ABSTRACT
When the House of Lords convicted Elizabeth Chudleigh, the avaricious Duchess of Kingston, of bigamy, Samuel Foote wrote a play, A Trip to Calais, with one of its characters a thinly veiled Chudleigh. Learning of Foote’s plan to stage the play, Chudleigh persuaded the Lord Chamberlain to ban it under the Licensing Act. Aggravating the controversy, Chudleigh had her associates publish insinuations in a newspaper that Foote was gay (in the modern sense of the word). This led to an accusation that Foote had assaulted a servant. He was indicted for sodomy and tried in the Court of King’s Bench. He was acquitted, but the quarrel damaged his health; he died of a stroke soon afterwards.
