Lady Mary Craven
(1837-1890)
2 November 1860
Volume 2, page 73, sitting number 1591.
Born in 1837 at Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire, Lady Mary Catherine Yorke was the daughter of Admiral Charles Philip Yorke, 4th Earl of Hardwicke.
On 20 July 1857, at St Paul’s in Knightsbridge, she married William George Craven of the 1st Life Guards, son of the Honourable George Augustus Craven and grandson of General William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven.
Their marriage produced five children before the couple separated by mutual consent in 1869.
On 27 June 1871 William Craven initiated divorce proceedings, citing his wife’s adultery with Antoine Joseph Manuel Espeleta [sic]. Count Antoine d’Ezpeleta appears to have been the Grand Chamberlain of the household of Queen Isabel II of Spain. Lady Mary denied the charge and, in turn, accused her husband of adultery with a ‘Miss Douglass’ at his residence in Paris and also at Dieppe, a charge which he denied. The petition was dismissed the following June.
In 1881 William George Craven was living with three servants at 26 Curzon Street in Mayfair. I cannot find his wife anywhere on the census.
Lady Mary Craven died on 14 December 1890 at Wadhurst in Sussex. Probate was granted to her estranged husband.
‘We regret to have to record the death of Lady Mary Craven, which sad event took place at the Highlands [the name of her house at Wadhurst] on Sunday night., Dec. 14th. The deceased was daughter of the Earl of Hardwick [sic] and granddaughter of the Lord Chancellor Yorke. On the day preceding her death, a telegram of inquiry was received from her Majesty the Queen. The interment took place in the Catholic portion of Tunbridge Wells Cemetery. On Thursday, the Requiem Mass was celebrated in the morning at St Joseph’s, Burwash. Among those present at the funeral were […] Lady Elizabeth Biddulph (lady in waiting), Hon. Alexander Yorke (equerry in waiting), and many others including several members of the Royal household' (Sussex Agricultural Express, 26 December 1890).
‘Lady Mary Craven had suffered so much, and in so many ways, that her death may be regarded as a happy release. Second daughter of the late, and a sister of the present, Lord Hardwicke, she was married in 1857, when barely twenty, to Mr. W. G. Craven, who, like his wife, has had many vicissitudes of fortune. One of the daughters, it will be remembered, was married a few years ago to Lord March, her wedding at the Savoy Chapel being one of the smartest celebrated in London during the season of 1882. But Lord March, who had lost his first wife a few years before, was destined soon to be a widower for the second time, for “the beautiful Miss Craven” as she was called, died of typhoid fever in 1887, leaving two little daughters’ (Clifton Society, 25 December 1890).