The Prince of Wales had met the devout Catholic and twice-widowed Mrs Maria Fitzherbert, when he was 21 and she was 27 at the opera. He had fallen for her immediately, but her Catholic faith made marriage impossible.
Mrs Fitzherbert spent a period in France, but when she returned to England, the Prince of Wales had not lost interest in her.
True to her Catholic faith, Maria made marriage a condition of a relationship with the Prince and on 15th December 1785, they were secretly married at Maria's home in Park Street London by the Reverend Robert Burke, who had been given a £500 bribe by the Prince.
The marriage was illegal in the eyes of the Prince's father King George III and the English Parliament. After the Duke of Cumberland's "unapproved marriage" in 1771, Parliament had swiftly passed the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 to prevent marriages to Catholics or people who had been married before.
By the date of his unconstitutional marriage, the Prince of Wales owed his debtors more than a quarter of a million pounds!
In July 1786, the summer following the couple's wedding, the Prince introduced Maria to Brighton. He was careful to arrive two weeks earlier than her and to make sure that he and his wife were staying in different houses in Brighton. It is thought that the Prince stayed at Thomas Kemp's farmhouse in the Old Steine and Maria stayed at Marlborough Row - a line of 9 terraced houses (built in about the mid 1770s and demolished in the early 1820s) sited alongside the road which ran through the grounds of the Royal Pavilion. In fact, one of the houses in what was Marlborough Row, still stands next to the Royal Pavilion's North Gate, and is suitably known as North Gate House. Wherever the Prince of Wales stayed in Brighton, Maria Fitzherbert was not far away. As Prince of Wales, he was determined to enjoy both love and money.