Mrs Jenny Taylor (formerly Viscountess Chelsea)

[JonnyK]

Interesting story in the Daily Mail yesterday about Earl Cadogan's ex-
wife marrying her new husband last week, shedding her title and
clearly very glad to have done so.

"Their 1989 marriage brought her access to the highest echelons of
London society. But it ended in bitterness and recrimination after
little more than two years when the country sports-loving Earl, now
70, summoned socialite Jenny to the drawing room of his grand London
home and told her that he wanted a divorce - offering to open a bottle
of champagne to celebrate. A civil divorce, however, wasn't enough for
the Earl, who wanted to marry his devoutly Catholic third wife Dorothy
Shipsey in a church service. He subjected Jenny to the bizarre
humiliation of having their marriage annulled by the Roman Catholic
Church - even though neither of them were Catholics and they had been
married in Chelsea's Anglican Old Church."

The hearing - rare in England - entailed Lord Cadogan's friends and
acquaintances making detailed personal, salacious, unsubstantiated
allegations about her...The Earl and his friends tried to portray her
as a scheming gold-digger who was in some way not fit to make her
marriage vows. 'Charles (Cadogan) blackened my character to get his
own way,' says Jenny. 'I was a broken woman and my self-esteem was on
the floor. I was not even allowed copies of the disgusting, muck-
raking, false statements made by people, some of whom barely knew
me.'

Perhaps they always were a mismatched couple. Cadogan was then a 49-
year-old divorcee with three children who was still mourning the death
of his first wife Philippa, daughter of the 9th Earl of Portsmouth.
Meanwhile, Jenny was a young and vivacious 30-year-old girl-about-town
who loved nothing more than shopping and socialising in the
fashionable salons of Knightsbridge, Kensington and Chelsea. 'We went
out for a few dinners in Chelsea and got along well, especially as we
both loved horses, racing and country living,' she says. 'Six months
later we were married, though I had an inkling that everything was not
going to be perfect when he banned most of my friends from our large
society wedding and allowed me just 50 guests - barely enough for my
close family. I was quite upset about that. It was hardly romantic,
either, when we discussed dates for the wedding and he said he had
only two dates free," she recalls. "We spent the wedding night at
Claridge's and he snored all night."

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