Peerage Record – 47416

     George Hester was born circa August 1833 at Abingdon, Berkshire, England^G.¹ He was the son of James Torry Hester and Catherine Esther Law.² He was baptised on 24 August 1833.¹ He died in September 1833. He was buried on 4 September 1833.¹
     B00C28E12D854F00AC11506139A84F43A793.

     Ellen Morland married James Torry Hester, son of John Hester and Susannah Torry, in 1858 at Shabbington, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England^G.¹
     04BF378F668744D3988FAA48E454F7734858. 6AE025A93B804ED5BD2AFE1EC3C267634843. Her married name became Hester.

     Susan Harriett Elizabeth Churchill was born on 14 March 1818 at London, England^G.^1,2,3 She was the daughter of George Spencer-Churchill, 6th Duke of Marlborough and Harriet Caroline Octavia Spencer.⁴ She was baptised on 17 April 1818 at St. Marylebone Church, Marylebone Road, Marylebone, London, England^G.⁵ She married Aimé Timothée Cuénod on 9 August 1837 at Prilly, Lausanne, Switzerland^G.⁶ She died in 1887 at Vevey, Kanton Vaud, Switzerland^G.^7,8,9
     Susan was the illegitimate daughter of Harriet Caroline Spencer, a relative of Lady Caroline Lamb, who became the ward of William and Lady Caroline Lamb. According to her biographer, Susan ‘born amid grief, gossip and mystery, became a delightful person whose whole life is a tribute to the sense of responsibility and the affectionate care of Lady Caroline Lamb and of Lord Melbourne.’

According to L. G. Mitchell, biographer of William Lamb, 1779-1848—who was later Lord Melbourne, and British Prime Minister 1834 and 1835–1841—and his wife, Lady Caroline Lamb née Ponsonby, 1785-1828, Susan Churchill was among several children adopted by the Lambs, and the one about whom most is known. “Born illegimately in 1818 to Harriet Spencer and a relation of the Duke of Marlborough, she was, for some unknown reason, taken in by the Lambs. Her education was supervised by them, and, after Caroline’s death, William sent the child to Switzerland under the care of one of his ex-mistresses, Lady Branden, who was also seeking anonymity abroad. The girl eventually married a Swiss named Aimé Cuenod. Melbourne took an intense interest in the marriage, providing a dowry of £500 himself. In gratitude, the new Mme Cuenod named her children William and Caroline, and continued to write to her benefactor until at least 1841.”
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Susan is the subject of her own biography, by Dorothy Howell-Thomas, Lord Melbourne’s Susan (Gresham Books, 1978).

‘…for reasons which become clearer later a complete conspiracy of silence hid the fact of Susan’s birth and her paternity from this time on. To all appearances, Harriet Spencer’s parents behaved, after Susan’s birth in March 1818, as if the baby did not exist.’

Excerpts from Lord Melbourne’s Susan are attached to this record in PDF format.
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Biographer Dorothy Howell-Thomas writes in part that Susan Churchill’s childhood in the care of relatives challenges a received popular historical view of character flaws of William and Caroline Lamb, and the Duchess and third Duke of Devonshire, in particular:

The importance of Susan’s story lies in the circumstances of her life, for they reveal hitherto unnoticed aspects of the characters of Lady Bessborough and her husband, the third Earl [of Devonshire], and especially do they alter the inherited image which we have of William and Caroline Lamb. The light they throw is a refracted light only, because Susan did not keep a childhood journal nor did she write reminiscences of her life at Brocket, the Lambs’ country home — would that she had: her journal begins in Geneva when she was in her fifteenth year. But the very fact that William and Caroline, to whom tradition attributes so tormented a family life, so little consistency, responsibility and generosity, brought her up and set her on her way to adulthood, and watched over her with affection to the end of their lives, speaks as only facts can. Her existence also lightens, just a little, the gloomy sadness which tradition, again, has cast over the last years of Caroline’s life.
In a real sense, therefore, even if at one remove, we see these people, with some of their children, their friends, their doctors and their servants, through the eyes of the child Susan. They grow in stature in the process. Lady Bessborough, who had of course known her young cousin Harriet Spencer from childhood, takes the baby Susan at birth and has her looked after in her house at Roehampton. Her daughter Caroline Lamb continues to care for her when Lady Bessborough dies. The presence of the ‘mysterious child’ at Brocket has been said to have been a ‘whim’ of Lady Caroline’s; on the contrary, Caroline was, it seems, accepting a trust inherited from her mother which continued until her own death. Then Lord Melbourne, though with less enthusiasm, sees to Susan’s education until her marriage, and even beyond that continues to act as one of the trustees of her marriage settlement.
Two other women, Lady Brandon and Mrs Norton, respectively mistress and — it must be believed on his solemn word, no more than — close friend of Melbourne, touched Susan’s life in some degree, as did, in care and kindness to her, Lord Bessborough and his sons after their sister Caroline’s death.^10,1,11,12 From 9 August 1837, her married name became Cuénod. She and Aimé Timothée Cuénod were founder of the Cuénod-Churchill Bank of Vevey circa 1840.

     John Burnett of Countesswells married Elizabeth Grant, daughter of Sir Ludovic Grant of Dalvey, 6th Bt. and Margaret Innes.¹

     Harriet Caroline Octavia Spencer was born on 5 January 1798 at Althorp, Northamptonshire, England^G.^1,2 She was the daughter of William Robert Spencer and Susan Gräfin von Jenison-Walworth.³ She married Karl Theodor von Westerholt on 9 October 1819 at Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany^G, in a location referenced by its historical name at that time, Ratisbon marriage.⁴ She died in 1831.
     Note: easily confused with but not the Henrietta Frances (Harriet) Spencer, 1761-1821, who was sister of Georgiana Cavendish née Spencer, Duchess of Devonshire (third child of John and Margaret Georgiana Spencer).
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The biographer of Harriet’s illegitimate daughter, Susan Cuénod Churchill, Dorothy Howell-Thomas, wrote of Harriet in part:

The tragedy for Harriet was not so much the fact of her seduction—unmarried girls in high society were after all sometimes seduced—as the publicity which surrounded it. Harriet was unusual for her time and her class in that she had behaved in such a manner as publicly to acquire a bad reputation. She frequented the company of young unmarried men, such as Henry de Ros, who were notorious for an extravagant and profligate life.

The signal failure of Harriet’s parents to protect her reputation is evident in the dreadful and unusual fact that the men in that company of young people themselves bandied her name about. For the older generation, a girl in polite society to whom this happened was forever degraded. Gentlemen, among themselves, had always of course told of their conquests of young girls or of well-known courtesans; but to repeat publicly what appears to have been the disorderly behaviour of poor Harriet was so shocking that Sir Harry Englefield, a close friend of the Spencers, wrote to the Duke of Devonshire of his distress at all ‘these reports which must I fear have arisen from the indiscretion (though that is not the proper word) of those men whose lips should have been the last to be ever opened on the subject. If it be so, I want words to express my abhorrence of their conduct.’
It was this public aspect of the case which so scandalised society and led to the ostracising of the Spencers and all the mixed feelings at the ball which, two years after the birth of Susan, the Duke of Devonshire gave for Harriet. Harriet had admitted to her mother to an association with Mr de Ros, and to great imprudence in her conduct to Mr Wombwell, who had been an exact contemporary at Eton and in the same form as George Spencer-Churchill, in 1817 Marquis of Blandford. It must be recognised here that Susan Churchill learnt of her paternity only at the time of or even after her marriage, and that the name of George Spencer-Churchill does not appear in the gossip surrounding Harriet and this group of young men; and that for reasons which become clearer later a complete conspiracy of silence hid the fact of Susan’s birth and her paternity from this time on. To all appearances, Harriet Spencer’s parents behaved, after Susan’s birth in March 1818, as if the baby did not exist.

…for Harriet the Spencers began to entertain the hope of marriage with her cousin Charles von Westerholt. Her father’s negotiations proved successful, and in April 1819, Mrs Spencer was writing to the Duke of Devonshire:

Petersham—April 8th 1819
At last my dearest duke I have the happiness to be able to tell you that
Harriet is going to be married to the Count Charles de Westerholdt—a
match in every way delightful to us—’Les Convenances et l’Amour se
trouvent d’accord’ . It was a marriage I wish’d for ever since I first went to
Germany but I never dared hope Ct Wt the Father would have consented
—however on knowing Harrio thoroughly he is so much pleased with her
character and the young people are so much in love that he has consented
& they are to be married immediately—there is but one drawback to my
happiness it is which is [sic] his making a point of their living in Germany
as he says he can not think of depriving himself of the society of his only
son—all he can do for me is to allow them to come & see us soon after
their marriage for six weeks.
I feel quite certain that this news will give you pleasure—God bless you
my dear duke—When shall you return? I do want very very much to see
you again,

Charles von Westerholt and Harriet Spencer were married at Ratisbon (Regensburg), in Bavaria, in October 1819. The account given in Mrs Spencer’s letter of the attitude of Count von Westerholt père varies considerably from what was being said about the match in England. According to widespread reports at home, the von Westerholts were told about the birth of Harriet’s child, but not about her public disgrace. It was thought that the publicity had not penetrated beyond London society, and that once again the name of Spencer had cast its spell over the German family.^5,6,7,8 From 9 October 1819, her married name became von Westerholt.

     Charles William Cuénod was born on 23 May 1841 at Vevey, Kanton Vaud, Switzerland^G.¹ He was the son of Aimé Timothée Cuénod and Susan Harriett Elizabeth Churchill.² He married Sophie Lucie Mayor de Montricher on 18 July 1867 at Lully, Kanton Vaud, Switzerland^G.¹ He died on 28 May 1920 at age 79 at Vevey, Kanton Vaud, Switzerland^G.^1,3
     Charles William Cuénod usually went by his middle name of William. He was Banker.¹

     Frank Cuénod was born in 1873 at Corseaux, Kanton Vaud, Switzerland^G.¹ He was the son of Charles William Cuénod and Sophie Lucie Mayor de Montricher.² He married Gabrielle de Meuron in 1901 at Corsier-sur-Vevey, Kanton Vaud, Switzerland^G.¹ He died in 1937 at Gland, Kanton Vaud, Switzerland^G.¹

     Hugues-Adhémar Cuénod was born on 26 June 1902 at Corseaux-sur-Vevey, Kanton Vaud, Switzerland^G.¹ He was the son of Frank Cuénod and Gabrielle de Meuron.² He died on 3 December 2010 at age 108 at Vevey, Kanton Vaud, Switzerland^G.³
     He was Singer (tenor.)

     Maud Delicia Hester was born on 23 September 1870.¹ She was the daughter of James Jeaffreson Hester and Jane Caroline Cuénod-Churchill.² She married Wallace Albury Robinson on 8 April 1891 at Neutral Bay, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia^G, in a at St Augustine’s Church, Neutral Bay marriage.³ She died on 28 May 1941 at age 70 at Gundagai, New South Wales, Australia^G, NSW BDM index no. 10789/1941.⁴ She was buried at Nangus General Cemetery, Nangus Road, Nangus, New South Wales, Australia^G.⁴
     Marriage notice, the Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday 18 April 1891:

ROBINSON—HESTER.—April 8, at St Augustine’s Church, Neutral Bay, by the Venerable the Archdeacon of Cumberland, assisted by the Rev. North Ash, M.A., Wallace Albury, only son of James Robinson, of Kimo, Murrumbidgee, to Maud Delicia, fourth daughter of the late James Hester. M.D., Indian Medical Service, and step-daughter of Thomas Francis Waller, of Honda, Neutral Bay.³ 65A9E2DD97BE4A448773B98318690363CD98. Her married name became Robinson. CD3B5A2ADC9D48CA83A26AB0810D6AE533A2.

     unknown Hester is the daughter of James Jeaffreson Hester and Jane Caroline Cuénod-Churchill.¹