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'''Charles Marsack''' (1747/8 – 22 December 1820) was an [[East India Company]] army officer and landowner who, from seemingly humble origins had made a fortune in India, and according to stories first published in [[Burke's Landed Gentry]] in 1894, was reputedly the son of [[Frederick, Prince of Wales]] or of [[George II of Great Britain|King George II]] by a so-called Comtesse de Marsac. He was said to have been born about 1735-6 (from his age at burial) but was probably born (from his age at marriage) in 1747-8 and was said to have married in 1767 (whereas he married in 1783). He was actually the son of Jean Charles Marsac (1708-1751), a servant to one of George II's pages, Joachim Lorentz Sollifoffer (died 1754), who in his will made generous provision for the widowed Margaret Marsac née Saunders and her child Jean Charles who was his godson. Jean Charles Marsac's father was the son of a migrant from [[Poitou]], also called Charles Marsac, a carpenter, who had come to England before 1704/5. Jean Charles Marsac was usually called Charles Marsac and was apprenticed as a weaver. He died in [[Kensington]] in 1751, having married at [[St Martin in the Fields]] in 1745/6 one Margaret Saunders who was probably related to Thomas Saunders (died 1753), standing wardrobe keeper to George I and George II. She married secondly at St George's Chapel, [[Mayfair]], John Holcroft (died 1768), and died in 1785, her administration being granted to Charles Marsack her 'natural and lawful son'. By her second husband she had a daughter Margaretta Holcroft (1755-1785) who lived with William Roome and had several illegitimate children by him who (aided by editions of [[Burke's Landed Gentry]] down to 1937) spread the story that she was the daughter of Margaret, Comtesse de Marsac.<ref>Anthony Camp, ''Royal Mistresses and Bastards, Fact and Fiction, 1714-1936'' (2007) pages 32-37.</ref>

Marsack went to India around 1760 as an Ensign in the service of the East India Company. After being appointed Lieutenant and Surveyor of the province of Oudh,<ref>India Courier Extraordinary: Proceedings of Parliament Relating to ..., Volume 2</ref> he rose by 1777 to be Captain of a cavalry unit of the [[Asaf-ud-Daula|Nabob of Oudh]]. Resigning his commission in 1779,<ref>Alphabetical list of the officers of the Bengal army; with the dates of their respective promotion, retirement, resignation, or death from 1760 to 1834 inclusive, by Dodwell, Edward; Miles, James Samuel, London 1838, p. 172.</ref> he in 1780 undertook an arduous journey from Lucknow to Delhi and back to meet the powerful [[Mirza Najaf Khan|Najaf Khan]], a journey that was documented by his native travelling companion.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.soas.ac.uk/south-asia-institute/events/simon-digby-memorial-conference/file91130.pdf|title= A Hanoverian Nabob on the March|publisher=South Asia Institute|accessdate= 27 March 2016}}</ref> He was expelled from Oudh by [[Warren Hastings]] in 1782 and gave evidence against the latter at his trial.

In 1783 he returned to England as Major Marsack and following marriage, with £20,000 contributed by his wife's trustees, bought [[Caversham Park]] in Oxfordshire<ref>Anthony Camp, ''Royal Mistresses and Bastards, Fact and Fiction, 1714-1936'' (2007) page 34</ref> from [[Charles Cadogan, 1st Earl Cadogan|Lord Cadogan]], restoring and enlarging the house in the Greek style, including the installation of a large Corinthian colonnade at the front. [[Thomas Jefferson]] had previously described the estate as having 25 acres of garden, 400 acres of park and 6 acres of kitchen garden. Now in Berkshire and from 1943 to 2018 used by the BBC, Caversham Park house has been rated a [[Grade II listed]] building.<ref>{{NHLE| num=1000524|desc= CAVERSHAM PARK |accessdate= 27 March 2016}}</ref>

Marsack served as [[High Sheriff of Oxfordshire]] for 1787 and died at Caversham Park, 8 November 1820. He was survived by his widow Charlotte Becher (1767-1837), whom he had married at Epsom, Surrey in 1783, and by seven of his eleven children: Richard Henry (1786-1852), George Hartwell (*1791), Edward Claude (*1794) and four daughters Charlotte (*1785), Caroline (1800-1836) who married Thomas Frederick Sowdon (1793-1873), son of Thomas Sowdon and Eleanor at St Mary's Church, Reading in 1821, Louisa (*1802), Mary Eleanor (*1807). His eldest son Charles, born in 1784, had died in 1786, and the Caversham estate passed to his eldest surviving son, Richard Henry, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Grenadier Guards, who sold it in 1844 to [[William Crawshay II|William Crawshay]].

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marsack, Charles}}
[[Category:1747 births]]
[[Category:1820 deaths]]
[[Category:British East India Company Army officers]]
[[Category:High Sheriffs of Oxfordshire]]

Charles Marsack - Revision history

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