Search Results for 'Elizabeth Vesey'

As the legendary Colonel Richard Martin neared the end of his life in Boulogne, where he had fled to escape his numerous creditors, a large four-horse carriage, on which two postilions, in jackets of dark-blue frieze, guided the coach on horse-back, arrived at the front door of Ballynahinch. It was dark, and its occupants were in a state of near exhaustion.

Week IV. Further humiliation was heaped upon Colonel Richard Martin, who sought redress for the ‘dishonour to his bed, the alienation of his wife’s affection, the destruction of his domestic comfort, the suspicion cast upon the legitimacy of the wife’s offspring, and the mental anguish which the husband suffers’ (such was the legal language of the day), during his divorce trial against John Petrie, to be awarded only £10,000., exactly half of the £20,000. which he felt justified in demanding.

Week III. It took two years since Col Richard Martin’s wife Eliza eloped with John Petrie, a merchant, before the long process of divorce in the 18th century could begin. It promised to be a sensational case given the status of Martin, a larger than life character, one of the largest landowners in Ireland, his reputation as duellist, and his enormous popularity for his gift of mimicry and acting.

The Criminal Conversation case taken by Richard Martin against John Petrie, in 1791, the seducer of his wife Eliza, which was extensively covered in the newspapers of the time, and no doubt read with enormous enjoyment by society in both England and Ireland, nevertheless, did not go entirely in Martin’s favour.