![]() ![]() She sailed to Russia to make friends with Catherine the Great, naming her yacht with her now-banned title, the Duchess of Kingston. ![]() However, like any truly spirited Duchess type, she wasn’t going to let public humiliation on a such a scale get her down. Her cunning plan to wed again without divorcing by skimming round the edge of the law worked rather well, until the day it didn’t, and she ended up in court being tried for bigamy in front of 4000 people. ![]() Unfortunately, on the rebound, she married a libidinous naval officer who should have been a summer romance attempted to keep it secret to retain her maid of honour role (only available to single women) and then met the man she really wanted to marry, the Duke of Kingston. He died when she was five, but through connections the dowryless beauty became maid of honour to Augusta, Princess of Wales. Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, the bigamist Duchess, subject of my new book, was born in 1721 to the Lieutenant Governor of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea. ![]()
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