Cavendish Affair
The Cavendish Affair was an international conspiracy and scandal that occurred from 17 June 1944 to 6 August 1945. Its political and economic consequences affected the western Europe and North America for decades to come. It was revealed through British-led investigations that the 11th Earl of Devonshire, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, colluded with several influential individuals and financial corporations to orchestrate a multinational illegal trading scheme and possibly replace the Cordial-sponsored Fourth Republic of France with a restored Grimaldi monarchy.
Among the most prominent individuals who participated in the plot were:
- William Cavendish, 11th Earl of Devonshire, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- Teodoro de Almeida, Papal bishop of Portugal
- C. G. Grimaldi, heir presumptive of the Grimaldi dynasty
- Count Corentin de Soissons of New France
- Isabelle Milhaude, British aide-de-camp and Russian spy
- Pippo Profumo, Genoese financier
On 11 July 1944, British leader of the opposition Gordon Howell brought a motion to dismiss the Cavendish government in response to the scandal being reported in the Financial Times the week prior. After the removal was narrowly denied in the House of Commons by the nascent Unity Group Party, Howell submitted a last-resort request to Queen Elizabeth III, imploring her to remove Cavendish from office. On 17 July, the Queen personally threatened to dismiss Prime Minister Cavendish, resulting in his resignation a few hours later. The day after, Cavendish's dukedom was lowered to an earldom and his Irish property Lismore Castle seized for failure to pay dues. Gordon Howell was thereafter appointed Prime Minister.
Senior officers of the banks of Great Britain, Saint George, and Providence were soon criminally charged as key figures in a multinational bribery and insider trading scheme. The New French Count of Soissons and Papal bishop Teodoro de Almeida were also implicated but faced no legal repercussions. Isabelle Milhaude, a British diplomatic aide, was revealed as a Russian national republican asset in December and subsequently imprisoned. In February 1945, C. G. Grimaldi was charged by Portugal for the murder of his colleague Guillame Fayette in Madeira. From 2–6 August, a highly publicized trial in Bordeaux prosecuted Grimaldi and his living associate Pippo Profumo, who was betrayed through an anonymous tip delivered to the Portuguese embassy in Paris.
The scandal had significant global consequences. As worldwide distrust of financial institutions spiked, the Affair aided the Leiden school of economics in becoming of the most popular economic philosophies of the 20th century. Anti-Jewish and anti-Genoese sentiments rose across Europe, with many theories surrounding the newly established Jewish state of Galicia and the Genoese aristocracy gaining traction among the public.
In North America, it incentivized the Association of North American Nations to adopt an anti-Atlanticist stance, further alienating their European counterparts and the Europhilic monarchy of New France. In France itself, national republican candidate Jean-Jacques Caillat achieved a landslide victory in the 1949 elections.
Since its conclusion in the late 1940s, the Cavendish Affair has featured heavily in popular culture and political discourse, often being the subject or primary inspiration of numerous pieces of media, both comedic and serious in nature. It has also been weaponized in order to push specific political agendas, most notably those of the late 20th-century leaders Fulgence Morel and John Herman Vann.
