Inheritance: The tragedy of Mary Davies
Property & madness in eighteenth-century London
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
‘Brilliant’ Financial Times
‘Hollis expertly weaves together the human tragedy and high politics behind the explosion of one of the world’s greatest cities’ Dan Snow
The reclaimed history of a woman whose tragic life tells a story of madness, forced marriages and how the super-rich came to own London
June 1701, and a young widow wakes in a Paris hotel to find a man in her bed. Within hours they are married. Yet three weeks later, the bride flees to London and swears that she had never agreed to the wedding. So begins one of the most intriguing stories of madness, tragic passion and the curse of inheritance.
Inheritance charts the forgotten life of Mary Davies and the fate of the land that she inherited as a baby – land that would become the squares, wide streets and elegant homes of Mayfair, Belgravia, Kensington and Pimlico. From child brides and mad heiresses to religious controversy and shady dealing, the drama culminated in a court case that determined not just the state of Mary’s legacy but the future of London itself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this well-crafted history, Hollis (Cities Are Good for You) views the making of modern London through the lens of an 18th-century marriage and property scandal. In 1701, Mary Davies Grosvenor, a 35-year-old widow with a history of "behaving strangely," was married in a secret ceremony in Paris. Or so her new husband, Edward Fenwick, claimed—after returning to London, Mary denied it. Tracing the origins of Mary's family wealth, Hollis takes readers through the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, events that reshaped London and made her inheritance, a tract of marshy farmland on the city's western outskirts, more valuable. After the death of her first husband, Sir Thomas Grosvenor, control of the land reverted to Mary, who held it in trust for her children. But with Fenwick claiming ownership as Mary's new husband, her family intervened, arguing that she was insane (some scholars believe she suffered from bipolar disorder) and had been duped into the marriage. After a series of court cases, the marriage was annulled and the property, controlled to this day by the Grosvenor family, was developed into Belgravia and Mayfair, two of London's most exclusive neighborhoods. Hollis unspools the story's multiple threads with verve, and lucidly explains complex legal and historical matters. Anglophiles and urban history buffs will be delighted.
