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Prior Lover. Christabel Russell appealed the divorce decree to the House of Lords and won. In 1924 a panel of lords, Britain's highest court, ruled that no child born after a marriage could be declared illegitimate merely on the testimony of his mother or father. Two years later, a High Court judge reinforced this decision by issuing a certificate of legitimacy for Geoffrey. Not until after John Russell succeeded to his title as the third Baron Ampthill in 1935 did the redoubtable Christabel finally divorce him. He later married Adeline Hone, a vicar's daughter who bore the young John Russell.
The renewed challenge to Geoffrey's legitimacy has been simmering since the third baron's death in 1973. Geoffrey and John Russell had already agreed on a financial settlement of their claims to his estate. But then, spurred by relatives, John challenged Geoffrey's right to the Ampthill title. Geoffrey fought back, as he told friends, to defend "the honor of my mother."
At week's end, the lords adjourned without reaching a decision. The main argument put forward by Geoffrey's lawyers was that if Christabel had had a lover prior to her marriage, then she could not also have had an intact hymen. John's lawyers offered, unsuccessfully, to introduce results of blood tests of the late third baron's blood as evidence in the complicated paternity issue. Whatever the lords eventually decide, the only person who knew for sure about Geoffrey's parentage will never tell. Serenely confident and "without one backward look that saddens or distresses me," Christabel Lady Ampthill died in Ireland last month at the age of 80.