Heiress

You'd think being an heiress, or a wealthy widow in control of her own fortune, would be desirable. But women had little rights (including no automatic right to their own money if married) and their reputation was all-important for themselves and their family. So being an heiress at this time could be hazardous. Impoverished fortune-hunters could resort to abduction: the unlucky woman was ‘ruined’ unless she married him. The story is that the first Earl of Bessborough, Brabazon Ponsonby, tried another tactic. To continue his extravagant lifestyle, he tried to woo a wealthy widow. After she refused him, he bribed her servants to let him enter her home early one morning, appearing at the window ‘in an elegant nightgown and cap decorated as was then the custom for bridegrooms to wear’, and having hired the city band which, again according to the custom, serenaded the supposed ‘newly-weds’. The wealthy widow had little choice but to marry the fortune-hunter.¹⁾ A less successful fortune-hunter was Hervey Morres - he was the Earl’s grandson but it is not certain where he fits into the Morres family detailed on this site. The story about him is that he also tried to improve his finances by marriage to a wealthy woman. However, he was ‘slightly clumsy in his approach’, too obviously assessing the ‘extent and value’ of her property: in 1797 he committed suicide, still unmarried ²⁾