But the petitioner could not help
putting forward the certificates of that marriage, because two of them
were written on the back of the certificate of the marriage of the
Duke of Cumberland with Olive Wilmot. Men of intelligence could not
fail to see the motive for writing the certificates of those two
marriages on the same piece of paper. The first claim to the
consideration of the royal family put forward by Mrs. Serres was, that
she was the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Cumberland by Mrs.
Payne--a married woman. Her next claim was, that she was his daughter
by an unmarried sister of Dr. Wilmot. She lastly put forward her
present claim, that she was the offspring of a lawful marriage between
the duke and Olive, the daughter of Dr. Wilmot. At the time when the
claim was put forward in its last shape, it was accompanied by an
attempt at intimidation, not only on the score of the injustice that
would be done if George IV. refused to recognise the claim, but also
on the score that she was in possession of documents showing that
George III., at the time he was married to Queen Charlotte, had a wife
living, and had issue by her; and consequently that George IV., who
had just then ascended the throne, was illegitimate, and was not the
lawful sovereign of the realm. And the documents having reference to
George III.'s first marriage were inseparably attached to the
documents by which the legitimacy of Mrs. Serres was supposed to be
established, with the view, no doubt, of impressing on the king's mind
the fact that she could not put forward her claims, as she intended to
do, without at the same time making public the fact that the marriage
between George III. and Queen Charlotte was invalid. Could any one
believe in the authenticity of certificates like these; or was it
possible to imagine that, even if Hannah Lightfoot had existed, and
asserted her claim, great officers of state like Chatham and Dunning
should have recognised her as "Hannah Regina," as they were said to
have done?

In another document the Duke of Kent gave the guardianship of his
daughter to the Princess Olive. Remembering the way in which that lady
had been brought up, and the society in which she had moved, could the
Duke of Kent ever have dreamed of superseding his own wife, the mother
of the infant princess, and passing by all the other distinguished
members of his family, and conferring on Mrs. Serres, the landscape
painter, the sole guardiansh