Nigella vs Saatchi, Paul McCartney vs Heather Mills; these brutal modern divorces had nothing on the notorious 18th-century break-up of Sir Richard Worsley and his wife Seymour, a case that scandalised society and has now been turned into a new BBC bodice-ripper.Telling the true story of heiress Lady Worsley, The Scandalous Lady W shows just how far two people will go to destroy each other. ‘It was one of the first acrimonious break-ups that everyone talked about,’ says Natalie Dormer, the star of Game Of Thrones and The Tudors who plays Seymour. ‘It was absolutely like Nigella and Saatchi. He tried to destroy her; their marriage was dragged through the mud. Shaun Evans, Natalie Dormer and Aneurin Barnard in The Scandalous Lady WThe drama is based on historian Hallie Rubenhold’s book Lady Worsley’s Whim. She started researching the aristocrat after seeing a Joshua Reynolds painting of her wearing a red riding habit and holding a riding crop with supreme confidence which hangs in Lady W’s childhood home, Harewood House in Yorkshire.
‘I remember thinking there has to be an extraordinary story behind this woman,’ says Hallie. ‘There was a blurb that mentioned her various entanglements and this scandalous court case, and I instantly wanted to find out more. With rumours of 27 lovers and reams of remarkable evidence there was a story there that would be shocking even today.’The Worsleys, friends of Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire (played by Keira Knightley in the 2008 film The Duchess), were part of London’s hedonistic set known as ‘The ton’ (from the French ‘le bon ton’, meaning ‘good manners’). Seymour was the daughter of a baronet, and Sir Richard, 7th Baronet of Appuldurcombe (an estate on the Isle of Wight), a Tory MP when they married in 1775: she was 17 and he was 24. Joshua Reynolds’ painting of Lady WThe union was unhappy from the off: it wasn’t consummated for three months, and though they had a son in 1776, soon after the marital bed, ‘like the weather, had grown perfectly cool’, according to Lady W. Six years after the wedding Seymour eloped with her husband’s friend Captain George Bisset, with whom she’d just had a daughter – Sir Richard had adopted her to avoid a scandal.
The pair holed up for five days in London’s Royal Hotel on Pall Mall, where staff grew suspicious about their guests because ‘there appeared a greater fondness between them than is generally seen between husband and wife’.‘The story is about not being able to escape an unhappy marriage,’ says Natalie, 33, who stars with Aneurin Barnard, Cilla Black’s husband Bobby in the TV drama Cilla, as Bisset and Endeavour’s Shaun Evans as Sir Richard. ‘The marriage was psychologically abusive. I think when Seymour left she thought Richard would let her go.’ At the time women could not divorce their husbands, but instead of divorcing Seymour Richard took revenge by suing Bisset for ‘criminal conversation’. He claimed £20,000 in damages – around £25 million today – under the charge, which was based on the premise that a wife was one of her husband’s possessions. The trial was eagerly followed by the press, with pamphlets covering the salacious details snapped up by a baying public.
Unable to defend herself in court because she was a woman and worried that Sir Richard would bankrupt her lover, Seymour decided to try to prove she was not worth the £20,000 her husband was claiming. ‘She was so in love with Bisset it felt like them against the world,’ says Natalie. ‘Because Seymour wasn’t allowed to defend herself she learned how to fight back, using the press sensationalising her story to her advantage to punish her husband.’So just when it looked like Sir Richard might triumph – the adultery was proven through the evidence of the maids at the Royal Hotel – the defence case started. It revealed that Seymour had taken many lovers in the previous four years and, at her request, five of them stood in the witness box and told how Sir Richard had actively encouraged his wife’s affairs and had even been caught spying through keyholes. London society was in uproar. Rumours began to circulate that there had been many more lovers – perhaps 27 in total.In the TV drama these revelations are depicted almost farcically as a stream of toffs have their wicked way with Seymour while her husband watches through a keyhole.
‘We filmed it all in one day and I was an utter mess at the end of it,’ says Natalie. ‘There’s a light-heartedness to some of the subject matter, but there’s also a dark undertone to the story.’But the defence was still missing an independent witness. Then, in a final, damning piece of evidence, it was revealed Sir Richard had once helped Bisset climb onto his shoulders to peep through a window at his naked wife as she dressed at some public baths. The bath maid Mary Marriott recalled Sir Richard calling out, ‘Seymour! Bisset is going to get up and look at you!’ Historian Hallie Rubenhold says this may have been ‘the most regrettable day of Sir Richard’s life’. It certainly became a field day for the satirists, who now had a pertinent image for the scandal; the most famous cartoon is by James Gillray entitled ‘Sir Richard Worse-than-Sly exposing his wife’s bottom; The judge declared Sir Richard had not only appeared to assist his wife’s lovers, but had also tacitly consented to her adultery with Bisset.
He concluded, ‘Lady Worsley for three or four years has been prostituted with a variety of people; that is extremely clear.’ After an hour of debate the jury awarded Sir Richard just a shilling in damages.Transcripts of the case became international bestsellers – even George Washington, at war with the British in America, had a copy. ‘But Seymour lost everything too: her reputation, her goods and the chance to see her two young children,’ says Natalie. ‘Mentally and emotionally she was a victim. She wasn’t a strong woman, but emboldened by love she went on a learning curve that took her to a place where she refused to be a victim any more. When you lose everything you have some kind of epiphany. These themes will chime with a modern audience.’Seymour never did get her divorce. She and Bisset split and she moved to France, returning in 1797, while Richard became ambassador to Venice until it was invaded by Napoleon. He died in 1805 leaving Seymour free to remarry and regain her fortune.