Anne (Luttrell), Duchess of Cumberland
British, 1743 - 1809
Person TypeIndividual
BiographyAnne Luttrell was born at St. Marylebone, London, on January 24, 1743, the eldest daughter of Simon Luttrell (1713-1787) of Luttrellstown, county Dublin, Ireland, and his wife Judith Maria, daughter and heiress of Sir Nicholas Lawes, governor of Jamaica. Successive generations of her family had gained notoriety for their outrageous conduct and she, too, would court controversy for most of her life. On August 4, 1765 she married Christopher Horton ("a sporting squire") of Catton Hall, Derbyshire. She was reportedly devastated when he died in August 1769, a few days after the death of their only child. Two years later, she began a whirlwind romance with George III's youngest brother, Frederick (1745-1790), Duke of Cumberland, who had recently been tried and found guilty of adultery with a married peeress. She married the duke secretly at her house in Mayfair on October 2, 1771 and they fled to Calais, France. The king's displeasure on hearing of this marriage (and soon thereafter of the surreptitious marriage of another brother, the Duke of Gloucester) provoked the Royal Marriage Act of 1772, which forbade members of the royal family under the age of twenty-five from marrying without the monarch's consent. For the next several years the duke and duchess were banned from court. They divided their time between England and continental Europe, where she raised eyebrows by insisting on high ceremonial treatment. Horace Walpole described her as "extremely pretty, not handsome, very well made, with the most amorous eyes in the world, and eyelashes a yard long. Coquette beyond measure, artful as Cleopatra, and completely mistress of all her passions and projects." Following the duke's reconciliation with the king in 1780, the duchess continued to attract notice by hosting lavish entertainments in London. She and her husband also traveled frequently abroad. The duchess sustained this pattern after her husband's death in 1791, spending much time in Germany and Switzerland. Her traveling companion was an unmarried cousin, Sarah Bettina Lawley, who became the principal heir to the duchess's estate on her death in February 1809 in Switzerland.