And they all lived happily ever after

Lord George Hay
by Jean-Laurent Mosnier
Wikimedia Commons

We left Johnny Tharp on his wedding day, the 1st of June 1815. Much to his surprise, he found himself married to Lady Hannah Charlotte Hay, daughter of the late George Hay, Marquess of Tweeddale (shown here).

Johnny hadn't been consulted on the small matter of who he was to marry, so it was fortunate that he was 'a youth of strong passions easily attracted by the personal beauty of women by reason of his unsuspecting disposition and imbecility of mind’.* Like many newly-weds, they fell out about in-laws and money. 

Lady Susan, Johnny's mother, expected to be repaid for her part in promoting the match, but Lady Hannah had no memory of having agreed to this. To thwart Lady Susan's plan 'to make his fortune subject to [her] own extravagance’,* Lady Hannah moved Johnny away from their honeymoon in Richmond and into her sister's home in London. A lady's maid later reported that he called it 'a damned place'* and attempted to escape to his mother's.

Lady Susan and her sister Lady Augusta weren't deterred, and continued urging Johnny to sign bonds in their favour. They tried to turn him against Lady Hannah, claiming that she was having an affair with Joseph Henry Blake, the 3rd Baron Wallscourt. This seems to have been an opportunistic slur based on a single flirty encounter at the opera that had left Johnny feeling side-lined. As if that weren't bad enough, Lady Susan also had two doctors provide 'an express prohibition ... in writing against the continuance of any connubial intercourse … as prejudicial to [Johnny's] health'.* 

Lady Hannah decided to take him away from the malign influence of his mother and aunt. Her ancestral home, Yester House, was about 25 miles from Edinburgh, and far enough away to prevent future attempts on his fortune. With the chance of obtaining Johnny's signature slipping through their grasp, His mother and aunt told him not to go -- that his wife planned to poison him.

Caught between these competing stories, Johnny's mental health suffered. When Lady Hannah had him bled, which wasn't unusual treatment for agitation at the time, he claimed it was 'for the purpose of putting an end to his life and of draining every drop of blood from his body'.* Their trip was postponed while he recovered his strength, giving his mother and aunt the opportunity to observe 'how very precarious his state of health was and at what an early period his father died'.* Of course, they didn't want to alarm him, but if he was to do anything for his poor mother, he would need to act quickly.

Although they did set out for Edinburgh eventually, the couple paused their journey in Shrewsbury, where Johnny was melancholy and violent in turn. He was cupped (bled) again and the doctor who attended him later confirmed that ‘he was at short intervals evidently insane’.* When they eventually reached Yester House, his mood swings continued, and he took to scrawling ‘Lady Hannah Wallscourt’ on walls and doors and in books in the library. Servants, passers-by and field-labourers all heard about her supposed infidelity.

In fear of Lady Hannah's life, the family followed doctors' advice by keeping the couple apart and providing only a plain diet. As a result, Johnny 'frequently complained that he was getting very thin and was going to die and in evidence of it pointed to his knees and his elbows as having no flesh upon them and he also often insisted that his heart had stopped'.* Refusing to be separated from his wife, he hammered on the door of her apartments and shouted abuse. When the doors withstood him, he used a ladder from the garden to get in through a window, and ‘with a hunting whip in his hand, his countenance being pale and his looks fierce so as to alarm [Lady Hannah] very much … he instantly struck her with the said whip across her face which gave her two black eyes and broke the skin of her nose.’*

There's no excuse for Johnny's violence, but it's important to remember that he was what we would  now call a vulnerable adult. Lady Susan (who we don't necessarily trust), claimed he'd been taken to Scotland to isolate him from his family and that, with letters intercepted and money withheld, he was a prisoner there. She wrote that 'it was no wonder if he did entertain suspicions of Lord Wallscourt and his wife since … his wife’s sisters who sometimes came to his apartments were in the practice of writing and leaving on his table and about his room notes and letters purporting to be written by Lord Wallscourt to his wife'.* If the Scottish courts could over-ride the Chancery court in London, Lady Susan claimed, Lady Hannah would have had him declared insane.

In a letter that he did manage to smuggle out, Johnny wrote 'I have been imposed upon and have been used in the most brutal manner by all [Lady Hannah’s] friends ever since I came down to Scotland for these last four months … my life is in danger’.* Whatever his intellectual limitations, Johnny understood that no-one's motives were pure. He had met with the family solicitor by chance before leaving for Scotland and told him that  '[Lady Hannah and her family] were wishing to separate him from all his own friends and connections … [he] declared … that he had been bought and sold and that he was convinced the said Lady Hannah had no affection for him and only married him for his money.'*

In December 1815, only five months after the marriage, Johnny's uncle John fetched him from Yester House and took him back to his mother in London. Delighted to have him back at home, she pressured him into signing a bond for £2500 to cover the cost of caring for him.

This story is a tangled web of claims and counter-claims, which only survive because of what happened next. In January 1816, Lady Hannah requested an inquiry into Johnny's sanity by the Court of Chancery. That part of the story deserves a post of its own.

* The quotes are from various letters and affidavits held in Cambridgeshire County Archives. Each one was written by someone with skin in the game.