Andrew Robinson Stoney

Mariage avec Mary Eleanor Bowes

Mary Eleanor Bowes, la veuve Comtesse de Strathmore et Kinghorne, était fiancée à son amant, George Gray, à l’été 1777 quand elle rencontra le charmant et rusé aventurier Anglo-Irlandais, Andrew Robinson Stoney, qui se frayait un chemin dans sa maison et son lit. Se faisant appelé Capitaine Stoney — bien qu’il n’était en réalité qu’un simple lieutenant dans la British Army — il insista pour combattre en duel pour l’honneur de Mary le rédacteur en chef du Morning Post newspaper qui avait publié des articles calomnieux sur sa vie privée. En fait, il avait lui même écrit les articles qui la critiquaient, ainsi que ceux qui la défendaient; et le duel entre Stoney et le rédacteur en chef a probablement été mis en scène. Prétendant être mortellement blessé, Stoney persuada la comtesse de l’épouser, étant sa dernière volonté, elle accepta. Il fut porté à l’hôtel sur une civière pour son mariage avec la comtesse le 17 janvier 1777. Mettant en scène un rétablissement miraculeux juste après le mariage, Stoney pris le nom de famille de sa femme (comme stipulé par les volontés de son père) et était désormais Andrew Robinson Stoney Bowes. Il servit en tant que High Sheriff of Durham en 1780 et fut élut député pour Newcastle plus tard la même année servant jusqu’à ce qu’il perde les prochaines élections en 1784.

Stoney's first wife, Hannah, was the daughter of William Newton of Burnopfield. It was widely believed that Stoney Bowes had caused her death in order to assume her inheritance. After his marriage to the Countess, he behaved brutally towards her. When he discovered that she had secretly made a pre-nuptial agreement safeguarding the profits of her estate for her own use, he forced her to sign a revocation handing control to him. Among other outrages, he imprisoned her in her own house, and forced her and one of her daughters to go into exile in Paris. They returned after a writ had been served on him. At the same time he raped the maids, invited prostitutes into the home and fathered numerous illegitimate children.

Mary Eleanor gave birth in August 1777 to a daughter Mary, most probably the child of her prior liaison with Gray. Bowes took the girl as his own child and the birth was registered as November 1777 but he later broadcast her illegitimacy. The couple had a son, William Johnstone Bowes, who was born on May 8, 1782.

Finally, in 1785, with the help of loyal maids, the countess managed to escape his custody and filed for divorce through the ecclesiastical courts. Having lost the first round of this courtroom battle, Stoney Bowes abducted Mary with the help of a gang of accomplices, carried her off to the north country, threatened to rape and to kill her, gagged and beat her, and carried her around the countryside on horseback in one of the coldest spells of the coldest winter of the century. The country was alerted, and Stoney Bowes was eventually arrested and the countess rescued.

Andrew Robinson Bowes Esq. as he appeared in the Court of King's Bench, on November 28, 1786 to answer the articles exhibited against him by his wife, the Countess of Strathmore

Many years later, Thackeray learned of Stoney Bowes' life story from the Countess's grandson John Bowes and used it in his novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon.