Hannah Lightfoot

Hannah Lightfoot
Born	1730
Died	1759 (aged 28–29)
Spouse	Issac Axford (m.1753)
Father	Matthew Lightfoot
Mother	Mary Wheeler

Hannah Lightfoot (12 October 1730 – before December 1759) the 'Fair Quaker' who is said to have been the first wife of George III of the United Kingdom.

Hannah Lightfoot was born into a Quaker family in St John, now Shadwell, Wapping, Middlesex, now E1, the daughter of Matthew Lightfoot (died 1733), a shoemaker, and his wife Mary Wheeler (died 1760). After the death of her father she lived with her uncle Henry Wheeler, a linen draper in Market Lane, Westminster. She married (apparently without the knowledge of her mother) outside her faith at Keith's Chapel, Curzon Street, Mayfair, on 11 December 1753, Isaac Axford, grocer, of St Martin Ludgate, London. She had absconded from her husband by 1 January 1755, but it was reported on 3 September 1755 that her mother 'was not fully satisfied she was absented from her husband'. The officials of her church reported on 7 January 1756 that she could not be found and agreed that a Testimony of Denial be prepared against her for marrying against their rules. This was read and approved on 3 March 1756. She had been bequeathed £50 by her aunt Hannah Plant in 1748 which she should have received on probate, 9 March 1756. As 'Mrs Hannah Axford formerly Miss Hannah Lightfoot' she was bequeathed an annuity of £40 for life by Robert Pearne of Isleworth, an old friend of the family, in his will dated 26 January 1757 and proved 4 April 1757. Hannah was also mentioned in the will of her mother Mary Lightfoot dated 10 January 1760 and proved 4 June 1760 in which she left the residue of her estate in trust for Hannah, adding 'I am not certain whether my said daughter be living or dead I not having seen or heard from her for about two years last past'. Hannah's husband Isaac Axford remarried in Wiltshire, describing himself as a widower, in December 1759, but he may not have known whether Hannah was dead or alive. His second wife, Mary Bartlett, died in 1791, and he himself died at Warminster in 1816.

George III admired the simple goodness of the Quakers and there is an old story, first published in 1770 but much embellished in the nineteenth century, that, in amusement, linked his name, as an extremely shy teenager of fifteen, with that of Hannah Lightfoot, eight years his senior, who ran away from her husband in 1754 and disappeared. The King, then Prince of Wales, is said to have organised her abduction at or after her marriage to Isaac Axford in 1753 and, according to later stories, to have secretly married and had children by her; two of them were known to history as George Rex (now known to have been born in 1765) and John Mackelcan, born in 1759. Her whereabouts were unknown to her family by 1758. Her husband married again in 1759 describing himself as a widower.

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