In 1785, they secretly contracted a marriage that was invalid under English civil law because his father, King George III, had not consented to it.

[3] Her mother was Mary Ann Errington of Beaufront, Northumberland, maternal half-sister of Charles William Molyneux, 1st Earl of Sefton.

[4] At eighteen, Maria married Edward Weld, 16 years her senior, a rich Catholic widower and landowner of Lulworth Castle in July 1775.

[8] Secretly, and – as both parties were well aware – against the law, they went through a form of marriage on 15 December 1785, in the drawing room of her house in Park Street, London.

Had consent been given and the marriage been legal, the Prince of Wales would have been automatically removed from the succession to the British throne under the provisions of the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement 1701 and replaced as heir-apparent by his brother, the Duke of York.

[4] In a similar case, his brother, Prince Augustus Frederick, contracted an invalid marriage with Lady Augusta Murray in 1793 without the King's consent and had two children with her.

[2] According to King George III it was the only way out of a hole: his heir apparent's enormous debts of £600,000 (£87.1 million in 2023)[7] would be paid the day he wed.[2] So the Prince married Caroline on 8 April 1795.

[2] In 1811 after becoming Regent, he invited Maria Fitzherbert to the Carlton House Fête but his insistence on seating her at a lower table led to her refusal to attend.

"[2] Fitzherbert was in possession of documents and after their final break her demands for her annuity payments were often accompanied by veiled threats to go public with her papers if she did not receive the funds.

He "begged her to accept the title of Duchess, but she refused, asking only permission to wear widow's weeds and to dress her servants in royal livery".

"[2][15] Indeed, during her early days in Brighton with the Prince of Wales, his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, and other friends believed Mrs. Fitzherbert to be pregnant.

[16] One suggested child of the Prince and his longtime paramour was James Ord (born 1786), whose curious history of assisted relocations and encouragement has been chronicled.

[15] Ord eventually emigrated to the United States where he worked first near Norfolk, Virginia, as a shipbuilder, next in Charles County, Maryland, in ship construction, and then on a farm outside of Washington, D.C.

[17] In addition to James Ord, the long-term relationship between Fitzherbert and George, as prince and king, appears to have led to more than a dozen claims of children conceived out of wedlock.

[citation needed] Edward VII, the Prince's great-nephew, granted permission to historian and Fitzherbert biographer William H. Wilkins to open her vault at Coutts Bank in 1906.

The release of Wilkins' book later that year prompted several supposed descendants of the Prince and Fitzherbert to claim the latter's substantial estate.

[19] The second codicil to Maria Fitzherbert's will outlines her two principal beneficiaries, and includes a personal note: "this paper is addressed to my two dear children ...

The will makes no reference to any sons, though this observation must be seen in its historic context; of the ten illegitimate children of Dorothea Jordan, Anglo-Irish actress and mistress of 20 years to the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV, care for the five boys was initially assumed by their father and his households, and custody and care for the girls given to Jordan.