You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey listener discretion advised just a few years ago. In two thousand and seventeen, the esteemed British auction house Christie's put up for sale a golden pendant encrusted with diamonds with a tiny portrait of George the Fourth inside. It was George the Fourth's bad luck to
have lived during the peak of British political cartooning. He didn't actually become king until he was nearly sixty, and in his years as a printon waiting and then as regent, satirical papers became ubiquitous, depicting him as a grotesquely overweight and heavy drinking clown wearing a military costume that never actually saw a battlefield. But the portrait in the locket that Christie's put up for auction looked very different. It was unrecognizable from the buffoon that George would come to
be seen as this. George the Fourth is young and gallant, almost nightlike. His light brown hair is swept across his forehead, his lips are faintly red, and his blue eyes are clear and bright. The locket had been passed down through descendants of Maria fitz Herbert, the strikingly beautiful woman who captivated George the Fourth so completely that, even though it risked his position in the line of succession, he married
her in secret. It's ironic that the period of history that bears George the Fourth's name, the Regency, is synonymous with refinement and social constraint. When George himself was such a figure of gluttony and excess. He was a drinker, a gambler, a womanizer, and when he finally ate himself to death by rupturing his stomach, his subjects had a little sympathy for him. But it's his love story with Maria fitz Herbert that maybe comes the closest to anything
in George's life to resembling a Jane Austen romance. The problem with Jane Austen novels, though, as they end with a wedding, they don't tell you about what happens afterward, when Prince Charming's nation status and miserable fatal flaws forced the star crossed couple apart to grow old alone with loneliness and resentments. Now, when Maria fits Herbert is mentioned in histories of George the fourth. It's usually a side note,
and rarely even by name. She's the quote divorced Catholic that the rebellious prince legally married before his real marriage to his cousin Caroline of Brunswick. Maria is less of a person than just one of the many examples of Georgia's youthful peccadillos and early scandal that would soon be buried under many, many more. The Christie's pendant sold for three hundred and forty one thousand pounds, nearly three times the auction house is highest estimate, but the piece was incomplete.
You see miniatures and lockets at the time, we're usually produced in pairs, and this pendant was no exception. It's mate was equally diamond and crested, featured inside a small portrait of Maria fitz Herbert. But it would have been impossible for Christie's to have sold the matching set. When George the fourth died, he still had Maria fitz Herbert's locket with him, and when the king was buried, it was buried with him, held close beneath his crossed hands.
I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The love story between George the Fourth and Maria fitz Herbert began with him seeing her from afar and deciding instantly that he was madly in love with her. He was eighteen years old at the time and the Prince of Wales. She was six years older and married. George was walking down the street with a friend when the carriage containing Maria and her husband, Thomas fitz Herbert, came ambling up
the avenue. Maria noticed the prince right away and pointed him out to her husband, who seemed uninterested. But Maria looked back again, and when she did, she saw that Prince George had run into the middle of the street to chase the carriage. He had fallen behind by then, but he was still looking straight at her as he faded into the distance. Maria had not married for love, but who does. Thomas fitz Herbert was actually her second husband.
She had married for the first time when she was just a teenager, to a man twice her age named Edward Weld, a wealthy landowner who resided at Lulworth Castle. Edward could afford Maria a life of comfort and stability, or at least he could have if he hadn't fallen off his horse three months after their wedding and died. In fact, he died so suddenly after their marriage that he hadn't even managed to sign a new will to
provide for his young bride. All of his possessions were instead transferred to his brother, and Maria was left with absolutely nothing. If she was going to survive, she needed to marry again and quickly. Thomas fitz Herbert, her second husband, was only ten years older than her. He was another landed, wealthy Catholic, a tall, athletic, energetic man, but his health was less robust than it seemed. A year into their marriage,
his coughing began. Two years into their marriage, he could barely leave the house without heaving over in violent spasms to try to get enough air. A year after that, he was dead at twenty four years old. Maria fitz Herbert was twice widowed, and that was when she met George the Fourth face to face for the first time. Maria had been persuaded by her family to leave her morning behind and go to the opera in London, just for one night. Her uncle, Lord Sefton, had urged her,
it's time you get back out into society. George could hardly believe his luck when he saw the woman from the carriage sitting across from him at the opera house. She had been so beautiful that day on the street that he had half convinced himself that she was a dream. While the opera was still going, he turned to his companion and in his full voice, demanded an introduction to her from that meeting, a deep curtsy, a kiss on
the hand. George was a man completely obsessed. He wrote letters to Maria and sent couriers to her apartments every day. He asked her to join him at dinners and parties. The woman graciously deferred. Even as a young man, George already had a reputation for his womanizing, but that wasn't even really the problem here. The problem was that Maria was Catholic, and there were no fewer than three laws in England at the time that explicitly prevented the heir
to the throne from marrying someone like her. For George, that was unacceptable. He had not stopped thinking about this woman since he saw her in the carriage, and he had been in love with her from the moment he touched her hand. At the opera and brought it to his lips, and so the impulsive young prince took one of his daggers and stabbed it deep into his side. A surgeon was rushed to the scene and instantly patched the wound to prevent its continued bleeding. But that wasn't
what George wanted. Hey. He told the surgeon, go find Mrs Maria fitz Herbert. Tell her I've stabbed myself. Also tell her that if she does not come to my side, I'm going to pull off my bandages. You can't pull off your bandages, the surgeon said, you'll bleed to death. Exactly. George said, Chop, chop, And so the surgeon got into his carriage and went to Maria fitz Herbert's house at the end of Park Street and delivered his message to
the bewildered widow. Maria knew that getting into a carriage with the male surgeon to go visit the prince would be enough to call a scandal, and so she agreed, but only as long as they made a stop along the way to pick up a friend of hers, the Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Cavendish. Georgiana would be something of an escort to ensure that the visit was beyond reproach.
Marian the Surgeon caught Georgiana just as she was leaving her home to go on another social visit, But as soon as she heard the dramatic circumstances of why she was being summoned, she immediately abandoned her plans and joined them. When they made it to Prince George's palace, they discovered that the stabbing wasn't just a made up story to entice Maria to his presence, as she had been half
convinced it was. He had blood oozing out of his side, dried streaks of it coming down his shirt, a small pool at his feet. Say you'll marry me, the Prince said, or I'll rip off my bandages and I'll bleed to death. Georgiana and Maria looked at one another. George, grimacing, began pulling the dressing out of his wound. Okay, Maria said, on my are you. George's pain was instantly forgotten. He bounded down onto one knee and pressed a ring onto
Maria's finger. But just as a reminder, Maria had agreed to that marriage under the threat of imminent suicide. As soon as she and Georgiana were back in their carriage on the way home, the two immediately agreed that a proposal under those circumstances was definitely not binding. The Prince wanted to marry her, Maria knew she couldn't marry him, and so without leaving a forwarding address, Maria packed her
things and fled the country. If you thought a little thing like Maria living across the English Channel in France was going to stop George the Fourth from pursuing her, it feels like you might have forgotten the whole stab himself to get her attention thing. George was a man obsessed, although Maria had not given him any information as to where she would be living or even what city she would be in, the and sent countless envoys along to
try to find her. As she traveled throughout France and Switzerland. George sent so many couriers from England to France and so often that the French government became suspicious. In fact, couriers were arrested and imprisoned in France on three separate occasions on suspicion of espionage. But in truth, there's was just a mission of love. George sent letters, tokens, trinkets. He promised marriage. He said his father's silly rule against
Catholics didn't matter at all. All that mattered was being with the woman he loved. By this time, Maria had lived abroad for a year. She was lonely, missing her friends and her life in London. Besides, she was being plagued by proposals from the French scoundrel Marquis de Belois, a sort of regency Eira a Gustan from Beauty and the Beast. For twelve months, George had sent her letters bearing his heart, telling her that he loved her so truly that he would refuse any marriage as his father
set him up with. His promises were silly, but still he made his point. For Maria fitz Herbert, a year in exile was long enough. Maria wrote to the Prince and said that she would consent to be with him as long as they were married in secret, if not under the eyes of the law, then at least under the eyes of her God. Delirious with joy, George accepted. The two were married at Maria's home on Park Street in a small ceremony attended by Maria's brother and uncle.
No priest would be willing to officiate to marry George the Fourth against the orders of his father, the King was tantamount to treason, and so George found a clergyman in Fleet Street prison and paid off his debts of five hundred pounds in exchange for his willingness to perform the ceremony. For the next few years, the pair lived in relative harmony together in Brighton, living in two separate
houses which share airing a view of the sea. The pair became the center of high society, holding intimate small parties for only the most selective guest lists. Things were relatively easy for them. With George's father still on the throne, the Prince could more or less behave exactly as he wanted to, and he did. He drank, gambled, he ate excess, and obviously that took its toll on him. Once, at a masked ball, the Prince's friend, the dandy and famous
fashion plate Beau Brummel, didn't recognize George. Brummel turned to their friend, Lord Avonlea and asked Alvin Lee, who's your fat friend. That's the sort of comment that's embarrassing under the best of circumstances, but when it's a royal you're insulting, it tends to end in exile. George did love Maria, but he loved gambling too, and less than a decade into their marriage, the Prince was out in the humiliating position of needing to ask his father to help him
pay off his exorbitant debts. George owed an excess of six hundred thousand pounds what would be tens of millions today. His father, George the Third, agreed to pay off what his son owed, but on one condition. The prince needed to get married properly, this time to a Protestant who could give England an heir to the throne. Parliament agreed George the Fourth would marry his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick,
and in exchange, his debts would be paid. Almost exactly ten years after she had wed the prince in secret, Maria fitz Herbert received a letter informing her in curt cold language that her relationship with George was terminated. George's allies in Parliament gave passionate speeches claiming that the rumors that he had ever been married to a Catholic were
scandalous lies. The marriage disappeared like smoke on a cold day, evaporating into nothingness, and for the third time in her life, Maria fitz Herbert was abandoned by the man she had married. George met his future bride, Caroline for the first time on their wedding day. He was not impressed. He saw her face and then turned to his manservant and said, I am not well. Pray get me a glass of brandy.
He spent their entire wedding ceremony drunk out of his mind, and their wedding night passed out in the great in front of a fireplace. The next morning, he roused himself, brought himself to her bed, and consummated their marriage for the first and only time. Nine months later, their daughter, Princess Charlotte, was born, and from that time on, George the Fourth wanted nothing to do with his wife. He all but explicitly bribed her to leave England and go
travel the continent, which she did. They both acknowledged that their marriage would be forever list and that the best they could do under the circumstances was to live separate lives. Only days after his daughter was born and his wife had left the country, George began dreaming yet again of the woman he had lost, Maria fitz Herbert. He wrote a new will, bequeathing all worldly property to my Maria fitz Herbert, my wife, the wife of my heart and soul.
Though she cannot avail herself publicly of that name, still such she is in the eyes of Heaven, was is, and ever will such be in mine. But Maria was not entirely convinced. She had married him. Yes, but now technically wasn't he married to someone else? And George had become famous for as many many mistresses, actresses and duchesses, whose caricatures frequently joined his and the popular satirical cartoons of the day, And so Maria turned to the highest
authority she could, the Pope. The Pope advised her to reconcile with her husband, and he also made it clear to her that he and the Catholic Church still believed her marriage to be legitimate, And so, with the Pope's blessing, Maria and George came together once more for what you would later describe as the happiest days of their lives. But this was also the period in which George's father, George the Third, was losing more and more of his faculties.
Though contemporaries called it madness, historians now believe he was suffering from a nervous system disease called porforia. But whatever you called it, the result was that George the Third became blind and deaf, speaking nonsense, and suffering from increasingly severe dementia until he completely lost track of reality. George the Fourth had been acting as an unofficial regent for his father for many years, but the severity of his
fathers decline led Parliament to making that role official. To celebrate his new position, George through a party at Carlton House for the most esteemed guests in the country. Maria entered the dining room to find that she had not been set a place at the table. Prompted by his royal peers, the laughing George the Fourth called her Mrs fitz Herbert and said that she would have to sit
according to her rank. She had tolerated the affairs and the drinking, the gambling and the excessive eating, but that night she had reached the point at which you could take no more humiliation. Maria fitz Herbert left the party and never returned to George the Fourth's home. Eventually, King George the Third died and the Prince ascended to his
throne in earnest. When he spoke of Maria, it was with biting, malice and hatred, repeating the claims that had been made in front of Parliament that their marriage was just a sham, all along on his feelings for Caroline, though, were, if anything, worse. When George was being coronated, Caroline had traveled back from the continent in order to be crowned Queen, only to have the doors of Westminster Abbey literally shut
in her face. The queen stood fuming against a line of soldiers holding bayonets under her chin, refusing her entry. Though the population tended to side with her in the press over her lush of a husband, The scene left them laughing and jeering. The uncrowned queen, humiliated, retreated, and died three weeks later. She was buried under the inscription Here lies Caroline, the Injured Queen of England. For the rest of his life, George the Fourth lived alone with
his mistresses and his demons. His weight reached nearly three hundred pounds, and he enlisted a thick corset to try to contain his fifty inch waist. When ever, he was getting his portrait taken, the king became addicted to laudanum opium drops, an alcohol after it was prescribed for bladder pain. By the end of his life, George was taking over a hundred drops of laudanum per day in order to
get through his state duties. He suffered from gout and dropsy, but he continued to eat, gorging himself on breakfast that consisted of a pigeon and beef steak pie, a bottle of mozzelle, a glass of dry champagne, two glasses of port, and a glass of brandy, and then, of course came his doses of laudanum. In short, he was approaching the end, and that was when he wrote to Maria fitz Herbert with the same message he had sent so many years ago.
Please come to me. Death is near. But in Maria's life there had been far too many messages from George threatening death. She didn't believe that the king was really dying, and so even though she wrote him a letter and treating him to get well soon, she was truth be told a little bit insulted that he hadn't bothered to write back. She didn't know that while the king had been dying, he had her unanswered letter clutched under his pillow. King George the Fourth received an infamous obituary in the
Times of the Unpopular King. They wrote, there never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased king. What I has wept for him? What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow. If he ever had a friend, a devoted friend, in any rank of life, we protest that the name of him or her never reached us. But the Times was wrong when it came to their claim that no one cried for him, unpopular
as he was among his people. When the executor of the king's will, the Duke of Wellington, informed Maria that the king requested he be buried with her miniature diamond portrait around his neck, she did what the Time had assumed was impossible. She wept. That's it for this episode of Noble Blood, but stick around after a brief sponsor break to learn more about Maria fitz Herbert and George of the Fourth. There are a number of claims that George the Fourth and Maria fitz Herbert had a secret
child together, although the proof is scarce and circumstantial. The most compelling theory is that Maria Bora's son, who was known as James Ord, born a year after Maria and George's wedding. Baby, James Ord never knew who his parents were. As an infant, he was whisked away to Spain, where he was raised by the British ambassador, Maria's cousin John
and the man he called his uncle. Later moved to America, where he was brought under the wing of the Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, who also just happened to be a close friend of Maria's. James Ord got married to a woman named Rebecca, and they had a son, Edward Ord. Edward was one of the heroes of the American Civil War. It was his corps of soldiers that led the march down to the Appomattox Courthouse to force the surrender of
Southern General Robert Italy. When ulysses Us Grant shook hands with Lee at the Mcleanhouse to end the war, Edward Ord was by his side for generations. The Ord family has passed along the story of how they might be the mysterious descendants of an illicit marriage between a future king and his Catholic wife. One such Ord, today, also named James, is an ex Mormon lawyer living in Utah.
Like his apocryphal great great ancestor, this modern Ord knew what it meant to not be able to marry the person he loved, but times and laws change for the better. The day that you Top began legally permitting same sex marriage, James Ord and his partner, Steve Hempel were one of the first couples in the state to legally become husbands. Noble Blood is a co production of I Heart Radio
and Aaron Minkey. The show was written and hosted by Dani Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.