The sexually lawless ‘aristocratic idiot’ who seduced King Edward VII at 16: CHRISTOPHER WILSON on a forgotten royal scandal that came to a sordid end

Passions ran high in the Victorian world, and nowhere more so than in royal circles.

Wayward Irish aristocrat Lady Olivia Fitzpatrick was a sexual predator who was dismissed from the royal court by Queen Victoria for trying to seduce her husband Prince Albert. But soon Olivia was back – with her eyes now firmly on Victoria’s son, the Prince of Wales. He was 17 years younger than her.

That didn’t happen either – but fearless Lady Olivia pushed her teenage daughter Patsy forward into the lusty prince’s path.

Patsy – born Mary Adelaide Virginia Eupatoria FitzPatrick – was just 16 years old at the time, while the prince was 29 and should have known better. But passion was Edward’s thing,

Although married at the age of 23, within a year the future King Edward VII had an affair with a woman named Mary Ross and, according to historian Anthony J. Camp, Edward had had at least thirteen mistresses before Patsy. was wheeled into the royal presence.

He was unstoppable. During his lifetime there would be many more ladies of high birth who were more than willing to submit to his unquenchable lust, but Patsy was the youngest.

And so he took Patsy’s virginity, encouraged by the teenager described as “sexually lawless.”

The only rule in Victorian times was ‘thou shalt not be discovered’ – so a plan had to be quickly devised by the cunning Lady Olivia to give the prince access to her daughter without getting tongues wagging.

Step forward with the clueless William Cornwallis-West, 19 years Patsy’s senior, whose home Ruthin Castle in Denbighshire was a short distance from a favorite country house where Edward often stayed – making him an ideal husband.

And while William was traveling, the prince came to visit.

There was something extra special about Patsy that kept Edward coming back for more over the years. With golden hair, an hourglass figure and ‘a complexion like apple blossoms’, she radiated sex appeal.

Socially, she rose to the top of the wave after her marriage – her husband was Lord Lieutenant of Denbighshire – and even after Edward became king, the couple would still meet clandestinely.

Spurred on by her ruthlessly ambitious mother, Patsy used her proximity to the throne to engineer advantageous marriages for her children – one daughter married the fabulously wealthy Duke of Westminster, the other a German prince, and her son married Lady Randolph Churchill – mother of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill – as her second husband.

It is said that the father of at least one of these children was the king himself.

But when the passion faded from her relationship with Edward – her place as his mistress was taken first by actress Lillie Langtry and then, for good, by Queen Camilla’s current great-grandmother, Alice Keppel – Patsy looked elsewhere for love.

As the First World War raged in Europe, Patrick Barrett, a young working-class soldier, became an invalid at home with wounds and shell shock. Of the 3,000 men in his regiment, the Royal Welch (NB correct spelling) Fusiliers, all but 80 were dead in the first six months of the war,

Patsy’s husband William was an honorary colonel of the Fusiliers, so the young soldier was invited to recuperate on the family estate.

And the ‘sexually lawless’ Patsy fell for him. She was 59, Barrett was only 25 – and what happened next culminated in a high-profile and devastating sex scandal that would ultimately destroy Patsy and her husband.

For a woman in her position to pursue an ordinary soldier was scandalous enough. The fact that the soldier was from her husband’s regiment made matters worse: she was called “the aristocratic tart.” And when the whole story came out, it turned out that Patsy had bombarded the unworldly young man with a cocktail of letters, poetry and promises of promotion – he was powerless to resist her amorous attack.

Using her influence – as the upper classes could do at the time – she had Barrett promoted to officer rank. But in those class-obsessed days, Barrett’s origins made him an alien figure in the officers’ mess, and word soon began to circulate that he had seduced a woman old enough to be his mother to gain his undeserved promotion.

The story was the other way around, of course, but no one believed Barrett was the innocent party. Deeply ashamed by the malicious gossip, he ended the relationship, without suspecting the scandal his rejection would cause.

Humiliated, Patsy went back to the senior officers she had persuaded to make Barrett an officer and demanded that they reverse his promotion. In January 1917, a court of inquiry was set up to investigate her interference in army affairs during the height of the war – and the story became public.

The Cornwallis-Wests were humiliated by the subsequent publicity and the shame and disgrace with which they both murdered Patsy’s husband within weeks – he died that summer.

And she, once the mistress of a king and the toast of high society – “the most beautiful woman in all four kingdoms” that her husband had called her – disappeared from view and also died at the age of 64.