Mon., 5 May 2003

QUEEN Victoria did marry her devoted servant John Brown, according to diary extracts to be published for the first time this week.

The Rev Norman Macleod, the Queen’s chaplain, is said to have made a deathbed confession that he married the couple -- and regretted it until his dying day.

The apparent admission is recorded in the diaries of Lewis Harcourt, a 19th-century politician and diarist, which will be published in the first issue of The British Diarist, a quarterly historical magazine.

Historians yesterday gave a mixed reaction to the diary’s suggestion that Queen Victoria married for a second time, following the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in December 1861. Speculation over the relationship between Queen Victoria and John Brown has raged for more than 100 years.

The couple, who became close following the death of the monarch’s husband, were rumoured to have married at the time but there has never been supporting evidence. And the newly-revealed diary entry from Lewis (later Lord) Harcourt, dated 17 February 1885 has again fuelled speculation.

Lewis, a politician in Asquith’s Liberal Government and the son of Sir William Harcourt, the Home Secretary in William Gladstone’s Liberal government, would have been 21 when he wrote the entry.

It reads: "Lady Ponsonby [the wife of the Queen’s private secretary] told the HS [the Home Secretary: the author’s father] a few days ago that Miss Macleod declares that her brother, Norman Macleod, confessed to her on his deathbed that he had married the Queen to John Brown, and added that he had always bitterly regretted it. Miss Macleod could have had no object in inventing such a story, so that one is almost inclined to believe it, improbable and disgraceful as it sounds."

Patrick Jackson, who wrote the introductory article to the extracts in The British Diarist, said he believed Lewis, who he called an "almost ideal diarist", had no reason to make the story up.

He said: "I suppose some people will say that it is no more than tittle-tattle, but it’s certainly very high-level gossip from very respectable sources who had no reason to make it up."

Historian and author Andrew Roberts said it was possible the couple had married out of affection but that their relationship had never been consummated.

However, fellow historian A N Wilson, the author of The Victorians, said: "I still think it is inconceivable that they married. The Queen was very fond of Brown; they may even have had a cuddle and a snog. But she had a great sense of dignity and would not have married someone in his position."

The diaries belong to the Hon Mrs Crispin Gascoigne, the author’s granddaughter, and are kept at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

The relationship between Queen Victoria and John Brown was turned into an award-winning film starring Dame Judi Dench as Queen Victoria, and Billy Connolly as the hard-drinking servant.

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See Victoria Biography