There are some figures in history that I'm amazed haven't been made into a movie, their life is so full of action, scandal and attention. One of these is Elizabeth Chudleigh, the eighteenth-century aristocrat who was titled Duchess of Kingston. 

Elizabeth was born in 1721, to parents Henrietta Clifford and Colonel Thomas Chudleigh. Her father died when Elizabeth was young, and at some point she went to live with her aunt. A witty and attractive young woman, she had already attracted the attention of men in power, among them Lord Bath who secured her a place at court as Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. She had also attracted the attention of a number of eligible bachelors, one of them Augustus Hervey, heir to the Earl of Bristol. In her biography of Elizabeth, Elizabeth: The Scandalous Life of an Eighteenth-century Duchess, Claire Gervat reconstructs the events that led to Elizabeth and Augustus’ marriage, and presents their union may have been possibly enforced or aggressively championed by Elizabeth’s aunt. In any case, the two were married in a secret ceremony in 1744. 

Francis Cotes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Almost immediately Elizabeth seems to regret this decision, pointedly avoiding her new husband and keeping the marriage secret at court, fearing that she would lose her position as Maid of Honour. The rules stated that only unmarried women could fulfil the role at this time. During her husband’s long absences at sea, she embarked on a new life of her own, living separately from Augustus and only seeing him when absolutely necessary. She caused scandal when she appeared at a ball dressed as Iphigenia in 1749, in a toga-style robe with her breasts exposed. A commentator wrote that she was ‘everything but naked; and yet, like our first parents [Adam and Eve], she was not ashamed’.

Elizabeth's Masquerade Costume of 1749 From Wikimedia Commons

Eventually, with her and Augustus basically separated socially (but not in law) Elizabeth fell for Evelyn Pierrepont, Duke of Kingston. Word soon spread that she was his mistress, and they even lived together for a period, before marrying in 1769. To overcome the problem of her previous marriage, Elizabeth had managed to get hold of the parish register in which it was recorded and ripped out the page it had been scrawled onto. An ecclesiastical court, after she promised she was unmarried, ruled that the wedding with the duke could go ahead and she and Kingston set up home together. It seems that their relationship was happy and loving, and she accompanied the duke at public events, finally now relinquishing her role at court. 

Their marriage was not to last. The duke died in 1773, and left a large estate to Elizabeth. Soon afterwards his nephew, Evelyn Meadows, contested his uncle’s will, claiming that their marriage was never legal as Elizabeth had (shock, horror) already been married. Disaster struck. Elizabeth was unable to access the funds left to her by the duke, the previous ecclesiastical court verdict was overturned, and she now had a high-profile court case to attend and pay for. 

Leaving her lawyers to handle business back home, Elizabeth set off for Europe, travelling to Russia, France, Poland and Italy. She established a close friendship with the Electress of Saxony, and they wrote to one another, eager to give assistance and anticipating their next meeting. In Russia, she had the honour of being seated next to Catherine the Great at a dinner, and got to know the ruler personally. She regularly accompanied Prince Radzivil of Poland, and there was talk of a relationship between them. 

With the money she had access to, she purchased land and various properties, and had a yacht fitted out with fine china and luxurious décor. It's almost as if Elizabeth wasn't acknowledging her problems at home but escaping them and living the lifestyle she would have enjoyed if it were not for the legal problems with the duke's will. However there was even more adversity when she found herself a victim of robbery in Rome, and a house that she bought in Paris had to be abandoned due to damage caused by renovations. Her every move was also documented in the press, including the Annual Register, which tracked her activities and the development of her legal business. She was depicted unfairly by caricaturists, who leaned heavily on her ever-increasing health troubles and love of food. One portrait, in the Wellcome Collection, shows Elizabeth arriving for her bigamy trial with her ladies, an apothecary, physician and chaplain in tow, the physician with a giant vaccination needle over his shoulder. A celebrity of her day, an early biographer commented in 1789, ‘This is an age when the prying eye of curiosity penetrates the privacy of every distinguished person; neither the living nor the dead escape’. The Georgians hung onto every tidbit of information about the rebellious duchess, ‘The most trivial pursuits of the one, and the former table-talk of the other, are narrated, with all the pomp of importance… engaged to furnish anecdote for the world’. 

Elizabeth's contemporaries saw her as scheming, manipulative, gluttonous, attention-seeking and a bigamist. In reality, she had found herself stuck in an unhappy marriage when young, with no way out, believing that it could simply be forgotten, conducted in secret and with a long, unofficial separation. She showed manipulation and naiveity however in her decisions and actions. Despite her initial efforts to protect her reputation by keeping her first marriage secret, the timeline she personally embarked on afterwards ended up leaving it in tatters, and she was cast as a villain among her peers. In 1779 on the death of her first husband Augustus, now Earl of Bristol, she was titled Dowager Countess of Bristol, and not the Duchess of Kingston that she believed she was.

Credit: Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, attending her trial for bigamy. Etching by John Hamilton Mortimer, 1776.Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

If you’d like to know more about Elizabeth, I would highly recommend the biography by Claire Gervat, Elizabeth: The Scandalous Life of an Eighteenth-Century Duchess.

Liked this? You might also like: What it was Like at a Real Georgian Ball in the 1700s and Georgian True Crime: Murder.

My book,  Power Couples of the Renaissance, examines the 1300s to the early 1700s and explores the relationship dynamics that went against accepted norms of the period. There were also power-hungry couples who ruled, fought and spread the patronage of art, science and culture across the globe during one of the most tumultuous periods of history. Find it on the Pen and Sword Books website. 

Claire Gervat, Elizabeth: The Scandalous Life of an Eighteenth-Century Duchess, Random House, 2003.

The Life and Memoirs of Elizabeth Chudleigh afterwards Mrs Hervey, and Countess of Bristol, commonly called Duchess of Kingston, printed by H. Chamberlaine, G. Burnet, L White, P Byrne, H Colbert and J Halpen. 1789.

As many of you know, as well as an explorer of history, I'm also an artist. Part of that side of my work is painting murals (both public and private), and it is always especially exciting when my two passions align. 

In the summer of 2026, we were commissioned to design and create a community-led mural, which celebrated the town of Tadley in Hampshire. I was enlisted to help with some of the historical research and put together the leaflet to inform residents as to the different themes and events the mural depicts. As an artist, I worked on filling the letters, with Amy, Fran and Immie.  

The mural was the brainchild of Tadley and District Youth Action Council, who were keen to merge both old and new elements into its design. More than a thousand years of Tadley's history are to be found on the painting, all brushed on by hand. The logos, images and symbols on the bottom were drawn and painted by residents who were allocated a tile, marking local groups, bands and businesses. We depicted Tadley's Roman past, connected by its ancient road to Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester), a fortified settlement that is still being excavated today. Besoms brooms are created in Tadley, and have done for hundreds of years - there's also Tadley Place, Tadley church, local outdoor and natural spaces and of course a reference to Tadley's 'treacle', an old legend that treacle bubbled up in the local soil as it was so thick and clay-like. Tadley Place of course once belonged to the local seventeenth-century landowner Sir Henry Ludlow. 

Our Two Lost Birds team on this project: Amy, me, Fran and Immie

When we think of the birth of the Renaissance in England, we tend to think of Elizabeth I, and her patronage of theatrical players, artists and musicians. Or Henry VIII, with his love of exotic costume and Hans Holbein diligently painting the likenesses of the royal family and Tudor courtiers. But I'd argue that the actual birth of England's Renaissance goes back further than that, to Henry's grandparents Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville.

The contribution of this couple to England's literary and cultural development in the late fifteenth century is even more impressive when we consider that they did it during a period of civil conflict, the Wars of the Roses. Usually, cultural progress halts while the country distractedly fends for itself amid battles and social division. However, after the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, when many of these changes had been established, Edward probably thought that the Wars of the Roses and any threat posed by the Lancastrian faction, was over. 

Edward married Elizabeth in a secret ceremony in Grafton Regis, on or around 1 May 1464. She was introduced as Edward's queen during a visit that September to Reading Abbey, to the surprise of his courtiers and advisors such as Richard Neville Earl of Warwick, who had been seeking out a dynastic match for the young king. The young royals' marriage was scandalous because Elizabeth was the daughter of a knight, their union believed to be the result of a love match. She was set up with her own royal household, and they went on to have ten children, presiding over periods of peace, war and overcoming their own, personal, adversities. 

Earl Rivers presenting his book and Caxton, his printer, to Edward IV by Charles Grignon  (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection)

As keen patrons of the arts, Edward, in the 1470s, recruited the Cornish metalworker John Tresilian as his master of ironworks. Tresilian created the beautiful screen that can still be seen today at Edward's tomb in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. A real feat of craftsmanship, it triggers similarities with a near-contemporary, Cosimo de Medici in Florence, who oversaw similar ironwork erected in the local churches of Florence during this new and exciting period. In his will of 1475, Edward also requested an elaborate tomb with an effigy and a figure of death swooping over it, something that would have been adventurous just ten years before. The couple also oversaw building work at Windsor and the Tower of London, with the Yorkist symbol of suns and roses still surviving on the inside and outside of St George's Chapel.

They also read widely, with Edward owning political and religious titles, along with others on mythological or ancient tales. Elizabeth too, owned romance stories, and the couple instructed those responsible for the upbringing of their eldest son Edward to read heroic and courageous books to the young prince to instil a similar appreciation and learning in him. The royal volumes were garnished with silks and tassels and according to the Privy Purse Accounts, were also mended and kept in good repair. Importantly, they both gave their royal approval and crucial PR to Anthony Woodville, Lord Scales (and Elizabeth's brother), to found a printing press at Westminster in the 1470s. It was the first printing press established in the realm and changed the future of the kingdom forever, encouraging the spread of new ideas, theories and avenues of study and enquiry. Edward's supporter Sir John Tiptoft was a well-known thinker of the period, who had spent years in Florence studying law before serving Edward in government. Edward and Elizabeth's elevation and their patronage of those who valued learning speaks volumes about how important they also considered it to be.

International influences played an important role, and Edward purchased clothes and boots from around the continent, including Spanish leather in various colours and different types of European cloth. His court not only took inspiration from Italy, through the courtiers who had travelled and studied there, but from the Burgundian court of his brother-in-law Charles the Bold.

In 1472 the pair received a visit at Windsor Castle from the Lord Gruuthuse, who assisted Edward during his difficult year in exile in Burgundy. The official was treated to hunting, elaborate feasts and wines and took a walk in Edward's 'garden of pleasance'. The couple showed him to his rooms where he slept on expensive sheets, took a relaxing bath and was gifted a jewelled cup with a piece of unicorn's horn set into it (believed to protect the owner from poison). These scenes, rich in ceremony, generosity and excess would not be out of place in Renaissance Italy, and were indeed encouraged by Edward and Elizabeth themselves in their royal ordinances. These ordinances set out the ethos of the court and how it was to be run, and the couple placed particular emphasis on legendary kings and queens of history, including those of England, who they praised for the similar traits they displayed in their own courts. What could be more 'Renaissance' than a 're-birth' of ancient ideals into their present time? 

You might also like: The Household of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, The Women of Reading Abbey, and The Lost Tomb of Edward IV.

Find out more about Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville in my book Power Couples of the Renaissance. It features relationship dynamics that went against accepted norms of the period and power-hungry couples who ruled, fought and spread the patronage of art, science and culture across the globe during one of the most tumultuous periods of history. Find it on the Pen and Sword Books website. 

We Brits have a thing about our kings being found in car parks. Richard III was found under one in Leicester, while theories are currently being discussed that King Alfred currently lies under another one in Winchester. In Reading, talk is all about King Henry I, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, who was buried in the town’s abbey in 1136. The abbey has since fallen into ruin and Henry’s remains have never been found, despite academics, press and others attempting to pinpoint its possible location. However in the early nineteenth century workers claimed to have found the royal sarcophagus, right where it was thought to have been buried. 

Reading Abbey was founded in 1121, with construction taking many years. It was a huge network of buildings and private chambers, but was dissolved by Henry’s descendant, Henry VIII in the mid-1500s. The building fell into disrepair, parts of it were used to build structures elsewhere and locals ransacked what was left for their own homes. The later Tudors and early Stuarts enjoyed what was left of the abbey lodgings as a royal palace and convenient stabling when they were visiting the town. There was more chaos on the site however when the abbey was turned into a battlefield when Reading was under attack in the seventeenth-century Civil War. By 1800, there were no floors, tiles, stained windows or structurally complete walls and the building had been left open to the elements for more than three hundred years.

Remains of Reading Abbey's Church

With all these disturbances, it seemed that Henry I’s grave, which had been solemnly interred under the tiles of the abbey’s church altar in 1136, was lost forever, along with those of other medieval royals buried there. But on 24 November 1816 workmen dug into the earth to make a footpath through the site and hit a slab of stone. The panel, they recorded, was ‘not three feet below the surface’, and formed the shape of a coffin, or sarcophagus. It was broken into two large pieces, with only the bottom of it surviving. What struck the men was the elaborate carving and depiction of columns on the panel, leading them to believe that the sarcophagus had been used for the burial of someone very significant. The stone slab was seven feet long and seven and a half inches thick. Iron rings had been attached, that would have once helped to lower a body into the ground. 

The devastating news was, that no other fragments of the coffin were ever found, nor were there any remains of the person who had been buried within. The discovery of the object so near to Henry’s burial place – the choir of the abbey church – raised hopes, but they were soon dashed. It may have held a royal body, but they were not the first to discover it.  In fact the evidence points to the sarcophagus being abandoned after having been dug up in a previous century. The workmen noted the shallow amount of soil found over the stone, suggesting that it had been left at ground level with earth gradually covering it over the centuries. There was obviously evidence of movement at the site, likely historical raids on wealthy burials for any grave goods they might contain. A lead coffin had previously been found in 1785, but there was never any evidence that this was Henry’s. 

We can imagine the excitement as workmen unearthed this exciting find, and immediately hoped they’d found the long-lost tomb of Henry I. The jury's out as to whether the king's remains are still in the soil of the abbey grounds somewhere. Due to the significant building that has been carried out on the site (a school, church and Reading Gaol occupy parts of Reading Abbey's ground), Henry's tomb may still lie buried. However it's equally likely that the tomb was ransacked by post-Reformation residents looking for grave goods, the broken sarcophagus discarded on the ground afterwards. A mystery that the Georgians thought they’d solved minutes after their metal shovel pinged into barely covered stone is still a mystery today. Did the Georgians find Henry’s tomb? Maybe a bit of it, but as far as we know the abbey ruins haven’t given up all of their secrets yet. 

You might also like: Don't Be Fooled, Reading Abbey is a Big Deal, Reading's Lost King: Henry I,  and Meet the Residents of Fifteenth Century Reading.

Interested in the Wars of the Roses? My first book explores the roles of women from all sectors of fifteenth century society and the impact they had on the Wars of the Roses conflict. Reading is mentioned, as is Elizabeth Clerk. Order your copy here. 

My second book, Power Couples of the Tudor Era, published by Pen and Sword Books, explores the contributions sixteenth century couples made to their own times as well as how they influenced our own. Order your copy here. 

Find out more about the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries in my book Power Couples of the Renaissance. It features relationship dynamics that went against accepted norms of the period and power-hungry couples who ruled, fought and spread the patronage of art, science and culture across the globe during one of the most tumultuous periods of history. Find it on the Pen and Sword Books website. 

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Source:

Archaeologia, Society of Antiquaries, London, Volume 18