Divorce and remarriage
In 1807 Lawless brought a sensational action for criminal conversation against Sir John Bennett Piers, 6th Baronet, a neighbour and school friend, whose dalliance with Lady Cloncurry had been witnessed by the painter Gaspare Gabrielli while he was at work painting frescoes at Lyons House. The lurid details of the case aroused huge public interest, in particular the barely credible evidence that the couple had been too preoccupied to notice that the painter was up a ladder in the same room. Lawless first became suspicious when he saw his wife and Piers walking hand in hand: he confronted his wife who broke down and confessed. Piers did not contest the action, having fled to the Isle of Man, where he remained for some years.
Lawless was awarded the then enormous sum of £20,000 in damages, although it was many years before he actually saw the money. As usual the action was the prelude to a divorce from his wife, which he obtained by a private act of Parliament, Lord Cloncurry's Divorce Act 1811 (51 Geo. 3. c. 73 Pr.). They had a son, Valentine, who died young, and a daughter, Mary, who married firstly Henry Fock, 3rd Baron De Robeck, by whom she had three children. Like her parents, her marriage ended in divorce by act of Parliament, Baron de Robeck's Divorce Act 1828 (9 Geo. 4. c. 46 Pr.). She married secondly in 1828 Lord Sussex Lennox, by whom she had three further children.
Elizabeth had a second son, born in 1807, who was generally believed to have been fathered by Sir John Piers. Lady Cloncurry was the youngest daughter of General Charles Morgan, Commander-in-Chief, India, and his wife Hannah Wagstaff, daughter of William Wagstaff of Manchester. After returning to live with her father for some years, she went to Italy, where she remarried the Rev John Sandford, the absentee vicar of Nynehead, Somerset, in 1819, and died in 1857. She and Sandford had one daughter Anna, who married Frederick Methuen, 2nd Baron Methuen.
Her former husband remarried in 1811 Emily Douglas, third daughter of Archibald Douglas and Mary Crosbie, and widow of the Hon. Joseph Leeson, by whom she was the mother of Joseph Leeson, 4th Earl of Milltown. They had three more children, including Edward, 3rd Baron Cloncurry. Emily died in 1841: her husband in his memoir paid loving tribute to their thirty years of uninterrupted happiness.
