Dorothy Jordan

Dorothy Jordan was the finest comic actress on the English stage for thirty years, bore ten children to the future William IV, and died in poverty in France after he discarded her. She was born near Waterford, went on stage in Dublin as a teenager, and fled to England pregnant by her manager; she made her name at Drury Lane in breeches parts, playing young men, which showed her legs and which audiences went to see. Hazlitt wrote that her laugh was as pleasant as the sound of a brook, and she was among the highest-earning performers of the age. From 1791 she lived with the Duke of Clarence, third son of George III, for twenty years - a period in which she kept acting, because his allowance from the crown did not cover his debts and hers did. The ten children were given the surname FitzClarence and were acknowledged. In 1811, needing a legitimate heir and a dowry, he ended the arrangement, paid her off on condition she did not return to the stage or write about him, and then reduced the payments when she was pursued by her son-in-law's creditors. She went back to acting anyway, lost custody of her younger daughters by the terms of the settlement, and fled to Saint-Cloud to escape debt, where she died in 1816. He became king fourteen years later. Claire Tomalin's life of her appeared in 1994. Her descendants include several British prime ministers and the Cameron and Fox families. A statue of her with two of her children stands in Buckingham Palace, commissioned by William IV after her death and hidden for a century. Romney and Hoppner both painted her.

• Lived: 1761 CE – 1816 CE
• Nationality: Irish
• Roles: artist