Lady Mary Alicia Coventry ⁶⁸

   Another name for Mary was Rolt.

  General Notes:

On the 30th June 1777, two days after their marriage, Maria Alicia Bayntun wrote a letter to her stepmother, Lady Barbara Coventry, from her new home, Battle House, in the village of Bromham. An extract from this letter reads: "We arrived here today by dinner time and took a walk around the park in the company of Mrs Forster, Miss Bayntun, Sir Edward and Mr Bayntun. I don't think it polite to write a long letter in their company. Sir Edward and Mr Bayntun wishes to be remembered to my father and I ask you to urge my sister Anne and my brother to answer".

Andrew and Maria Bayntun's first-born daughter, Mary, died a few days after her birth, but in 1780 they had another daughter, Maria Barbara, and the couple made their home at Battle House (the Dower House), situated next to the church in Bromham village.

However Maria had an affair with Andrew's nephew, John Allen Cooper in 1781, a 21 year old officer in the 20th Regiment of foot who had served with his regiment in America during the War of Independence. He was the son of his older sister, Mary (1740 - 1784), who lived at Comberwell, two miles north of Bradford on Avon. Maria had been seeing him regularly, in secret, for 10 months or more as he was very friendly with the couple and resided with them for some time at Battle House.

He was a gentleman of great personal charm and attractions, and the wife and mother forgot her two-fold duties with many stolen meetings with her new lover. Andrew and John enjoyed riding with the hounds and often hunted with a pack belonging to the Bayntuns. He was a Member of Parliament for Weobly, Hertfordshire and therefore spent quite some time in London.

The affair was first noted at the beginning of September 1781 by Andrew's brother, the Rev. Henry Bayntun, when he visited the house on three separate occasions and saw the couple romping together and kissing each other. Mary Nash, who was Lady Maria's personal maid and some of the other servants of the house were also aware of the affair and had seen them together on many occasions. Sir Andrew, at this time, was in London attending Parliament.

On the 9th December, Edward Baldwyn, one of the servants at Battle House, rode to Spye Park, the residence of Andrew's father\endash Sir Edward Bayntun Rolt and acquainted him of what he and the other servants had seen. Sir Edward asked Baldwyn to tell the same to the Rev. Henry Bayntun.

Andrew arrived home from London on Monday 10th December, and complying with Sir Edward's instructions, the Rev. Henry Bayntun, his brother, duly informed him of the affair. Later Henry was called to the drawing room at Battle House, as was Cooper, where Andrew immediately summoned and confronted his wife, who was pregnant at the time. He asked her to confess to the affair, which at first she denied, but eventually stated she had lain with Cooper on several occasions. Andrew asked her if the child she was carrying was his or Coopers. Upon learning it was not his, he asked for the return of her wedding ring and banished she and Cooper from his house. Andrew and Maria never laid eyes on each other again from that day.

The following day, Maria sent her maid to personally deliver a letter to Andrew. In it, she begged his forgiveness and stated that although she had now become bitter enemies of both his mother and father, and in their eyes a wicked woman, she pleaded with him to believe that she would not be wicked enough to ever deceive him again and stated that she still held a glimmer of hope that he would be hers again.

But without a reply, she and Cooper, set off from the Greyhound Inn to his mother's house in Cumberwell where they lived together for a short while. Nothing further is known of the baby she was carrying when she left.

Divorce was rare at this time but on the 15th February 1783 it was granted to Andrew Bayntun Rolt by an Act of Parliament. Andrew was, at first, inconsolable and despite her shameless actions, he long lamented the mother of his only child.

However Cooper treated Maria with cruelty and brutality. The heartless destroyer of her life and fame, finished the dismal tragedy, shutting up her corpse in the house alone, until the rats had actually eaten part of her body. Yet this man was afterwards admitted to the best society and admired by all the ladies. Death at least put an end to her sufferings and the young, elegant and accomplished Lady Maria, nurtured upon the bosom of indulgence, died in a low house, without a single friend or attendant to minister her last wants or a charitable hand to close her dying eyes. She died on the 18th January 1784 at the age of 29.

Mary married Andrew Bayntun Rolt Bt on 29 Jun 1777. The marriage ended in divorce in 1783. (Andrew Bayntun Rolt Bt was born about 1754 and died on 12 Aug 1816.)