic and a Conservative politician. Matthews never took the stand at the Chetwynd case, and so it seems ironic that he made his name at the Bar for his examination of witnesses, especially Sir Charles Dilke in a sensational divorce case in 1885. He was MP for Dungarvan, Co Waterford (1868-1874), and later for Birmingham East (1886-1892), and he was the Home Secretary (1886-1892) throughout the Whitechapel Murders, some of which are attributed to Jack the Ripper. He was given the title of 1st Viscount Llandaff in 1895 and died unmarried in 1913 at the age of 87.
The intricate and puzzling details of the Chetwynd and Talbot family trees in Staffordshire and Wexford is a tangled web that continues to fascinate me. The story of how the Chetwynd-Talbot branch of the family in Rugeley and Brereton managed to convince their peers that they were the rightful heirs to the titles of Earl of Shrewsbury, Earl of Waterford and Earl of Wexford is another genealogical riddle that I hope to try to unravel or disentangle on another evening.
Further Reading:
HE Chetwynd-Stapylton, The Chetwynds of Ingestre, being a history of that family from a very early date (London: Longman & Green, 1892)
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