Patrick Comerford
Accusations of bigamy, adultery, infidelity and seduction in rural Staffordshire in the mid-18th century were at the heart of a complex legal battle over 270 years ago. The case and the appeal were drawn out between 1752 and 1754, and the stories that unfolded involved accusations of greed, manipulation, cheating, forgery, desertion, perjury, bigamy, adultery, bribery, drugged drinks and corrupt and dishonest clergy.
I came across these stories once again during a number of visits to Staffordshire in recent weeks, including visits to Wolseley, Rugeley, Stafford, Lichfield and Tamworth. These stories centre on the widowed Ann Whitbey (1724-1782), who went through some sort of a marriage ceremony with the widowed Sir William Wolseley (1692-1779) of Wolseley Hall, in 1752. Ann was then 28, a widowed mother with two young children; Sir William was 60, more than twice her age, and the recently widowed father of three sons and a daughter, then aged from one up to 12.
But were they ever truly married? And if there was bigamy, who was the guilty partner?
Sir William Wolseley was the fifth baronet of Wolseley, and the son of Captain Richard Wolseley, who established the Irish branch of the family at Mount Wolseley. When his uncles, the third and fourth baronets, Sir William Wolseley and Sir Henry Wolseley, died in quick succession in 1728 and 1730, he unexpectedly succeeded to the family title as the fifth baronet of Wolseley and inherited Wolseley Hall in 1730. A younger brother, Sir Richard Wolseley (1696-1769), inherited the family’s Irish estates at Mount Wolseley, Co Carlow, and became a baronet in his own right in 1744.
Sir William Wolseley married his first wife, Ann Fieldhouse (1706-1752) from Rugeley, in 1738, when she was 31 and he was 46, and they were the parents of four children, three sons and a daughter:
1, Sir William Wolseley (1740-1817), who became the sixth baronet.
2, Admiral Charles Wolseley (1741-1808).
3, Sophia Wolseley (1749-1801), who married William Piggott (1743-1802).
4, James Wolseley (1751-1773).
Ann (Fieldhouse) Wolseley died of smallpox in January in 1752, and nine months later the widowed Sir William married the widowed Anne Whitby, daughter of William Northey, on 23 September 1752.
But soon a complex case of separation from bed and board was being played out in the ‘Bawdy Court’ of the Diocese of Lichfield, and then in the Court of Arches appeal court. The case and the reputations of all involved became major points of gossip in the coffee houses of London and in the parlours of country houses in Staffordshire.
Sir William Wolseley’s case against Ann Whitby or Ann Robins was heard in 1753 before Richard Smalbroke (1716-1805), who was Chancellor of the Diocese of Lichfield and Coventry for 64 years. Sir William stated that his wife, Dame Ann Wolseley, had committed adultery with John Robins, MP for Stafford, and he alleged fraud involving the falsification of the parish register in the Castle Church, Stafford.
Wolseley alleged that John Robins and Ann Whitby were married bigamously on 9 October 1752, but claimed that marriage was falsely recorded by the Revd William Corne, the curate of Castle Church, and that had been changed in the register variously to 9 June 1752 and then to 16 June.
These dates are pivotal to grasping the intricacies of the case. The records indicate that William and Ann were married on 23 September 1752; if she married Robins in October, her marriage to Robins was null and void and bigamous; however, if she married Robins in June her marriage to Wolseley was bigamous and null and void.
If William wanted to access Ann’s inherited wealth, an annulment would not suit him. In their marriage contract, Ann agreed to pay him £300 a year and undertook to make no claims on the Wolseley estate should she survive him. A separation based on adultery could lead to further claims on her fortune, while an annulment would not, because in the eyes of the law the marriage would never have taken place.
Ann Whitby’s father, William Northey (1690-1738), was MP for Calne in 1713 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)Ann Whitby was the daughter of William Northey (1690-1738) and his wife Abigail (Webster). He was MP for Calne in 1713 and for Wootton Bassett in 1714. He had inherited large property near Chippenham in Wiltshire and bought the Compton Basset estate near Calne. He accused his wife Abigail of adultery and claimed her son Thomas was not his but was in fact the son of Edward Thomas. Indeed, when William Northey died, Abigail married the same Edward Thomas. William Northey left only £1,000 in his will for Thomas, and so his daughter Ann inherited most of his wealth as a result of her mother’s alleged adultery.
Some writers suggest this acrimonious atmosphere of infidelity and adultery influenced Ann in her formative years. Ann was considered to be beautiful and when she married John Whitby of Whitby Wood (1716-1750) in 1743 she was 19. They were the parents of two sons: the Revd Thomas Whitby (1746-1828) of Creswell Hall, High Sherrif of Staffordshire, who is buried at Saint Mary’s Church, Stafford; and William Whitby (1748-1792).
John Whitby died in 1751 and within a month of his death the widowed Ann had started an affair with John Robins (1714-1754), MP for Stafford (1747-1754). She soon became pregnant again, but soon suspected the 38-year-old MP had ‘abandoned’ her. Ann then looked to the 60-year-old widower Sir William Wolseley to save her name and reputation. However, after her marriage to Wolseley, Robins returned and Ann left Wolseley to live with the much younger Robins.
George Winfield, a Lichfield publican, tried to serve a decree from William on Ann at Robins’s house in Stafford on 11 October 1753. He ‘searched diligently’ for her, but having waited an hour he pinned the decree to the door and left.
The case for Sir William and for Ann were handled by their lawyers: John Howard and Edward Burslem Sudell respectively.
William sought separation or divorce from bed and board and mutual cohabitation on the grounds of adultery. He graphically described her alleged adulterous behaviour, claiming Ann, ‘unmindful of their conjugate vows did in violation thereof behave herself in a very lascivious, incontinent and adulterous manner and did contract a criminal correspondence and intimacy with John Robins Esq and without any lawful cause quitted the conversation with her said husband Sir William Wolseley and in or about the month of October, went to live with said John Robins at his house in Stafford in an adulterous manner and went by the name of Robins and as the pretended wife of John Robins.’
He went on to say that in Robins’s house they had ‘frequently lain naked in one and the same bed together and have at such times had carnal use and knowledge of each other’s bodies and have committed the foul crime of adultery’. The court heard that two body impressions were found on the bed and that Ann had been frequently ‘lighted’ up to Robins’s bedchamber by servants and that Robins had later ‘followed on’.
William maintained that from June to September 1752, he had proposed marriage to Ann and that they had agreed to marry each other. Meanwhile, Robins asserted that he had proposed marriage to her between April 1751 and May 1752.
William presented a copy of the parish register with their marriage on 23 September 1752 at Colwich Church. The wedding was conducted by the Revd John Clements, Vicar of Colwich, and the witnesses included his nephew, Lieutenant Richard Wolseley, later Sir Richard Wolseley (1729-1781), the second baronet, of Mount Wolseley, Co Carlow.
Sudell, Ann’s lawyer, told the court that on 16 June 1752 John Robins and Ann Whitby were married in the Castle Church, Stafford, by the Revd William Corne. He presented an extract of the register, but this was a copy and not the original, and was not evidence that the date 9 June had been scratched out and replaced with 16 June.
Throughout the case, Wolseley’s lawyer John Howard referred to Ann as ‘Ann Robins, falsely called Dame Ann Wolseley’, and he called Lieutenant Richard Wolseley as a witness. He said he was present at the marriage in Colwich Church on 22 September 1752, although the parish register indicates they were married on 23 September.
He described the domesticity of the Wolseley household, how he dined with William and Ann on 26 September, when she took her place ‘at the head end of the table’, and how he saw William and Ann walking together in the garden.
The judgment in Lichfield favoured Sir William. But Ann appealed and her case was heard by Sir George Lee in the Arches Court of Canterbury and began on 5 April 1754. The new evidence before the court involved the importance of the dates of the alleged marriages of Ann and John Robins, the alleged drugging of Ann and the pressure on her to sign a marriage agreement with Sir William.
Ann pleaded that she and Robins were married by the Revd William Corne on 16 June 1752. Corne, however, appears to have a crisis of conscience, and he later admitted to several witnesses and in a signed affidavit, that he acted illegally but with the best intentions.
The evidence suggested that Ann was pregnant by Robins and the date of the actual marriage was 9 October 1752, seven days after she married William. Robins begged Corne to enter the date of 9 June to save her ‘dignity’ – a reference to her pregnancy before marriage.
Corne was told that it was well known that Robins was with Lord Uxbridge on 9 June and could not have married Ann that day. Robins then told Corne to change the date from the 9 June to 16 June, and in what appears to have been bribery or inducement gave Corne £1,000.
In court, Sir Brooke Boothby (1710-1789), a Derbyshire landholder, alleged Corne asked him to see if Sir William would forgive him if he told him the whole truth. Boothby’s family once owned the Moat House, the former Comberford family home in Tamworth, and his son, also Sir Brooke Boothby (1744-1824), was a member of the intellectual and literary circle in Lichfield.
John Dunn claimed to have seen a change in the register to 16 June when he knew the marriage was on 9 October. Phoebe Booth, who also knew Corne, said that she had heard him say he had ‘grievously injured’ William. Richard Derry, Ann’s servant, claimed Ann and John Robins were married on 9 October and that he gave Ann away.
Corne confessed to fraudulently altering the parish records and inserting an incorrect date for the marriage. Although he said he falsified dates for the sake of Ann’s dignity, he admitted receiving £1,000. This would make him a party to a bigamous marriage, as he must have known that Ann had married William 17 days earlier.
There were allegations that Ann had been drugged or forced to drink too much at a dinner on 26 August 1752 in the vicarage of the Revd John Clements who had married Ann and William. The next day they signed a contract to marry, and the implication was that Clements and his wife were involved in some subterfuge along with William.
The judge, Sir George Lee, initially rejected suggestions from Ann’s legal team that Corne’s affidavit should be ignored because of his fraudulent actions, that he was guilty of a clandestine marriage, that he had excommunicated himself and that he was not a reliable witness. In fact, Corne had died 19 months before the appeal, on 22 November 1753, and could not be questioned on his affidavit. In Lee’s opinion, no credible witness supported Sir William’s cause. He dismissed as unreliable allegations that Corne had married Ann and Robins on 9 October, as Corne had previously perjured himself.
To complicate all these matters, the parish register where the alleged altered marriage dates for Ann Whitby and John Robins were entered, shows no sign of any significant and meaningful alteration.
The final judgment was that William’s marriage to Ann was invalid because she was already married to Robins at the time. Lee also ruled that Ann should pay no costs, and so these probably fell on Sir William.
Robins absconded to France for fear of being charged with perjury, and died shortly after on 17 December 1754. Ann also absconded, but never faced charges of perjury or bigamy and held on to her fortune. When Robins died she married her third – or fourth – husband, Christopher Hargrave, a chancery solicitor. Sir William Woseley was never charged with bigamy, never married again and died on 12 March 1779.
A scandalous book, The Widow of the Woods (1755), published after the appeal, was written by a one-time associate of Sir William, Benjamin Victor. The Wolseley family tried to buy up as many copies of the book they could and burned them, but is still available online.
Further reading:
Alan Wiggins, The Bawdy Courts of Lichfield, ‘Sir William Wolseley 5th Baronet v Whitby or Robins or Wolseley – Trying to divorce somebody you might not actually be married to!’ (19 June 2019)
