The Rake and the Rich Widow (Part 1)
Andrew Robinson Stoney (1747 – 1810) was an Anglo-Irish rake and adventurer. A conman, he infamously tricked a noblewoman into a horrific marriage. It was to ancestress of King Charles III, Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne (1749 – 1800). She became known as “The Unhappy Countess”, and what Stoney did to her scandalized England and led to a juicy divorce case. Mary was born in London to a wealthy coal baron who died when she was eleven, and left her a fortune of about one million pounds – Paris Hilton type money back then. It made Mary Europe’s wealthiest heiress, and one of Britain’s most desirable women. Aristocrats wooed her, and she enjoyed and encouraged the attentions, before finally marrying 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 debility and lack of libido. She cheated on her husband with a series of lovers, and earned a reputation for licentiousness. 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. She finally resigned herself to marry Gray after the fourth pregnancy. Before tying the knot, however, she met and was seduced by Andrew Robinson Stoney, a British Army lieutenant who styled himself a “Captain”. In 1777, Stoney wrote anonymous scurrilous articles about Mary, and had them published in a newspaper. He then feigned outrage over the insult to Mary’s honor, and challenged the newspaper’s editor, who was in on the scam, to a duel.