Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough
Charles Mordaunt, 3rd Earl of Peterborough and 1st Earl of Monmouth, KG, PC (1658 – 25 October 1735) was an English Army officer, Whig politician and peer. He was the son of John Mordaunt, 1st Viscount Mordaunt, and his wife Elizabeth, the daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Carey, the second son of Robert Carey, 1st Earl of Monmouth. Mordaunt's father, John Mordaunt, was created Viscount Mordaunt of Avalon and Baron Mordaunt of Reigate, Surrey, in 1659.[1]
Lord Peterborough was short in stature and spare in habit of body. His activity knew no bounds. He was said to have seen more kings and postilions than any man in Europe, and the whole point of Jonathan Swift's lines on Mordanto consisted in a description of the speed with which he hastened from capital to capital. He was eloquent in debate and intrepid in war, but his influence in the senate was ruined through his inconsistency, and his vigour in the field was wasted through his want of union with his colleagues.[1]
In 1678 Charles married Carey Fraser, daughter of Sir Alexander Fraser and his wife, Mary Carey (a second cousin of Mordaunt's mother, Elizabeth Carey – making Carey Fraser a third cousin to him). She died on 13 May 1709 and was buried at Turvey. They had three children:
In 1722[b] he secretly married Anastasia Robinson (ca. 1695–1755), a famous dramatic singer (from 1714) of great beauty and sweetness of disposition, daughter of Thomas Robinson (died 1722), a portrait painter; but she was at first unrecognised as his wife, and lived apart from him (regarded merely as his mistress) with her two sisters at Parson's Green. She remained on the operatic stage until 1724.[2]
A second marriage ceremony appears to have taken place a few months before his death in 1735. By his second wife, he appears to have had no issue. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911), it was only a few months before his death that Anastasia died; however, this is flatly contradicted by the evidence that Anastasia, Countess of Peterborough and Monmouth, survived until 1755 and that the purported second marriage ceremony never took place in 1735.[c]