12. The Rake and the Unhappy Countess
Andrew Robinson Stoney (1747 – 1810) was an Anglo-Irish rake and adventurer – a conman who gained infamy when he tricked a noblewoman into a horrific marriage. That marriage was to Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne (1749 – 1800), an ancestress of Queen Elizabeth II. She became known as “The Unhappy Countess” as a result of her marriage to Stoney, which scandalized England and ended in a riveting divorce case. She was born in London to a wealthy coal baron who died when Mary was eleven-years-old, and left her millions of pounds as an inheritance – Paris Hilton type money in those days. It made Mary the wealthiest heiress in Europe, and one of Britain’s most desirable women.
Aristocrats wooed her, and she enjoyed and encouraged their attentions, before she finally married the Earl of Strathmore and Kingmore on her eighteenth birthday. The couple had five children, but when the Earl caught tuberculosis, Mary grew frustrated with his increasing debility and lack of libido. She sought romance elsewhere, and began to cheat on her husband with a series of lovers, and earned a reputation for licentiousness in the process. When the Earl finally succumbed in 1776, the widowed Mary resumed control of her fortune, and took up with a lover, George Gray. He got her pregnant four times within a year, and Mary aborted each one.