11. A Gesture of Romance That Turned Out to be a Con
Mary Bowes, the Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, finally resigned herself to marry George Gray after the fourth time he got her pregnant. Then she met and was seduced by Andrew Robinson Stoney, a British Army lieutenant who styled himself a “Captain”. In 1777, Stoney wrote anonymous scurrilous articles about Mary, and arranged to have them published in a newspaper. He then feigned outrage over the insult to Mary’s honor, and challenged the newspaper’s editor, who was in on the scam, to a duel. In the ensuing fake fight, Stoney pretended to have been “mortally wounded”. He then appealed to Mary’s romantic side, begged her to grant him his dying wish: her hand in marriage.
Moved by such a gesture of romance, and figuring that the marriage would only last a few hours, Mary agreed to wed Captain Stoney, who was carried down the aisle on a stretcher. Soon after the vows were exchanged and the ceremony concluded, Stoney made a miraculous recovery. In those days, husbands had the right to control their wives’ finances, but Stoney discovered that a prenuptial agreement stood between him and his wife’s wealth. Undaunted, he forced Mary to revoke the prenuptial and hand control of her fortune over to him.
