10. England’s Worst Husband?
Andrew Robinson Stoney (1747 – 1810) might have been England’s worst husband in the eighteenth century. An Anglo-Irish rake and adventurer, Stoney was a conman who gained infamy by tricking an unsuspecting noblewoman into a horrific marriage without any love, but with plenty of abuse. It was to Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kingmore (1749 – 1800), an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II who became known as “The Unhappy Countess”. The marriage scandalized England, and led to a riveting divorce case.
Mary was born in London to a wealthy coal baron who died when she was eleven. He left her a fortune of about one million pounds – Paris Hilton type money in those days. That made Mary the wealthiest heiress in Europe, and one of Britain’s most desirable women. Aristocrats wooed her, and she enjoyed and encouraged the attentions, before finally marrying John Bowes, 9th Earl of Strathmore and Kingmore, on her eighteenth birthday.