LORD Strathmore of Gibside died at sea on March 7, 1776. The following August, his wealthy widow Mary Eleanor Bowes solemnly became engaged within the hallowed walls of St Paul's Cathedral to her lover, George Grey.

In the six months since her husband's death, she had already induced two miscarriages to avoid having a child by Grey out of wedlock; in the November she discovered that she was again carrying his child.

But when she married on January 17, 1777, it wasn't to Grey. Instead she became the wife of Andrew Robinson Stoney, an Irish scoundrel, whose first wife, Hannah of Burnopfield, had died after he'd kept her in a tiny dark cupboard and fed her only an egg a day.

As the National Lottery this week awarded £1.5m to restore Mary Eleanor's orangery at Gibside in County Durham, now is a good time to recount one of the most extraordinary episodes in North-East history.

Mary Eleanor had become the richest heiress in Europe on the death of her husband, and Stoney adopted strange tactics to win her heart. Secretly he wrote scurrilous letters to a London newspaper about her discreditable affair with Grey and then, in a very public defence of her honour which was calculated to impress her, duelled with the editor. It worked. They married. She gave birth to Grey's child; Stoney became the lord of Gibside and Streatlam Castle, in Teesdale, and MP for Newcastle.

Very soon, the Countess realised her matrimonial mistake. Stoney was pilfering her fortune and raping her maids. In 1785, she told the Ecclesiastical Court that she wanted a divorce and asked the Chancery Court to put a restraining order upon him. Stoney was staring ruin in the face. He had to get to her and persuade her to change her mind.

While she was in London, he went to Gibside and, in the depths of pretend despair, let it be known that he had tried to commit suicide with a gun in his dressing room.

But she did not come rushing to his aid.

He journeyed to Barnard Castle, paraded around the market and set off for Streatlam. En route, he fell terribly from his horse, his own men giving him a good beating to make his injuries truly bloody.

It didn't soften Mary Eleanor's heart.

With persuasion failing, only force was left. On November 9, 1786, Stoney's rogues kidnapped her in Oxford Street and carried her for 33 hours to Streatlam. There, Stoney put a pistol to her forehead and demanded that she signed an annulment of the divorce.

She refused; he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger.

Instead, he loaded her onto the back of a horse and for a week dragged her crazily across the snow-covered Durham dales.

One night they spent in Darlington's Prospect Place. There was a price on his head and posters went up proclaiming him "the greatest monster that ever disgraced society". In the morning, a crowd gathered outside the front door so he tossed Mary Eleanor over a high wall at the back and galloped away.

Up to Newcastle; back down to Aycliffe where he was spotted pump-priming two pistols. Fuelled by the prospect of reward, a mob took up the pursuit and Stoney tried to give them the slip by crossing the Tees at Sockburn.

But near Neasham, an old countryman caught hold of the bridle of the horse. Stoney raised his pistol, aimed at the old timer and was about to pull the trigger when he was knocked out of his saddle by the local constable Christopher Smith.

Stoney was imprisoned for the rest of his life and Mary Eleanor lived happily on oranges ever after.