From:
What happened to Parson John Ambrose and his family? (Joanne Major, 26 March 2014)
Juliana Catherine Colyear’s background and ancestry deserves to be examined and we make no apologies for going off at a tangent here and recording the story of her ancestors. Her mother was
Harriet Bishopp, daughter of Colonel Henry (Harry) and Mrs Mary Bishopp of Sussex with illustrious family connections. Colonel Harry was the youngest son of Sir Cecil Bishopp and Harry’s sister Frances was the wife of Sir George Warren. In the September of 1791, at the age of 22, Harriet had married one Henry Jackson, reportedly an ’eminent solicitor’ and the two had settled down to married life. In 1793 Henry Jackson suffered a paralytic stroke and Harriet added the role of nurse to that of devoted wife up until July 1799 when she met Viscount Milsington at a ball thrown by Lady Charles Somerset. Milsington, or Thomas Charles Colyear, was the eldest son of the 3rd Earl of Portmore, his mother being a daughter of the Earl of Rothes and he had been married to Lady Mary Elizabeth Bertie, only child of Brownlow Bertie, the 5th Duke of Ancaster and heir to a fortune. One child had been born of that union, a son named Brownlow Charles Colyear in 1796 and Lady Mary Elizabeth had died the following year.
The acquaintance between Harriet Jackson and Lord Milsington was renewed the following summer at Ascot Races and Harriet passed Milsington off to her husband and his relations as the suitor of one of her unmarried sisters, a ruse that was totally believed by all concerned. Henry Jackson positively encouraged Milsington to spend time with his extended family, even inviting him to stay at his own house, keen to have a sister in law married to an heir to an Earldom, never thinking he was being cuckolded. Months passed and by the summer of 1801 Jackson was beginning to suspect that something was amiss, the expected marriage proposal to Miss Bishopp not having materialized and he ordered his wife to break off the friendship and not to allow him to visit again. He left it to his wife to decide how to break this news to Milsington. Faced with the prospect of having to break off contact with her lover, Harriet was distraught and there was an added complication. She had a child, one that although recognized as the legitimate child of her husband, had been born since she had begun her relationship with Lord Milsington (she had fallen pregnant before this but it had resulted in a miscarriage). Milsington expressed his wish to look after her and her child and on the 4th August 1801 she ran away from her husband’s house and eloped with her lover. It is not known whether she took the child with her.
Henry Jackson instituted a criminal conversation or ‘crim. con.’ trial against Lord Milsington and this was heard on the 9th January 1802. The Miss Bishopp whom Milsington had supposedly been paying his attentions to did not appear, through reasons of delicacy, and various witnesses were examined. They all expressed surprise at the elopement, having no idea of the attachment and no evidence was produced against Milsington apart from a letter to his ‘beloved’ and ‘adored’ Harriet which was found in a drawer of her desk.
I hope most earnestly very soon to see that my beloved Harriet was not the worse for the expedition of yesterday. I wished very much to have called this morning, to have inquired after her, but thought if I did, I should not have the pleasure of passing the evening with the only woman in the world that I have the smallest attachment to, an attachment so strong and fixed, that nothing in the world can alter. I never can be happy till we live together, with that dear little angel that so resembles the figure of its dearest mother; it makes me quite miserable, the thoughts of leaving town; I cannot bear to be separated