Heneage Finch, the Cowboy Earl | Great Packington One

Heneage Finch, Sporting Joe and Cowboy Earl.

Joseph Heneage Finch was born on 21 February 1849 at in St George Hanover Square, London, the son of Heneage Finch, 6th Earl of Aylesford, and Jane Wightwick Finch nee Knightley. The family seat was Packington Hall in Great Packington, Warwickshire.

He married Edith Peers Williams in 1871. They had 2 daughters: Hilda Joanna Gwendoline Finch and Alexandra Louise Minna Finch.

metapth860274_xl_BoxD-2-6-040_02 - Copy.jpg

Credit: Big Spring Heritage Museum, Texas.

1874 Royal Visit to Warwickshire - Copy.jpg

Credit: Etsy.

Heneage served as an officer of the Warwickshire Yeomanry as a young man, and was considered a bit eccentric. When Queen Victoria had been passing through Leamington Spa whilst journeying from Windsor to Balmoral, he caused a stir by insisting on admission to Leamington's train station platform to act as the Queen's guard of honour alongside a troop of his men and refused to leave. Some reports claimed the he punched the Station Master. The Queen's Private Secretary, Major-General Henry Ponsonby, spoke with Heneage and shared that 'her Majesty did not wish to hurt his feelings at all, but wished that her stay in the station should be quite private.' Only then did he withdraw with his company of Yeomanry.

He was also known as a heavy drinker, with the 1879 publication Our Old Nobility writing that after dinner he would 'spend the remained of the evening at places like the Alahambra and Cremorme [Gardens], supping with persons of dissolute character, after that he would visit his club, and find his way back to his residence in a state of intoxication.' It was suggested that he engaged in 'vulgar amours' with sex workers.

Heneage was nicknamed ‘Sporting Joe’, for 2 reasons.

Firstly, and most literally, he was a keen sportsman who enjoyed running races, boxing and horseracing. Heneage was described in 1884 by the Liverpool Mercury as 'a well built man, standing 6 feet 2 inches tall in his stockings' and 'as fine a specimen of manhood as one often encounters.' In Warwickshire, he was known for daring locals to athletic feats against him, such as challenging a Master Butcher of Leamington Spa a 100-yard race at 3am on Warwick High Street. The winnings for the race were said to be a bottle of champagne! Sporting Joe was also fond of betting on the horses and was elected a member of the jockey club in 1875. He sometimes raced under the alias 'Mr Gillman'. His racing colours were yellow with violet sleeves.

Secondly, as he facilitated a turned a blind eye to the relationship between his wife Edith and Bertie, the Prince of Wales and later King Edward VII. The Earl and future King were good friends from their introduction in 1869 and were both part of the extravagant and aristocratic 'Marlborough set'. When Heneage broke his leg the Prince visited him in hospital with 2 bottles of champagne, and there is a silver cigar box in the shape of a log cabin at Packington Hall that was a gift from Bertie to his friend.

Edith was considered an amusing woman and was the sister of the Prince's equerry, Owen Williams. Heneage colluded in Bertie's visits to his wife and hosted parties at Packington Hall, allowing the Prince and Edith to discreetly have their affair at the residence during the mid 1870s. The most reported on visit to Packington Hall occurred in 1874, as part of a Royal Tour in Warwickshire by the Prince and Alix, Princess of Wales. Sporting Joe arranged a 5 nights stay for the royal couple with a ball, hunting and fireworks. Lanterns and lamps illuminated the drive and Heneage even had a telephone link installed, at great cost.

Credit: Internet Archive.

Credit: Library of Congress.

Joseph_Heneage_Finch_(1849-1885),_7th_Earl_of_Aylesford.jpg

Photograph taken at Packington Hall, during the Royal Visit, November 1874.

Credit: The Saleroom.

Etching 0f a ball during 1874 at Packington Hall.

Credit: Etsy.

Credit: FindMyPast.

Heneage next accompanied the Prince on a diplomatic trip to British India between 1875 and 1876. True to his nickname, he organised the sports activities and hunts on the tour, despite suffering from a brief fever in December 1875. While her husband and the Prince were abroad, Edith remained at home and began another affair with George Spencer-Churchill, the married Marquess of Blandford and heir of the Duke of Marlborough, The Marquess was considered 'attention-seeking' and 'clever'. Edith intended to elope abroad with her new lover, get a divorce and leave her husband.

News of the affair was sent to the Earl during his travels in Asia, arriving at the Prince's camp in Nepal on 20 February 1876. Both Heneage and Bertie were outraged. The Princess of Wales had also heard news of the affair and wired her husband Bertie urging him to 'tell Joe not to take rash steps' and to 'try your most to soothe matters with Joe.' The future King responded that 'it is too late. After letter A[ylesford] received ... reconciliation is impossible. He will never allow her to remain under his roof.' Heneage abruptly departed for England just days later.

The Earl ordered his mother to remove his daughters from Edith's care, cut his wife off financially and banned her from the family home in Great Packington. The Dowager Countess of Aylesford duly took in her granddaughters until Heneage arrived home. Later in 1876, Edith wrote in a letter to her mother in law that: 'I do not attempt to say a word in self-defence, but you can imagine I have suffered much before I could have taken such a step: how much it would be impossible to tell you, but it is the only reparation I can make to Guernsey, and he will now have the opportunity of getting rid of one he has long ceased to care for.'

Heneage Finch and Prince of Wales in India.jpg

Credit: Royal Collections Trust.

The Prince of Wales called George Spencer-Churchill a ‘blackguard’ over the affair, which was a powerful insult during the Victorian era. He insisted the Earl of Aylesford should divorce his unfaithful (to them both) wife, and that Blandford must divorce his own wife to marry Edith. A divorce would have ruined the Marquess, so his family scrambled to try and prevent this by any means. George's alarmed brother Randolph Spencer-Churchill, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Woodstock, telegrammed the Prince of Wales to ask him to and persuade Joe to stay with Edith, saying: 'for God's sake use your influence to defer final decision of Aylesford's till his and your return.' The Prince declined and replied 'entirely approve of the line he is taking'. Unsuccessful, Randolph then threatened to publish love letters 'of the most compromising character' that Bertie had sent to Edith in 1873 and 1874, which she had given him, if his brother were forced to endure the scandal of a divorce. He claimed that the release of the letters to the press would ensure that 'the Prince will never sit on the throne of England.' In response to the threat of blackmail, the Princes of Wales challenged him to a duel, with pistols, at dawn!

Birmingham_Mail_03_July_1878_0003_Clip p3b.jpg

Part of an 1878 article about the Aylesford v Aylesford and Blandford Divorce petition.

Credit: FindMyPast.

As the situation was spiralling out of control, the Princess of Wales went to Queen Victoria, who intervened through her Proctor to smooth out the 'dreadful, disgraceful business' with the assistance of the Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. The case had by now reached court, but Heneage agreed to drop the public divorce action and separate from his wife by a private deed. The Duke of Marlborough and his son were sent to Dublin, Ireland, to the posting of Viceroy of Ireland that got them out of the capital but kept the Churchills in office. The whole saga was a scandal in polite London society which disgraced all parties involved and became known as the Aylesford Affair.

After the scandals surrounding the affairs of his wife with married men, his attempts at divorce and the implications for the Prince of Wales, Heneage fled to America and left his daughters with his mother. Edith and her lover left for France. They had travelled together previously, under the alias Mr and Mrs Spencer. The Marquis' wife Albertha Frances Anne Spencer-Churchill nee Hamilton (known as Goosie) was left at home with their 4 children and they separated, but he did not intend to divorce her or marry Edith.

George, Marquiss of Blandford. Credit: Francine Matthews.

Edith Finch nee Peers Williams. Credit: Francine Matthews.

Joseph Heneage Finch, Earl of Aylesford.

Credit: University of Texas, San Antonio Library.

After his flight to America, Heneage settled in Big Spring, Texas, USA where he was known as the Cowboy Earl and was teasingly called 'the Judge'. In an American biography of the Earl, it records how ‘in late summer 1883 he arrived at the West Texas cattle town of Big Spring. There he bought a 2,500-acre ranch north of town and a $40,000 herd of cattle on 'range delivery', or sight unseen. Because the rustic boomtown had few conveniences, in quick succession Finch bought a hotel and a bar.’ He also paid for the building of a meat market at Big Spring, the town's first permanent masonry building.

The Texas State Historical Association website records that:
‘Finch was associated with the prince of Wales and his high-living social set in the 1870s. Exiled from England after going through a notorious divorce, he settled in Texas in 1883. Though initially unable to gain the acceptance of the local cowboy-cattleman fraternity, the earl won them over in time by his generosity with his liquor, by his being introduced formally at roundup by a prominent cattleman, and by his pleasant personality. He spent his waking hours partying, drinking, and hunting, to the neglect of his ranch and stock. Although mysterious and remote, he became a valued and respected member of the community, for the frontiersmen did not pry into one's personal life.' He was well liked and could often be found in bars in Texas, where his cowboy friends said they would 'spill their blood for him as quickly as he would open a bottle for them.' On one occasion Joe tried to intervene in a bar fight and was hit on the head with a bottle and knocked to the floor, which diffused the whole situation!

Credit: Historical Marker Database.

Credit: FindaGrave.

Heneage died in 1885, and the website continues that: 'On January 13, 1885, after hosting a two-week party that was spoken of in awe for years, he unexpectedly died. His hard drinking had apparently caught up with him. Finch was a colourful example of the "remittance man," typically a wealthy European who for various reasons was exiled to reform or to perish, to the remote regions of the world, where he regularly received money (remittances) from home.'

Heneage was claimed to have drunk himself to death at just 35, with his ranch home to a pile of empty whisky bottles said by locals to be 'as big as a haystack.' The Earl's body was repatriated to England, travelling by sea on the White Star Line steamship SS Britannic. His brothers Charles Wightwick Finch and Daniel Harry Finch travelled to Liverpool and escorted their brother's coffin back home to Great Packington.

Heneage's death and funeral were widely reported on in the local and national news, with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writing that his 'death revives a scandal which has agitated the highest circles in England for years past, and which exhibits the old nobility in no very credible light'. He was buried at Great Packington after a private funeral on 3 February 1885, which was attended by friends, family, about 200 tenants and a representative of the Prince of Wales, William Molyneux, 4th Earl of Sefton.

Credit: FindMyPast.

The_Western_Daily_Press_15_January_1885_0008_Clip p8f.jpg

In 1881, Edith gave birth to an illegitimate son in Paris, France, who was known as Guy Bertrand. His birth was registered in Paris as the 'son of mother and father not known'. In April 1883 he was bought to England, where his birth was registered again and he was baptised on 29 June 1883 in London as Guy Bertram Finch. He was recorded as a son of the 7th Earl of Aylesford on his second birth certificate. Neither of these documents recorded his father as the Marquess of Blandford despite how Guy was later proven to be the product of Edith’s second adulterous affair and how he was said to love Guy more than any of his other children.

When the 7th Earl died in 1885, Edith tried to claim the Earldom and family seat of Packington Hall for her infant son Guy but was refused by the Committee of Privileges at the House of Lords. Minutes from the Committee record the witnesses called and evidence presented in the case, including testimony given by staff of Packington Hall such as James James (butler and house steward), William Bennett (valet) and Sarah Gillett (upper housemaid) which demonstrated that Heneage had not been with his estranged wife during the period of time when Guy would have been conceived. The title and estate instead passed to Heneage’s younger brother Charles Wightwick Finch (below right).

Now a widow without an income from her late husband's estate, Edith did not have a happy ending and relied upon support from her birth family. The Marquis returned briefly to his wife Albertha but then divorced her after he succeeded as the 8th Duke of Marlborough in 1883 and has yet another affair with Lady Colin Campbell. He then married the wealthy American widow and socialite Lilian Warren Hamersley née Price and used her money to restore the ailing family seat, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. They married in a civil ceremony in New York on 29 June 1888. Edith passed away on 24 June 1897 in Marylebone, London, ostracised and unwelcome in high society, after a short illness.

Even years after the Aylesford affair, the Prince of Wales refused to enter a room if Randolph Churchill was in it, to attend any events where he may be present or to even acknowledge his existence, until he signed a letter of full and formal apology to Bertie. Randolph eventually signed, feeling the effects of the social exile, and even returned the letters written by the Prince to him. The Churchill's were later rehabilitated, with one of the most famous sons of the family becoming the famous wartime Prime Minster Sir Winston Churchill.

1885 Aylesford House of Lords evidence.png

Credit: Google Books and National Portrait Gallery.

Sources:

Ancestry: 1891 England Census; England & Wales, Civil Divorce Records, 1858-1918; England and Wales Death Registration Index 1837-2007; England & Wales Marriages, 1837-2005; Westminster, London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1935.
Big Spring Heritage Museum, Texas.
Bridgeman Images
Burke, Bernard and Burke, Ashworth P. (1915) A genealogical and heraldic history of the peerage and baronetage, the Privy Council, knightage and companionate. 77th ed. London: Harrison & Sons.
Cokayne, George E., ed. (1910) The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed (vol. 1). London: St Catherine Press.
Cracroft's Peerage.
Debrett, John, Hankinson, C. F. J. and Hesilrige, Arthur G. M. (1947) Debrett's peerage, baronetage, knightage, and companionage: comprises information concerning persons bearing hereditary or courtesy titles, privy councillors, knights, companions of the various orders, and the collateral branches of all peers and baronets. London: Oldham's Press.
Etsy.
Evans, Howard. (1879) Our Old Nobility. London: E. J. Kibblewhite.
Fenton, James. (1979) ‘Big Spring's Amazing Tenderfoot: The Earl of Aylesford’. In: West Texas Historical Association Yearbook #55.
FindaGrave.
FindMyPast: British Newspapers Collection, 1710-1965.
Friends of Leamington Station.
Gray, Charlotte. (2023) Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt. London: Simon and Schuster.
Historical Marker Database USA.
House of Lords. (1885) The Sessional Papers printed by order of the House of Lords, or Presented by Royal Command, in the Session 1884-5 (48 & 49 Victoria): Minutes of Evidence, &c. Taken Before the Committee for Privileges on the Aylesford Peerage Claims. London: House of Lords.
Internet Archive.
Kownslar, Allan O. (2004) The European Texans. Texas: University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures.
Library of Congress.
Lovell, Mary S. (2011) The Churchills: In Love and War. London: W. W. Norton & Company.
Matthews, Francine. (2018) Scandal - The Aylesford Affair blog.
The Peerage.
Ridley, Jane. (2012) Bertie: A Life of Edward VII. London: Random House.
Royal Central: The Duchess of Marlborough and the Aylesford Affair blog.
Royal Collections Trust.
Russell, William Howard (1877). The Prince of Wales' Tour: A Diary in India; With Some Account of the Visits of His Royal Highness to the Courts of Greece, Egypt, Spain and Portugal. New York: Lovell, Adam, Wesson & Company.
The Saleroom auctions.
Texas State Historical Association.
UK Parliament: Hansard's.
University of Texas at San Antonio Library.