The trials of the King of Hampshire

the long version

The 3rd Earl of Portsmouth voted in the House of Lords, took county positions, invited Jane Austen to his balls, counted William Cobbett as one of his Hampshire neighbors and had Lord Byron as his best man at his second marriage. Then, at the age of fifty-five, his own family launched a case citing him as a danger not only to the peerage but to himself. Historian Elizabeth Foyster invites us into the jury box for the lengthiest, most expensive and vastly controversial lunacy commission ever heard, including accusations of abductions, sodomy, blackmail and domestic violence.