17. The Conman Who Landed Europe’s Richest Heiress
Anglo-Irish adventurer Andrew Robinson Stoney (1747 – 1810) gained infamy by tricking an unsuspecting noblewoman into a horrific marriage. His victim was Mary Eleanor Bowes, Dowager Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne (1749 – 1800), an ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II. Bowes became known as “The Unhappy Countess” as a result of the marriage, which scandalized England and ended in a riveting divorce case.
Mary was the daughter of a wealthy coal baron who died when she was 11, and left her a fortune of about a million pounds – Paris Hilton-type money back then. That made Mary the richest heiress in Europe, and one of Britain’s most desirable women. Aristocrats wooed her, and she enjoyed and encouraged the attention, before finally marrying the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne on her 18th birthday.