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In the summer of 1881, 38-year-old Francis Needham, 3rd Earl of Kilmorey, was married to society beauty, Ellen Constance Baldock, who was only 22. The couple’s names can be found regularly in attendance lists for all sorts of sparkling state functions during the reigns of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. Royal guests were regular visitors at Mourne Park, the Kilmorey estate near Kilkeel, and it was rumoured that Nellie, as Ellen was known, was one of the “favourites” of the Prince of Wales. Francis and Nellie’s names soon began to appear in society columns alongside that of Prince Francis of Teck, known as Frank.
Born in 1870, Frank was the son of a minor German Hungarian royal. His sister, Princess Victoria Mary, known as May, married George, Duke of York, later King George V. From an early age, Frank was very rebellious and was expelled from Wellington College in Berkshire. In 1895 whilst serving in the Royal Dragoons quartered in Ireland and already owing £1,000, he lost a further £10,000 on a single bet at The Curragh. The debt, estimated to be almost £1 million today, was paid by May and George. The scandal was covered up and Frank was able to continue his military career but the relationship between May and her brother was forever changed. Frank remained a regular fixture at royal functions - in the summer of 1890, for example, newspapers mention him in attendance at a party at Montagu House in London, where he was part of a royal contingent along with Lady Kilmorey, who wore a “peculiarly becoming shade of mauve.”
By 1902, Frank had retired from the military and settled in Clonsilla, Dublin. He became even closer to Lady Kilmorey and although she was twelve years older, Nellie and Frank developed a deep and lasting connection. Royal biographers are divided on the exact nature of that relationship, one referring to Nellie as Frank’s “elderly ladylove” and another as simply “a flirtation.” Regardless, there would never be a more important relationship in Frank’s adult life.
Frank died in suddenly in 1910 having caught pneumonia at Balmoral. His continuing involvement with a married woman, his mounting gambling debts, and his unwillingness to take on any work after leaving the military had greatly irritated his sister and brother-in-law. Upon his death, the now King George and Queen Mary were astonished and shocked by the contents of Frank’s will which had been made in 1902. Mary, who had been so generous to her wayward brother, had been left nothing at all - the document included the stinging remark: “My sister, Victoria Mary Princess of Wales, has everything she can want.”
Frank had left virtually all his money - £17,000 or almost £1.5 million today – to Nellie so that “she may enjoy it”, as well as all the jewellery that he had inherited from his late mother. These jewels included 40 spectacular emeralds which had been been acquired when Frank’s grandfather, the Duke of Cambridge, had stopped in Frankfurt with his bride Princess Augusta of Hesse on their way to England and bought a lottery ticket which won. They were henceforth known as the Cambridge emeralds. The outraged Queen Mary, who was known as something of a magpie with a life-long love of jewellery, had assumed that the family gems would naturally be left to her.
The Teck family heirlooms were handed over to the Countess of Kilmorey, but Queen Mary immediately offered to purchase almost all the jewels in question for the sum of £10,000, and Nellie accepted the offer. For her coronation in India in 1911, known as the Delhi Durbar, Queen Mary had the emeralds set in a fabulous new suite of jewellery. Later some of the emeralds were incorporated into another tiara, known as the Vladimir, which was regularly worn by HM Queen Elizabeth II.
Queen Mary decided that she needed to act to keep her brother’s relationship with Nellie hidden so she requested that Frank’s will be sealed, keeping its contents private and setting a precedent. Virtually all royal wills since have also been sealed which has led to speculation about what might be hiding in those documents, with historians, legal scholars, and even those claiming to be illegitimate royal children calling for the documents to be made public so that their secrets can be revealed. In 2023 some royal wills, including Frank’s, were unsealed for the first time.
For more information on objects in the museum's collections visit their website www.visitmournemountains.co.uk.
Newry & Mourne Museum is open from Tuesday to Saturday, 10.00am - 4.30pm. Free tours are available on Wednesdays at 2.00 pm, which must be booked in advance by calling our Education Officer at 0330 137 4422.
