Francis denied a Letter addressed to the British Nation,’ she pretended to prove this statement from evidence of handwriting.
In 1817 she made her first claim to be the daughter of Henry Frederick, duke of Cumberland and Strathearn [q. v.], brother of George III. In a petition to the king she alleged that she was the daughter of the duke by Mrs. Payne, a sister of Dr. Wilmot, and wife of a captain in the navy (cf. Gent. Mag. 1818). In 1820, after the death of George III and the Duke of Kent, she amplified her pretensions, now asserting herself to be the legitimate daughter of the Duke of Cumberland, and in a memorial to George IV assumed the title of Princess Olive of Cumberland. She managed to hire a carriage, placed the royal arms on it, and drove out with her servants dressed in the royal livery. In September 1821 she was at the Islington parish church rechristened as Olive, daughter of the Duke of Cumberland, and Olive, his first wife. A newspaper, called ‘The British Luminary,’ took up her cause, and Henry Nugent Bell [q. v.], the genealogist, is said to have reported favourably on it.
According to her story—as finally elaborated and supported by what was represented as genuine documentary evidence—Dr. Wilmot of Oxford secretly married a sister of Stanislas, king of Poland, and had by her a daughter, who was placed under the care of Dr. Wilmot's sister, Mrs. Payne. At the age of eighteen the girl won the admiration of both the Duke of Cumberland and the Earl of Warwick, but the earl gave way, and the duke married her at Lord Archer's house in London on 4 March 1767, in the presence of Warwick and James Addez, D.D. Of this marriage she asserted that she was the child, but that ten days after her birth she was substituted for a stillborn daughter of Dr. Wilmot's brother Robert, who was thenceforth reputed to be her father.
In July 1821 Mrs. Serres was arrested for debt, and moved the court for a stay of proceedings on the ground that she was the legitimate daughter of the Duke of Cumberland, and as such was exempt from arrest in civil cases. The court held that, as she had put in bail, she was too late to raise privilege. She now produced what purported to be an early will of George III, witnessed by Chatham and Dunning, leaving 15,000l. to ‘Olive, the daughter of our brother of Cumberland.’ In 1822 she applied to the prerogative court for process to call upon the king's proctor to see George III's will; but the court held that it had no jurisdiction. In March 1823 Sir Gerald Noel, who long interested himself in Mrs. Serres's pretensions, presented a petition to parliament from ‘the Princess of Cumberland,’ and in June he moved that it should be referred to a select committee. This motion was seconded by Joseph Hume. Sir Robert Peel, the home secretary, declared Mrs. Serres's contentions to be baseless, and the motion was negatived without a division. In 1825 Serres died in the rules of the king's bench, repudiating in his will any belief in the genuineness of his wife's claims. Mrs. Serres spent the rest of her life in difficulties, and, dying on 21 Nov. 1834, within the rules of the king's bench, was buried in St. James's Church, Piccadilly.
Besides the works enumerated which she produced under her own name, she published much anonymously. There are good reasons for believing that she had a hand in the scandalous ‘Secret History of the Court of England, and the Authentic Records of the Court of England by Lady Anne Hamilton.’ Lady Anne Hamilton denied all responsibility for the work (see ‘Hannah Lightfoot’ by W. Thoms, reprinted from Notes and Queries).
Mrs. Serres left two daughters. The younger took part with her father. The elder, Lavinia Janetta Horton de Serres (1797–1871), married, in 1822, Antony Thomas Ryves, a portrait-painter, and obtained a decree of divorce from him in 1841. She took up her mother's claim, and on her mother's death called herself Princess Lavinia of Cumberland and the Duchess of Lancaster. In 1844 Sir Gerard Noel, her mother's champion, formed a committee of friends to assist her in asserting her alleged rights. A bill was filed against the Duke of Wellington, as executor of George IV, praying for an account of the legacy of 15,000l. alleged to have been left to her mother by George III. The court of chancery held, however, that it had no power to give relief under a will that had not been proved in the ordinary fashion. In 1858 she published an ‘Appeal for Royalty: a Letter to Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, from Lavinia, Princess of Cumberland and Duchess of Lancaster.’ In this book she related incidentally the fictitious story of an early marriage between George III and Hannah Lightfoot, and published copies of what purported to be certificates, in her possession, of the marriage which she pretended was celebrated by Dr. Wilmot. The document was doubtless forged by her mother.
Mrs. Ryves took advantage of the Legitimacy Declaration Act of 1861 to bring her case again into court. She first obtained in
