Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, attending her trial for bigamy. Etching by John Hamilton Mortimer, 1776.

The maids of honour hold a bottle marked "cordial". They are followed by a fat chaplain, a physician with a bigwig and sword, and a lean apothecary with a big enema syringe

Elizabeth Chudleigh married the Hon. Augustus John Hervey secretly in 1744; the marriage was not registered until 1759. In 1769 a consistory court declared her unmarried, after which she married Evelyn Pierrepoint, 2nd Duke of Kingston, in 1770. In 1776, 15-22 April, she was tried in Westminster Hall for bigamy, and convicted, the surgeon Caesar Hawkins having testified to the birth of her son by Hervey. She left England immediately and lived thereafter in Paris, St Petersburg and Rome

Published at Westminster according to law : [publisher not identified], Ap.l 15 1776.

1 print : etching

Iphigenia's late procession from Kingston to Bristol. - by Chudleigh Meadows. - Then the dutchess was brought into court attended by her chaplain, physician, apothecary and three maids of honor. Morning post May 16: 1776.

British Museum, Catalogue of political and personal satires, vol. V, London 1935, no. 5362

Betty Rizzo, "Companions without vows: relationships among eighteenth-century British women", Athens, Ga., 1994 (cf. review in Times Literary Supplement, 3 June 1994, p. 7)

Wellcome Collection 12029i