Motley Talk about the May Fair
A fair, a tragic heiress, and men who should have kept their spending within their budget, all in the richest area in London.
Dear Motley Officers, Crew & Friends, it’s May and, if you lived in the 17th Century, you could head outside the city of London, to the May Fair. But before we go to the fair, let me first tell you the story of the tragic heiress to the lands where the fair was held.
In 1677 there was an arranged marriage between 12-year-old Mary Davis and 21-year-old Sir Thomas Grosvenor. Mary’s family were rich but not nobility, and her ambitious, widowed mother negotiated fiercely for a good marriage for her daughter. Thomas had lands but Mary came with gold, and with most of the land that is now Mayfair, referred to as ‘The Hundred Acres’ in early deeds. The land was to the west of the city, north of Westminster and was mostly rural, marshy fields, but it had potential.
Mary was allowed to stay with her mother until her 15th birthday. Afterwards Thomas and Mary seem to have had a happy marriage, they had eight children (four survived to adulthood).
In 1688 King James II gave permission for a May fair. His decree said it was "not for trade and merchandise, but for musick, showes, drinking, gaming, raffling, lotteries, stageplays and drolls [a short comical sketch]." It was a large event held on Great Brookfield (now Shepherd Market) and it lasted for 15 days each May.
Back to Mary, who had converted to Roman Catholicism shortly after her 21st birthday. Her husband remained an Anglican but since the question of religion was an issue at the time, his loyalty to the monarchs was often questioned1. Sadly, in 1700 Thomas died aged 43, when Mary was eight months pregnant with their daughter Ann.
Mary was now a widow with a baby, and young children. Not curtailed like ordinary folk, she set off for Europe with a monk, Father Lodowick Fenwick, to meet the Pope. She left her children behind with servants, which would not have been unusual at the time.
On the way home, in Paris, Mary became seriously ill. Father Lodowick had replaced all Mary’s usual servants. The following story is lacking in clarity, possibly because facts were hidden at the time. It seems that Mary suddenly married Father Lodowick’s brother, Edward Fenwick. When a woman married all her property was made over to her husband. At the time Mary did not say anything about the marriage. But when she recovered and made her way back to England, she vehemently denied it. By then her ‘husband’ Edward Fenwick was trying to collect the rents on her property.
The Grosvenor family were a powerful family and had well-connected friends. There were two lawsuits, and finally the marriage to Edward Fenwick was annulled on the grounds that Mary was not ‘compos mentis2’ at the time (and that he was a gold-digger). The lands and the money remained within the Grosvenor family, where they remain to this day3.
The story does not end so well for Mary. She had had mental health issues in the past. The trip to Rome and the episode in Paris caused a further breakdown. What did happen in Paris – did Mary marry willingly, was she starved and drugged with opium (Mary had complained that she was poisoned), or was she raped? In any event Mary was declared insane and disappeared from view. Hopefully she was well looked after privately, since public mental health institutions were not good at the time.
About the time Mary went to Europe, the May Fair was becoming a riotous affair. It was held just north of the royal palace of St James, an area that was slowly becoming developed by the rich nobility; the fair was an annoyance. In 1764 the fair was finally closed because it was “a publick nuisance in which many loose, idle and disorderly persons do rendez-vous and draw and allure young persons and servants to meet, to game and commit lewd and disorderly practices”. In other words, a fun time was had by all.
But the fair did give the name to the area ‘Mayfair’. In the 18th Century Mayfair was quickly developed with grand houses and large squares. The exclusivity was maintained because there were no poor or slum houses in the area. Gradually the nobility, who had moved to areas such as Covent Garden and Soho after the 1666 Great Fire of London, found those areas declining and moved into Mayfair. It helped that in 1698 St James’s Palace became the principal royal palace, and nobility wanted to live close by. Mayfair became and remains the most expensive, exclusive area in London.
Life in Mayfair was pretty much like Bridgerton, with balls and society events, fun times for the rich, hard work for their servants and social strictures, especially for women.
Mayfair was stuffed full of Dukes, Earls and their like, including John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich (1718 to 1792). The sandwich was undoubtably around long before the Earl, but during a long session at the gaming table, he supposedly asked for “beef between two slices of bread”. His friends then began to order “the same as Sandwich”.
The Earl of Sandwich gambled, but so did most of the nobility. There were many opportunities to gamble, including in most of the gentlemen’s clubs in Mayfair; each one maintained a betting book. White's is the oldest gentlemen's club in London, founded in 1693; the building is just south of Mayfair (it is also mentioned in Motley Talk about a Rake). There is a famous bow window at the front, with a table where sat the most socially influential men in the club.
George ‘Beau’ Brummell (1778 to 1840) lived in Mayfair and became the arbiter of fashion. He sat in honour in the bow window at White’s. Presumably in the late afternoon, because he took five hours a day to dress; his boots were polished with champagne. His patron, the Prince Regent (later King George IV) and other friends would visit, to watch his elaborate toilette.
Sadly, Beau Brummell had several disagreements with the prince, spent too much money on clothes and entertainments, gambled, got into debt and fled to France to escape debtor’s prison. There he died, aged 61, penniless, unkempt and insane from syphilis.
When Beau Brummell left for the continent in 1816, his friend Lord Alvanley sat in the place of honour. He is supposed to have placed a bet of £3,000 (nearly £300,000 today) on which of two raindrops would reach the bottom of a pane in the bow window first. Not surprisingly Alvanley also got into debt, but at least he had family estates to sell. He lost his position in society and eventually resigned his membership of White’s4.
Amongst the many famous inhabitants of Mayfair there were two musical geniuses. In the 18th Century George Frideric Handel lived in Mayfair and helped bring opera to the British public. Jimi Hendrix lived next door for a while - in the late 1960s.
After the first world war many of the largest houses in Mayfair became too expensive to run and were converted into foreign embassies. Nowadays there are also many large commercial buildings in the area. It is still an exclusive area to live in, but you need mega bucks. Most of the houses are leasehold (see Grosvenor Estate footnote). For example, an 8-bedroom house in Mayfair can cost £5.5 million for a 10-year-lease. Small mews properties, that were originally stables for the large houses and servants’ quarters, rarely come up for sale, but they are freehold, and they sell for around £5 million.
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In 1688 King James II was deposed, in part because he had wanted to overthrow the Church of England and make the country Catholic. From 1689 William & Mary were joint monarchs, mostly supported because of their Protestant faith.
Compos mentis = having full control of one's mind.
Mary’s great-great-great-great grandson became the first Duke of Westminster. The Duke, and the Grosvenor Estate, are immensely rich and own much of west London. The current duke has an estimated net worth of £10 billion.
In 2022 White's continues to maintain its men-only member status. But women can stand on the pavement and stare at the bow window, and wish they could take part in the discussions with their influential male colleagues, who are inside the club.