Dick Tardy's Triad Trial: Sir Richard and Lady Seymour Worsley Pt. 1

Club Golden. That'd be a cool club. Actually, no, it'd be terrible club. People be shooting at you. The world is about to explode. Sean Bean is here stressful? Everything's down to you for some reason. Oh my god, I gotta kill all y'all by myself. How many times James Bond is like, how did I end up being entirely on my shoulders? I literally work for the biggest organization of spies in the world. I'm here on my own. Can you walk around me and like, I ain't your dad?

I'm going to be one thing to like, yeah, you're a spy. You gotta go get into hel be y'all quiet and discreet on your own. But here I am like assaulting the base of operations with three hundred armed guards, so many on my own. If I was James Bond, I would be very upset about my coworkers. Yeah, I'm like, m, where's the backup? Right? Are they all assaulting evil bases somewhere? Because if that's the case, y'all got to get better at stopping these things before they start an evil base.

It's clearly simple, love, supply and man. Seriously, well, you know, surprisingly this is a great intro because we are in England. Hey, we are in Yeah, Hi everybody, I'm Eli, I'm Diana. That's welcome to the show Ridiculous Romance. We're here once again talking about some crazy couple of people, crazy couple or yea more trio this time. Sometimes we don't stop it too and we're here to cover them all. Yeah, So thanks for tuning in and welcome to London. Jolly good.

Smell the air, maybe don't. Well, it's pre industrial Revolution, so it probably smells great right well through their ship in the streets, all right, I don't think it smells history that's a hard question, yeah, because I mean Egyptians used a lot of perfect um, but that just means you covered up your own stench like a weird The worst is the smell of perfume over a bad smell that mix and then again lots of animals and livestock and sooty chimneys and I don't know, I feel like

it probably maybe now my Okay, I'm sorry I got us way off subject here. But the important thing is this is a great story. Uh, y'all. I'm not gonna apologize this time. It's a two parter. I know, we just did one. We try not to do it, but there's a big story. And what's cool about this one, though, is that these are like they're really two separate stories. They're just about kind of the same people. I think that's the sort of gist I get. You're not gonna

get left on a cliffhanger here. We just have two really cool stories about some really wacky people. All right, Well, let's get going on this story. It is so great. We're in London at that time among the nobility, it wasn't unusual well to get married just for monetary reasons, right, I mean, We've seen that many times in history, right. Um, the foundation of the monarchy in a lot of ways, basically, who's best for me and all the rest of us

to maintain our wealth and power. But that's also why it was not very unusual for married lords and ladies to carry on a delterous affairs. Um. They were often tolerated by their spouses, but if an affair wasn't discreet, a humiliating scandal could ensue, and nobody wanted that. So often men would even raise their wives illegitimate sons as a cover, basically so no one would know what was really going on. Okay, yes, this is my little Jeffrey. He doesn't look anything like me. He looks a lot

like my neighbor. Hey, but don't worry about that. We don't need to talk about that. But if things went too far, no amount of scandal could keep a man from the courtroom. And Sir Richard Worsley thought that he had an ironclad case of adultery against his wife, Lady Seymour Worsley, and her lover, George Bassett, but he seriously underestimated the links that she was willing to go to

get rid of. Sir Richard, and it would result in one of the most scandalous adultery trials in the eighteenth century. So let's hear about criminal conversation trials and what about to the most expensive peep show in serious Let's go, hey their French, come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships. A lover might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons at a

concrete wall. But if there's a story with a second glance, ridiculous rolevance. A production of iHeart Radio. Sir Richard Worsley was only twenty one years old in seventeen seventy two when he announced to a family friends, the historian Edward Gibbon, he was going to get married within five months time determined. Yeah, he had a deadline and everything. Not like I met someone and will be married soon, but just like, you know what, five months. It's about times. I don't want

to turn twenty two and still be single, embarrassing. It's important to set goals for yourself abtainable now. He had just returned to England from his Grand Tour, which was like this trip that very rich aristocratic men would take as part of their education. So they go to like college and get their book learning, and then they would go to these actual countries and get immersion in the languages and the art and the architecture and the history

of the continent. And they would also learn like gentlemanly arts like fencing and dancing and all those becoming charming, you know what I mean, all those gentlemanly things. So they would go through Italy and France, and then they would usually take a trip over the pines on a donkey or something as like a test of nerve, so you could see they could keep a stiff up a lip in bad circumstances. And then they would go home

to dazzle England with their charm and competence. So literally these guys went out and then came back and spent the next twenty years saying, well, on my study abroad, Oh yes, I actually rode a donkey once, terrifying, but I was stiff up a lip. You know, it was nothing for me. You know, in my study abroad in Italy, I learned that it's pronounced Yeah, you have a lot in common. I can relate to the English aristocracy in at least one way, one single way study abroad. Alert. Now,

Richard really liked art in architecture. He loved like Greek antiquities and statues and that kind of thing. Um, but he actually hadn't distinguished himself much in school. According to Halle reuben Hold's biography The Lady in Red, he was called dick Tardy, dick tardy, sod dick tardy because he quote lagged so far behind. Yeah, yeah, a couple of shots of tequila, and I'm a little dick tardy too. Sometimes you know what happens to everyone, just a little

late to the game, normal circumstances. Too much tequila, it shows up. Okay, yeah, just a little everyone's over by, everyone that's already left, parties over amazing. Now you're here, Oh, Dick Tardy, every time with you every time? Alright. So anyway, Dick Tardy loved his Grand Tour because he loved art and architecture and all that. But for him, the main thing about the Grand Tour was that he was able to reinvent himself because his father was a guy who

also had like a passion for education. In that way, they had a lot in common. But he was also an alcoholic and he really indulged himself all the time, very dissipated kind of dude, and so Richards him is a bit of a buffoon. He was like, I don't want anyone to think of me like my dad. He really wanted to distinguish himself as a completely different kind of guy. So when he got home from his grand tour, he's like, I am a respectable, reliable, grown ass man.

And he figured a great way to prove that would be to get married. Settled down to the married state, right, Okay, So in five months, five months time, five months after my study abroad, I'll be getting married, unlike my idiot father. Okay, who drinks too much now. Seymour Fleming was born in seventeen. Seymour lost two sisters and her father by the time she was five years old, so she and her older sister Jane were brought up by their mother. Both girls

totally comfortable heiresses. They had a lot of money coming their way already, what was their the money their dad had left them. But then their mother remarried to an extremely wealthy man in his seventies, very old guys, So there was more money on the way. This guy side note, however, got his money from his sugar plantations in Barbados. So slavery, yes, boo children, you're right. It's so funny to me just being American slavery so much in our backyards, like literally

lived alongside it. And for a lot of British lords it was very far away. I mean, I think they still had some like black pages were like a fad apparently to have a little kid in your house like run errands for you or something. But like a lot of slavery was just so far away from them. But maybe I wonder if it was even more theoretical in

a way or something. It was like outsourced more or less, right, I mean, as opposed to the plantations in America, where it was like the rich guy who was making all the money owned the property and lived on the property where it was happening. As opposed to like the Brits who were making money off slavery. It was like, like you said, so distant, somebody else is handling all the actual you know, horrible stuff they're doing with these I don't even have to see it. I don't even have

to look at it. Interesting so I always think about it. I think that's such an interesting distinction. And how you saw the institution point being the Flemings were hella stacked with money. The newspapers of the time were like super curious about the exact amount that each heiress could bring to a marriage, and they guessed that it was upwards of around seventy thousand pounds, which, adjusting for time, means twelve point six million pounds today, which is like over

fifteen million U S. Dollars. Yeah, that's a lot of ye And I'll say to their mom did nothing to put paid to any of these rumors, Like she was like, I won't tell you the real amount because it only helps their marriage. The speculation. Yeah, they were like, She's like, yeah, sure, keep ad into it. I'm getting more and more calls every day. Yeah right, right, fifteen million dollars would be nice. I mean that seems like chump changed to me, because tomorrow,

of course, we will have won the billion dollars. Yeah, by the time you all listen to this will be billionaires. Just just the heads up now. Jane, the older sister, was known for being an epitome of virtue, impeccably behaved perfect lady, beautiful and graceful. But Seymour was more headstrong and wilful. She was less pretty, but still good looking. She was great on a horse, and she loved playing cards.

Really now. She was only four een years old when the handsome young baronet so Richard Worsley came to stay with the express purpose of dating the older sister, Jane. Richard was plenty rich on his own and it didn't really have to worry about this, but a rich, fashionable wife would help launch him into a higher society, and that is exactly what he was looking for. I think he felt like like on succession, the poorest rich man in the room, like he was rich, but like he's like,

I gotta be Richard another. Richard had decided on a political career, and the higher social circles that he moved in, the more influence he would have in that career. That made sense, but unfortunately Jane was not interested. She could tell he was really only attracted to her money and not herself, so she turned him down. That's good for you, Jane. But apparently he persisted so much that, according to Reuben Hold, she kind of had to get a little. It meant him.

Oh wow. So he's like, I got your letter, you know, saying, no, how about we talk about it over dinner tonight, Sir Richard. You flatter me with your proposal, you do, you really do. That's what I do. But I could never, ever, ever, in any conceivable universe, ever marry you. Right, okay, please do turn your attentions away from me to someone else. Sure, I know you said something, but shall I pick you

up at seven and we'll talk about it. But Seymour did flirt a little bit with him, and he'd flirted him back. Of course, she's only fourteen, so it's like a real playful like okay kid, yeah, sure, wink wink. But a few years later, when Seymour was a lovely seventeen years old and confident, and she'd been she you know, she had, she was a debutante, she'd already her bowels and everything, nearly middle age at point basically old, she met him at again at the York Races and they

danced together all night. They were inseparable the races the next day, and by the end of the week they were engaged to be married. A big whirlwind courtship and Gibbon wrote that he felt like his friend was compelled quote by love and eight pounds. In reality, Seymour brought more like fifty two thousand pounds to her marriage. Um it's about nine point three million pounds today. Okay, so

ten million bucks pittance, nothing, basically nothing. Um. Now, some of this money was set aside for her to reinherit upon Sir Richard's death. It's called a widow's jointure. So that would ensure that she had something to support herself if he died. Wait, if he dies, we'll give you a little bit of your own money back. Okay, don't get me started on it. She gets a little bit back. Um. She was also legally entitled to a certain amount of her own spending money year, which was called pin honey,

how progressive. Oh yeah, and I love it's called pin money. It's like, you know, let's go buy you little things if you need. But it was never enough to like

support a house, you know, or something like that. And yeah, so, as you say, most of her wealth, the bulk of it, including quite a lot of property in the Isle of Wight, was under Sir Richard's control the minute they got married in September seventy and thanks to all that rampant speculation about the size of her wealth, the couple became the toast of London. They were invited everywhere, they were moving in the highest circles of society. It was just like

Sir Richard had hope. And in the next couple of years he joined various intellectual groups. He became a patron of the painter Joshua Reynolds. He even became the Privy Counselor for the King, which is basically the king's main accountant, and apparently it was extremely good at this. He earned a new nickname, Sir Finical Whimsy. I guess to step up from you, you know what, you know what the

King's saying, Oh, bring Dictordio. And he got paid a really good amount to do that job as well, um, besides becoming friends with the Prince of Wales and other extremely highly connected and powerful nobles. So it's like everything's coming up, Sir Richard. It's looking real good for him to stand for election as a Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight, where he owned all this land. But all was not well between him and Smore And

we will find out more about that. Right after these messages welcome back to the shore day now Richard and Seymour's initial flame that burned out fast. Uh. Seymour complained in a letter that Sir Richard kept her a virgin for three months after their wedding, and things didn't really heat up much in that arena at all. She got pregnant and she gave birth to a son in seventeen seventy six, but that meant that Sir Richard had done his deote, and it seems that he basically ignored her

after that. He traveled for his work and she partied at home, and for a couple of years they seemed to lead completely separate lives. She's pretty insulted by that too, that he would touch her. She was like to find. She's like, I gotta give you all my land, I gotta give you all my money. If you straight up croak and die, I might get a little bit back. I got this tiny little allowance to go buy pins, whatever the funk that means, and I'm not even getting

laid out of it. Come on, yeah, come on. At least you could do is is bring Dick Tardy over here and try and show me a good time. Didn't show right, dick absent, Dick, she should have called of that dick absent. But all this seems understandably to have brought out kind of a rebellious side in Seymour, like maybe she just wanted to grab her husband's attention. She

started playing all these outrageous pranks. One holiday at her family home, Hairwood Hall, the Flemings held a New Year's Eve masquerade ball, and they threw open every door of their house for people to go in and out as they wished, including the private bedrooms. Sounds like a very exciting party. Alright, masquerades already pretty well welcomed some dissolute behavior. Everyone's in a mask. You can do whatever you want. So yeah, they would, you know, they would like fondle

each other, and you know they'd get into it. They'd get into it in a different way. So then all to add like go into my bedroom and look through my ship. It's such a weird addition and already wild party. It was like the Purge for them, like the Lunge. We're so stodgy and stuck up most of the year. We have a one masquerade night, or we can just

fondle each other and enter each other's bedrooms. So they're at this masquerade ball and Seymour and a couple of friends of hers took advantage of this open door policy and they went into the gentleman's bedrooms. They went through all their stuff and, according to the papers of the time, get this, they quote through the gentleman's clothes out of the windows, particularly their breeches, thinking them unnecessary. Yeah, they

wanted all these dudes to Donald Duckett. She's like, you won't be meeting these anymore, Richard, and threw his pants out the window. So in retaliation, one of the men went to Seymour's room and quote took all her caps and band boxes and hung them in a tree in

the park, where they remained all night. This is what wild stuff Delta Sigma Kappa would never Apparently, this crazy story spread like wildfire, and it was considered very sordid behavior and even endangered Jane's engagement to the Earl of Harrington. Can you imagine going over to the Earl of Harrington's house and his mom being like, I don't know, your sister threw some clothes out a window, so I just don't know, if I'm gonna work out like I got

to do. Remember, I'm the perfect one. But no matter what prank's Seymour played, no matter what debts she ran up, Sir Richard just laughed it off and paid them because he thought he was untouchable, just above any scandal. He was doing so well, he was the talk of the town. No one was going to talk about Richard. True. So yeah, maybe she was trying to get his attention, or maybe she's kind of trying to punish him by being like, I'll embarrass you or cost your money or something. You'll

have to think of me sometimes. Just come have sex with me and this I'll be real quiet. He's like, I'd rather pay out for all your scandals. So in seventeen eighties, Sir Richard finally stood for election as MP. You know, his the pinnacle of his dreams. And ruin Hold goes into some detail about how corrupt politics were at this time. All right, so it's not like he's winning the hearts of the people. Most MPs just spread their money around to buy votes, or they would strong

arm people into voting for them. Um. A lot of landowners too, could basically force their tenants to vote however they wanted them to. So if you had property, if you had tenants, people running for MP were like, tell them, you know, tell them to vote for me, whatever, and Richard was no different. He bribed election officials to deprive his opponent of poll books, he bought votes, plenty of votes,

and he threw lavish parties for his supporters. But he also made friends with his twenty three year old neighbor, a landowner named Maurice George Bassett. George, as he preferred to be called, could influence his tenants in Sir Richard's favor, so he was an important friend to have, but no one liked him more than Seymour. By September of that year,

she and George were having a passionate affair. Sir Richard won his election and he gave George a captain's commission in his South Hampshire Militia as a thank you for his help. Good job, George, you moving up in the world. But Sir Richard also had another motive for that, because all the militias were actually being called into action. France had just joined the Americans in their war for independence.

Those columnists so Britain was really concerned that their neighbors might strike on home soil, and so all the militias were put on high alert. And Richard really wanted to have a friend with him during all these boring drills and troop movements that he was about to be going through. And George, for his part, was very glad to go with Sir Richard because Seymour, of course, would go with her husband, and she happened to be expecting her and

George's child. Now, Sir Richard didn't seem to care about this, not at all. He rented a house nearby the militia encampment for them to live in, and he insisted that George take a set of rooms in it for himself. Little in law suite for George exactly. He also decided to hire an entire new team of domestic servants to wait on them, instead of bringing a handful of you know, like trusted servants from their main home that they were used to, as most aristocrats did. So I imagine Carson

was furious, my lord, new staff. It's not for me to tell you how to set up your household, my lord, but I will say I'd rather be shot in the head than he is something like this now. When they moved camp again a few months later, all those new servants he hired were dismissed, and then a whole new staff was hired again. So it's a lot of cleaning house, getting fresh eyes in there. We don't want anybody here

long enough to figure out what's going on. Yeah, so he was really taking a lot of pains to keep this little threesome a secret. When Bissette and Seymour's daughter, Jane, named after her older sister I'm assuming was born in Sir Richard even claimed this girl as his own to cover up, of course, the true nature of their relationship. Again not uncommon at this time, totally normal, lots of men except their wives, lovers children as legitimate so that

there wouldn't be a big scandal. Again. Yes, I know he looks a lot like George, but that's just because George is such an admirable fellow, looking up to him, copying him in every way, including his hair, nose, lips. Yes. The other thing is that it had been five years since the birth of Richard and Seymour's own son, so having another child come along would quiet any whispers about you know the state of their marriage, and how how

dick tardy he had been to her. So Reuben Holt writes that quote, the arrival of George Bissett in both of their lives heralded a sudden reinvigoration of Worsley's interest in his wife. Far from being ignorant of Seymour's affair, her husband openly encouraged it. The possibility that Sir Richard

Harbord homosexual longings for Bissett cannot be discounted. The eagerness with which the baronet pulled his neighbor into his life, the intensity and regularity of their opanionship is behavior unmatched in any of words these other friendships. So possibly they were roommates, or it might have been unrequited, like interested, but Richard was and it's not likely he would have admitted to this because sodomy and homosexuality were illegal at

the time and punishable with the death penalty. Right, can I get a boot? Thank you? Pretty unlikely that a lord would get the death penalty for it. He probably just go to prison or some but still like it was like the worst thing that could happen to you, So nobody wanted to talk about it. But there's another aspect to this that we must consider, and that's the

fact that Sir Richard was something of a voyeur. Back when he was on his Grand tour in the early seventeen seventies, Sir Richard had stayed in a house in Paris right across the street from a brothel. And he's around eighteen or nineteen. Hard to not do in Paris in early seventeen seventies especially, and they were just regular houses, how you know, I thought it just a lot of

ladies lived there together through me. There's lots of roommates coming and going, and every house and coming and oh goodness. Now he's like eighteen or nineteen at the time. He could see right through their windows, so he's totally spying on them. Um, and they notice and of course start beckoning him to come join them, like flashing their titty. If someone's peeping in through your window while you're having sex, the logical thing to do is to beckon them to

join you. Well, or if they're just prostitutes, are like yeah, right, hey, buddy, that will be ten shillings. Okay, you don't look for freeze. They say no, peep show. He's like, damn, that's what I like. Well, finally one night he's like, all right, I'm doing it. I'm I'm grown. I'm gonna go get late tonight, boy, big boy, and I'm gonna get late. But the landlady of this boarding house that he's saying at had gotten wind of his plan, so she stopped him on the staircase and she was like, I heard

you're trying to go across the street. Let me tell you that brothel has a very bad reputation and you should not go over there. And I'm assuming since she's friends, she was like, I have a list of some respectable organizations that you can go check out, but this one no, no, no, one star, like one of those Airbnb binders, Like check out some local brothels in the area. Totally, She's like, I've got really good recommendations for you, but this one

I cannot say you should go to. So Richard's like, fine, I won't go. And as he recorded in his journal the next day, that was a lucky escape because a guy was murdered that night in the brothel, and Richard saw the victim from his window. The next morning, As he wrote, quote naked and stripped of all he had been possessed of. So this experience really made him very cautious of women and of like he really couldn't shake the fact that he could have been murdered if he

had just you know, the timing was crazy. He felt insane. So it was like really took hold in his mind. And Reuben Hold writes that quote the experience persuaded him in part that the sexual act was best enjoyed when observed from afar. Okay, no one can stab you in the back if you're in the other room. That's a healthy attitude about sex. So good. So Richard became partial to peeping, and that was considered fairly normal sexual kink to have in his time. It was called kicking King,

kicking k k kicking you kicking Tom. I don't know why I was called king. It's like peeking, but it's kinky there, that's probably. But he also got into a kink called candleism. Now, this was named after the ancient king Kendles, who exposed his naked wife to his servant guiges. And after the wife found the servants buying on her, she told him, look, you can either kill yourself, or

you can kill my husband to restore my honor. And so guy just was like, let me think real quick, and he killed the king and he became the king instead. Um So, Candleism is a kink where you get sexual pleasure out of exposing your partner to or images of your partner to other people. And that can include undressing them in front of other people. That can include putting their personal photos their nudes up on the Internet or

distributing them around to people. It can even include encouraging your partner to wear revealing clothing when you go out, like a really short skirt or like something that shows her titties or something even that want them to be jealous of my thing that I own. It's kind of that kind of vibe. And with all, as with all kinks, if there's consent here, you know, it's that's one thing.

That's one thing. Yeah, that's what you're putting pictures up of someone on the internet without them knowing about it. That's another thing exactly up up. One psychoanalyst is the door Sager. Theorized that a candlest completely identifies with their partner's body, so that deep in their mind they feel like they're exposing themselves, which I'm like, Okay, that's very

convenient because you don't actually have to expose yourself at all. Well, it sounds like something a psychiatrist would say to me, but um, that's probably true of some Yeah, i'd argue it's And I do wonder if part of the kink is the person not knowing or or I imagine it could be for some content is or is not there. If that adds or takes away too from it. I

don't know that it's not part of the breakdown. I read like, if I go out with you and you're looking hot and I see somebody check you out, that's that's kind of cool to me. I'm like, I don't feel jealous. I'm like, hell, yeah, that's right, that's right. I thought so too. Guess what, I'm married her, I'm going on with her. Um, yeah, you know, so that's cool. And whether or not you see, you won't see that

because you're oblivious to anyone being interested in you ever. Always, Um, that's very I'm like, that guy was so nice and you're always like he was hitting it. We were just having a really fun conversation that ended as soon as he found out I was married. I don't think I had anything to do with anything. Oh yeah, that guy suddenly got very interested in nonprofit theater. Sometimes they are totally are not not often. You're probably right, Daddy. I

don't know where how we got on that. I don't either, But anyway, the term candleism didn't exist until the eighties, so it's not like they had an understanding of that kink at the time. For Sir Richard, they just were like keeking, you like to peek on people or whatever. If you exposed your wife to other people, you were like the weirdest, most perverted. Like that was beyond anything, because you you know, you're supposed to respect your wife, cherish her and all that, so you're not supposed to

show her off, Like that's the weird. Now we know that Sir Richard was into this because after Seymour had recovered from her childbirth, the three of them, Richard, Seymour, and George decided to visit the cold baths at Maidstone on a hot day. Now, public bath houses were separated by gender, so Richard and George Bissett took a dip

in the men's side. Of course, while Seymour refreshed herself on the women's side, but as she got out of the pool, she heard Richard calling through from the other side of the door to tell her quote, h seb Bissett is going to get up and look at you, m m. And then she saw George's face through the window above the door. Richard was holding George up on his shoulders to help him look in at his naked wife, and he held him there for five minutes while Seymour,

totally into this, openly displayed herself. And she did this like sexy reverse stripped tease. And she as she put all her clothes back on, so she ruled her stockings up real slow and that type of thing. She's doing this little dance, and she's like, and now I clasped the brae yes, can't wait to unclasp it later. It's like I liked what I saw, and now I like it less. I guess I'm not sure exactly how it works.

I can't laugh. But anyway, afterwards they all got together and they laughed about it, like we are now it's funny. Oh that was so interesting, Thank you, Richard, are your shoulders okay? He's like, I don't care. Dick's not toddy right now, so having a good time. It was just like a fun bonding moment for this little triangle. Yeah, totally. Ruin Holt wrote about it, quote, it was a collection of minutes which Sir Richard would view in his mind repeatedly.

The color of the details would fail to degrade with the years. He would recall it vividly, the words that were spoken, the weight of George Bissett on his shoulders, the heady recklessness of it. Over the next few months, he would remember the afternoon with fondness. After that, he would rue it as the most regrettable day of his life. And we will find out why that is right after this commercial break, Welcome back to the show, My little Kicksters.

You're nasty all right now. It seems like this little manage ati was getting a long fame. I mean they're doing little peep shows and having a good old time together. But then the militia had to move again for the winter, and Seymour and Richard had to get a smaller house so George couldn't live with them anymore. Oh no, no in law suite, No in law suite. That was in my that was in my must have on my dream house list, with a separate entrance very important, and a

window between the two bedrooms. So George and Seymour could not bear to be apart and they were really super in love, so they started talking about maybe eloping together so they could maybe force Richard to give Seymour a

divorce and they could finally get married and be happy forever. Okay, So it's kind of like, I mean, we're in the middle of season one right now of the Great and it feels like, um, what's the couple who's sleeping with the Emperor, you know, and the husband is just like, well, we just have to do this so we can have our thing, you know. It just reminds me of that. And they're like, we're hanging out with Richard. Yes, he's he's he's there. He likes this little threesome thing we

have going on. But if we could have it our way, it would be ok. Yeah. Now, wives could not apply for a divorce. They were not allowed. Only a husband could do it. But a little bin was super risky because a husband could also sue for separation instead of a divorce, and that was basically purgatory for a woman because she was no longer respectably married. She was cut off from her financial support of you know, her husband, but she was also not free to remarry. Changed woman,

a changed woman exactly. Okay. One woman that Seymour knew about. She had thrown over her husband for a lover. They ran off together, hoping for a divorce, but the husband got vindictive. He's like, I'm only giving you a separation and she ended up having to flee to the continent, and everyone talked about her like she was nothing more than a street prostitute, like that she she had everything and then she had nothing. So anymore would know that

that is a possible consequence. Meanwhile, on George's part, he's not only a social inferior to Richard, but also a military inferior, and on top of all that a very close friends. Everyone knew they were really good friends. So like running away with your friend's wife was the lowest of the low for a gentleman. I think people still feel that way. Really. Oh yeah, bros, before ladies, that's right, watch your mouth fries before guys. What it's not as

good fries before guys. But it's not as good because it's not about like, lady friendship. What about French fries. It's just it literally fries. Yeah, fries, eat fries before going out on like two girls get together and eat French fries before they worried about hanging out with some hanging out with some dude. I mean, yeah, French fries are objectively better, never disappointed the challenge. It's very easy for a French fry to disappoint you, I know, but

they rarely do. It cannot be hot enough, it cannot be salty, could be too thick, it could be too thin. They could be too crunchy. They could be too soft. They could just be crinkle cut. You know, actually I like crinkle Cooke. Now, don't talk about and men are equal in terms of their potential disappointment. And it's high fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. But you can throw the fries in the trash, okay, and they don't follow

you home. Yeah. No, So anyway, this was just considered like a gross betrayal of male friendship and the only way to go lower was to be the guy's brother instead of his friends, you know what I mean, and step with his wife. They were like, that's basically the most heinous thing you could do airmano. I don't know how. I know that it took four years of Spanish. We love arrest of development in this house, we do love arrest of development. Well, you know, and of course Will

and Jason friends of the show. Oh yeah, you're right, right, absolutely, we gotta get them on. I mean, I love that. We gotta get the SmartLess guys on this show. If you if anybody's got their contact info, yeah, we should know because there are friends they are I know, but you know, we never get the phone. It's awkward to reach out about work, dear friends and stuff. I don't like to. So, yeah, George would be risking his reputation, his social status, his good name, as much as Seymour would.

And he also had a financial scare in the wings just as much as she did too, because Richard could bring a lawsuit against George for adultery. This was known as a criminal conversation or a crim con suit. And if you're like me and you read a lot of those regency romance novels, you've seen crim con and have no fucking idea what they're talking about. And so I thought, this is a real revelation for me. I got excited. Um, and now, conversation at the time was a euphemism for sex.

So it's basically criminal sex, sex crimes crim criminal conversation crim CON. That is way different than what I thought crim con was, which sounded like, you know, uh, comic con for criminals. Or maybe it's just the ridiculous crime podcasts like just there showing up at CRIMN. I love it. I feel like we should do a crossover with a

criminal conversation with them. We definitely should. And if you had crim con and it was just ridiculous crime episode convention, it would be a crim con, which means we could do a ridiculous romance episode about it, which would be so insane that ridiculous news would have to come and afterwards ridiculous it's ridiculous history. Yeah, as long as it happens, we'll come back in time. But all I'm saying is ridiculation is in the works. Ridiculous. There might be some

crim con at ridicul cotion. You never know when there's a hotel involved, Alright, So anyway, they each had a lot of factors to consider and huge consequences that could come down from this decision. But even so, George and Seymour decided they would take their chances and Elope. Maybe since Richard had just been so tolerant of their affair all so far, they were kind of like Shirley Hill's fine, he's the divorce, he's a friend, he's not sucking you anyway.

That's exactly what are you trying to preserve here, Richard. Come on. They figured that, you know, maybe he'd be generous enough to just give her, give her the divorce without a fight. Yeah, their friends, it's fine. Well, they would be wrong. Oh. Seymour and George eloped one night when Richard decided not to go to a party that

they were both at. Now, George had done a little planning and he packed a bag, but Seymour basically had leave with the clothes on her back and nothing else, because it would have looked weird if she was packing a bag. Before. They shacked up at a hotel and they passed as man and wife, although the maids were suspicious. Is when they had to change the sheets three times in one day because they were doing it so much.

One of them said, quote, they're appeared to be a greater funness between them, and it is generally sane between husband and wife. This Cabby from London changed in the seats. It's one of the maids. She's like, I know husbands and wives and they don't fuck that much. They do know now Also it doesn't matter, but her name was Hannah Commander, and I just think commander, dope name hand A Commander is my favorite name in our whole show. Commander is so good, incredible one names and a commander

it is. And I've never seen a husband and wolf do. It's much and they only know husbands and wives. You want to know how much husband and wolf is having sex, you just come see Atlanta. Commander amazing well from this hotel see more sent her husband a letter and asked him for a divorce. Richard gets this letter and he is piste about this elopement, and he was determined to be as cruel as possible in exacting his revenge for George. That meant a crim con suit, and not just any

crim con suit. Richard said, I'm bringing a crim con suit so large it's gonna make your head spin. You're gonna be drowning in my lawyers. You're gonna be uh just boop in your pants. How big this crim con

suit is gonna be a would utterly ruin George. He set his damages at twenty thousand pounds, and that meant if he won, George would have to sell all of his land, any property, any assets that he had, and then he would probably still end up in debtor's prison because George had like eight hundred pounds a year or something. But it didn't matter. The guy got to set what he thought the damages of his property were and you

had to pay that ship no matter what. If he won his case, and as an added perk, Richard could then buy George's land and that would make him the biggest landowner in the Isle of Wight. Now for Seymour, Richard was determined that this woman was never gonna be happy or comfortable again, so instead of granting her the divorce, he decided to sue for separation. He was hoping to

drive her into prostitution to keep herself afloat. He also decided that he wasn't going to send her any of her clothes, or her jewelry or anything like that as further punishment. So Seymour hid at this hotel for several days without even a change of underwear. On top of all that, George and Seymour's daughter Jane, was still under Richard's control, and of course he refused to let Seymour see her, and Seymour was really anxious about what he

might do to her. And in this she might have been justified because Jane did die sometime that year, and Seymour and George thought that Richard might have had something to do with it, but they couldn't really investigate because they would then have to admit to James's actual father and that would just help Richard win his adultery case against George. Now, Richard couldn't really give it away either, because that would make him look complacent. So to this day,

no one knows where Jane is buried. Dark This guy went nuts, he did, and apparently burned a lot of her ship. It's not outside the realm of possibility that he killed that kid. And it's just that intense, like I mean, toxic masculinity. I guess it's this sense of ownership, how dare you try to take what belongs to me? Like he didn't even care about her, he didn't love her, he didn't like having sex with her, nothing about their marriage as as a as a unit was important to him,

except I control you. You don't come to me and say what you want. I tell you what you get. I was letting you funk this guy. Y'all were having fun. We were all having a good time. How dare you try to cut me out of that? Well? And on top of that, you're just his social inferior. You don't get to run off with my wife. Like you know, it's also so much about appearances for him, in terms of not only masculinity, but class and aristocratic stuff and

all of it, and military thing like. He just felt so slighted by this upstart, little nothing coming from out of nowhere and taking his wife away. So it was like his pride just took such a blow he could not handle it. But Seymour wasn't about to lay back and take all this crap from Richard, Okay, she was

willing to fight for her lover and her freedom. Now, Richard did offer to take her back, and he would drop his suit and all this would go away, but she said she suffered so many quote slights and inattentions from him that she could never bring herself to return to him. There you stand up for yourself. That's right. And she also warned him that she had quote resolved to go to all lengths to circumvent his design. Damn. She threw down the gauntlet. She said, bring it. That's right.

She said she would countersue him for her pin money that she was legally entitled to and he had not yet money. Gimme mushie. And furthermore, she was willing to see to it quote that he was exposed and made the object of universal condemnation. Yeah, she said, how dare you stepped to me? Oh you think it big ship? I'll show you big ship. I'm a ship on your face. She's going. But either Richard did not believe how far she was willing to go, or he was too mad

to care. Because he did not back down, his lawyer Is enlisted several of the hotel servants, chiefly Hannah Commander, to help them prove that she and George were living there, pretend to be husband and wife, sleeping in the same bed. You just call command. You need a witness. But he was ready to do it too, and the suit was duly filed and in February two, Sir Richard and George Bissett arrived at the courtroom. It was packed crim con suits meant that a lot of fancy, rich people's dirty

laundry was gonna get aired out, lots of drama. So all the judge duty fans in the area where they're ready to be entertained. But Seymour was not present because her she was considered superfluous to the conversation. She was just property in the eyes of the law. And as Reuben hold points out, quote no one asked a horse how it felt to be stolen? Isn't that crazy? So

we don't need to hear from you girl now. Richard's wealth, of course, enabled him to hire the best lay years that money could buy, and after they made their case against George, he was feeling pretty good. Even George's lawyer said that he deserved a favorable verdict. The only real question was how much the damages should be. Richard probably had a big, smug, stupid smile on his face there for a minute, but guess what. Best smile got wiped clean off pretty fast once he realized just how far

Seymour was willing to go for George. Because the lawyer started saying some uncomfortable stuff. Uh, why haven't. Richard's lawyers mentioned that George had been living in the wars Ley's house in made Stone at Richard's invitation. Clearly wasn't telling everyone the full story. And then George's lawyers started calling witnesses, and some of them talked about how they were friends with the couple and they never saw them together. Seymour had even asked Richard to join her on an outing

several times and he had refused. Some talked about how they had told Richard to curb his wife's promiscuous behavior, but he always said he didn't mind it, and some of them talked about their own love affairs with Seymour. One of them, Viscount dear Hurst, was an explosive witness. He was known as the lothario of his age, and he was estranged from his family for eloping with a woman himself. So he knew this game, Yeah, he knew it.

And he said that he stayed at the couple's house once and Richard actually encouraged him to go after Seymour. He told the court that Richard said, quote many young men had tried her to no effect, and that I had his permission to try my chance with her, you know, and the judge was like, and you know, at the time when he said it, dear Hurst kind of take it as a joke. But he did start sleeping with Seymour while he was staying with them. I mean, if you say so, I'll try my chance. Oh it was

incredibly easy. This girl is sex starved. She was ready to say yeah. She kept talking about Dick Toddy. Is that you So? One night dear Hurst left Seymour's room at four in the morning and he basically tripped over Richard in Seymour's dressing room, and as he told the court, all Richards said was, quote, dear Hurst, how did you come to be here? As it wasn't totally obvious when he probably his shoes in his hands, you know, tipt in and Richard's like, oh, what a coincidence We're both

in my lady's dressing room. Yeah, dear Hurst just like, but you told me you try my chest. You know what, I'm just going to go now. Reuben Holt also points out that this testimony suggests that our voyor Richard had been deliberately spying on the two of them together, maybe without their knowledge. She writes, quote the keyhole would have provided a luscious eye fell of the illicit activity. So that might be why he was in the dressing room in the first place. Yeah, he's a real George McFly.

Oh yeah, is I know right now? The next day he acted like the incident had never happened. Um. He allowed Seymour and Dearhurst to be alone together and go out together. He did not reprimand him, he did not ask him to leave, nothing that you would think a husband would do in that situation. And it kind of gave Dearhurst a real dislike of Sir Richard and a deep sympathy for Seymour. I think he's like, don't you care about her at all? Like, you don't care at all?

And then also you're weirdly in her dressing room? What the fuss going on with this guy? After their love affair cooled down, he remained a really true friend to her. I mean, besides being willing to testify publicly to in front of Godden everybody about his own bad behavior that didn't make him look very good, he actually also helped

her and George elope together. He was like their go between. UM. While they were in the hotel hiding from Sir Richard, but he was not her only lover, and she had several who she wrote to and asked to testify, although they did not show up. Like dear Hurst, tad one was a womanizer and a gambler named Charles Wyndham. She liked him so much that she gave him her wedding band as a token of her affection when he went

off to war. A respectable lieutenant had a brief fling with her at some point, and then he fell in love and got married, so he didn't want to testify because he had like a whole life. I'm not going to that. She had another lover who was a notorious womanizer named Lord Chumley, and she like Tim so much that she get depressed when he was away, and Sir Richard would send for him to come cheer her up. My god, oh my wife, for you sad to get here.

Lord Chumley, come here, cheer my wife. I can't stand her. Dear Lord Chumley, it's your friend, Sir Richard again, calling to see if you could bring that giant dick over to make my wife feel better. Yours very sincerely, now. Chumley was so notorious a philanderer that he actually had a four page poem dedicated to him in pamphlet. It was called the Torpedo, a Poem to the Electric Eel. So let's go down to poetry corner and hear a

quick excerpt. What thou, Lord Chumley, may conceal a most enormous length of eel, admired for its size and bone, this mighty thing when lank depressed a mirror noun adjective at best, is useless when alone. Wow, can you imagine a four page poem being published that's just speculating on how big your dick must be to get all these ladies? Yeah? I know I can't. I can't. I'm not sure i'd be complimented. But I'm not a man. So I don't know what poems have been written about me, and I

don't know their subject matter. I feel like there might have been one or two in my day. I write you a poem right now, I'll think of one. Okay, we'll do it at the end of the episode. Just coming up. So Seymour even wrote to her doctor and asked him to testify at the trial about everything he

knew about her. So this doctor shows up and he told them that she had called him to treat a sexually transmitted infection that she'd picked up from another lover, the Marquess of Graham, and it was probably gone a rhea um. But this was pretty damning because Richard didn't have Gona rhea. He never caught it from her, which demonstrated to the judge, the jury, and the rest of the world that Richard was not fulfilling his conjugal duties.

The star witness for the defense were sworn affidavits from some old servant lady. She worked at the public baths in Maidstone, and she had seen Richard hoist George up on his shoulders so he could have a little peep at Richard's naked wife. So she described the entire spectacle to Georgia's lawyers, and they walk in and they lay it down. They're like, boom, here's what's going on between the three of them. Why the hell is Richard so piste off when he'd been encouraging this behavior the whole

time he was into it, ladies and gentlemen. Now the papers took their reporting two extremes on this whole thing. Of course, what the papers that whatever? A sex scandal, and they inflated it. No way so unusual. So because it's it's often said that Seymour is known for having twenty seven lovers. This is what the movie Dresses was about. That's right, one dress for each man. My friend I've actually I'm sorry, this is totally unrelated, but every time

I hear the title Dresses, my favorite. The best joke I've ever heard is my friend Jeff had a birthday party. He was turning and the invitation went out and it said seven Jeff is my favorite. I laughed so hard when I got that. Larious Jeff. If you're listening, it's still one of my favorite jokes of all time. They seven Jeff is well, if you're six and named Jeff, do it. Keep that in mind, keep that one in

your back pocket. Do it, but give credit, give credit credit due another Jeff up there somewhere, all right, So what happened was twenty seven men had been subpoenaed at Seymour's direct requests. So that's why they kind of were like, oh, she has seven lovers, we're going with Obviously that isn't great math, al right, because we already said one of them was her doctor, her lover um. Several were anti character witnesses. They were just there to prove that her

husband was always not never around, was careless with her. Um. So some of these papers just added names however they wanted, you know, they didn't care about truth or whatever. They went as high as sixty lovers. Some were a little more conservative, they said only eleven. But they're just making up. They were like the Duke of Earl Richard the Third Yeah,

William Shakespeare. Now Reuben Hold mentions about five confirmed names that we were talking about on this episode, So we don't really actually know her real body counts or anything like. But in the eyes of the world, Seymour was now an insatiable sex maniac, capable of any aberration, you know, because she had let all these lovers come around just tell her business everybody. But Richard didn't fare much better.

He was now seen as an impotent cuckold, and worse than that, a depraved weirdo who would display his wife to other men. The judge saw him as no better than a pimp. He said, quote, this woman, for three or four years has been prostituted with a variety of people.

That is extremely clear and extremely plain. Now, Richard had set his damages again at twenty thousand pounds that's around three point seven million pounds today, because he was like, I'm a big man and look how terrible they've treated me, and I don't deserve none of this. Well, I'm swinging around dick punctual. So so the only way to kind of drive home how badly he had behaved was to funk with his damages, because they were like, definitely adult,

really clearly happened. You can't say it didn't. So you win, yes, adultery. But he was only awarded a single shilling. What that's worth around five or six pounds? Oh my god, Reuben Hold writes quote for the price of a pound of soap, a muslim neckcloth, or roast beef dinner. Worsley had sold his wife and his honor to George Bassett. Damn ouch. I just gotta say that from without ever stepping foot in the courtroom. Seymour torpedoed this man's whole case and

he ended up getting eight bucks out of it. He got nothing here, go get yourself a half a sandwich, have fun. Unbelievable. His little pete show cost him three point seven million pounds and she knew how to play it against him to the lawyers, like they were like, I'm sure those lawyers were like tell us everything. She's like, I got some news for you, and they were like, oh,

I mean. And you have to admire the bravery of her being like, I will just lay it all out for you, and you know, we'll get to it in part two. But she don't stop. She continues to funk with Richard for a time. So it's it's just really cool that she was just I think it must have been incredibly difficult to do that, especially with the fallout. She's going to have a long time of not being respectable, which is hard to be in you're, you know, gently born woman. And she's like, you know what funk all

that noise? I don't like you, you don't like me. I don't know why I'm tied to you the rest of my life and you get all my money and everything. What do I get? Nothing? I get a son I don't get to see, and a bunch of lovers who I can't marry and be with all the time, to control all my movements and everything where I live. And she's just done with that. And yeah, absolutely, I mean, and you've got to look at the potential consequences she's

looking at. She's like, I'm not coming out of this unscathed, right, everything is stacked against me, So how can I you know, bare minimum, I'm going to tear him down with me. Best I'll get is I'll totally buck up his life, right. You know, she went for it, went all in, and I think it worked out probably better her than she thought it could have. Probably, I think too there was a bit of um self preservation in it as well, because if you know, once he said he was suing

for separation and not divorced. That was pretty much the end of the story for Seymour. She has nothing else to lose, so that's how he sucked up, really, and she has nothing to lose, so she's got to rely on George to financially support her. And so if George loses everything, it becomes ruined. Who's going to support her. There's no one she would have to find a new lover. So she's kind of like, at least you can keep your money if I if I help you, you'll have

some money to pay for my life. Now that Sir Richard ain't gonna do it, and I don't want anyone else right now. I'm in love with you because at this point they're just separated, but there's no divorce, not not yet. They're not even separated legally yet, they're just living apart. But yeah, she thumbed her nose at every convention, and just like I'm a modern lady, I guess just this total torpedo for his plans. I love it. It's so cool without without even being allowed to show up.

So I'll show you what a horse thinks about being stolen. A horse can make itself known, right well, I mean with the pens mightier than the sword. She's spent a lot of time writing a bunch of letters, and looks she brought his whole thing down. You know, fellas hell, ladies, everybody, if your person out there, you know you, and you think you've got all this power over your partner and you're gonna wheel it against him. Don't do that ship because, first of all, because don't do that ship. It's a

bad thing to do. Durating people like ship. But wash him come back. Wash. It bites you in the as you know, you think you're so high in might do you think you do well? We talked about it. Richard thought he was so untouchable. He just laughed off all her non sense because it's like, oh, I'm I'm perfect. I don't know if you've heard, but i'm sir Richard. You know, well, guess what, sir Richard? Now, who are you? Ain't ship? Now you got eight bucks? Now you got

eight bucks? You gotta pay for all these lawyers stuff. Amazing. So there's all there's that's a that's it. That's a story right there. That's it. And there's more. There's so much more. There's the new female Cotoree coming up, which is all these ladies like Seymour who kind of put together their own club to hang out and move about society, and the Jilted Woman's Club. She's she's got some new friends on the way. They wives Club first, I mean kind of. You know, for the longest time I thought

the first wives Club, I've never seen it. The longest time I thought it was about I just thought it was first ladies. I thought it was about ex president's fives when hung out together. And like when when you told me it wasn't that, I was like, oh, yeah, it's not the First Ladies Club. First Wives is not what they called the First Lady. I don't know why I made that connection to a pretty good movie from my memory. I'm just saying a movie I would love to see is the First Ladies Club. What do they

all get? You know? Who else could relate to you a but another First Lady? True? Well, I can't wait to hear about this First Wives Club. I am, but I love it. I love it. I think they're so cool. I mean, you know, there's something to be said for the institution of marriage and holding up society or whatever. But I love these ladies for being, like, you know what, fuck that noise. I'm just going to live my life and you can call me a slide if you want.

But I'm happy and I got my own typle of friends and I'm doing my own thing out here, so I kind of love them. I'm excited to tell their story as well. And then Richard has some kind of weird ship coming up to and I love I love you sitting here doing a podcast with your spouse saying yeah, it's something to be said for the institutional blah blah, all that bullshit. Well, maybe I'll have to find my

own George. No, I don't want to get divorced. No, not divorced, just just someone, uh for you to peep on me. And that's what I'm really looking for. Yeah, I know that's all You've ever really wanted, Just to watch me and socially inferior man get it on. What's that can't call? Oh yeah, it's very specific. Right. Well, thank you for tuning in today for this, for this part one of this crazy story. I hope you loved it. Yeah,

it's so much more to come. Other things he did to her on their marriage and stuff is a lot. It's a lot, so tune in for the next part as well. Definitely tell us what you thought about this one. You can email us at dick Romance at gmail dot com or find us on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Oh great, it's Eli. I'm at Dyanamite Booms and of course the show is at ridic Romance right and we always love to hear from you. Thank you so much for spending time with us today and we will see

you next time. So long, friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show, Tell your friends name's uncle's in this to listen to a show ridiculous roll nance