According to leading gossip columnist and author Penny Junor "Johnny could be violent, and [Frances] felt she and her children would be safer out of the home."[6] Their daughter Diana also recalled "seeing my father slap my mother across the face and I was hiding behind the door and she was crying."[6]
Divorce and remarriage
Ardencaple house
Her marriage to Viscount Althorp was not a happy one and, in 1967, she left him to be with Peter Shand Kydd, an heir to a wallpaper fortune in Australia, whom she had met the year before. His half-brother was the former champion amateur jockey William Shand Kydd (1937–2014), who was the brother-in-law of John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan. [2] Frances lived with her two youngest children, Diana and Charles, in London during the separation in 1967, but during that year's Christmas holidays, Viscount Althorp refused to let his children return to London with their mother.[7] He was granted custody of their children by the courts after his former mother-in-law, Lady Fermoy, testified against her own daughter Frances.[8]
Frances and Peter Shand Kydd were married on 2 May 1969 and lived on the Scottish island of Seil, where they bought an 18th-century farmhouse called Ardencaple,[9] 10 kilometres from Oban. She divided her time between London, Seil and another sheep farm in Yass, New South Wales. On 14 July 1976, John Spencer, now the 8th Earl Spencer, married Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, daughter of the novelist Dame Barbara Cartland.[10] Although Frances lived a quiet life, she was forced into public view following the engagement of her daughter Diana to Prince Charles on 24 February 1981.[11] Frances and her second husband Peter separated in June 1988.[3] In 1993 Peter Shand Kydd married Marie-Pierre Palmer (née Bécret),[12][13] a French woman who ran a champagne-importing business in London.[14][page needed]
Later years
In 1996, she was banned from driving after being convicted of drunk driving,[15] but denied she had a problem with alcohol. She and Diana quarrelled in May 1997, after she told Hello! magazine that Diana was happy to lose her title of "Royal Highness" following her controversial divorce from Prince Charles. She was reportedly not on speaking terms with her daughter by the time of Diana's death.[16][17][18]
She spent her later years in solitude on Seil.[19] She became a Catholic and devoted herself to Catholic charities.[2] She eventually became involved with The Hosanna House and Children's Pilgrimage Trust, the Royal National Mission for Deep Sea Fishermen, the Mallaig and Northwest Fishermen's Association, and the National Search and Rescue Dogs Association.[3]
In October 2002, when Frances left her Scottish home to give testimony at the trial of Diana's former butler, Paul Burrell, burglars targeted her house and stole her jewellery.[20]
