Charles Marsack

Charles Marsack was an East India Company army officer and landowner who, from seemingly humble origins had made a fortune in India, and according to stories first published in Burke's Landed Gentry in 1894, was reputedly the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales or of King George II by a so-called Comtesse de Marsac. He was said to have been born about 1735–36 but was probably born in 1747–48 and was said to have married in 1767. He was actually the son of Jean Charles Marsac (1708–1751), a servant to one of George II's pages, Joachim Lorentz Sollifoffer, who in his will made generous provision for the widowed Margaret Marsac née Saunders and her child Jean Charles who was his godson. Jean Charles Marsac's father was the son of a migrant from Poitou, also called Charles Marsac, a carpenter, who had come to England before 1704/5. Jean Charles Marsac was usually called Charles Marsac and was apprenticed as a weaver. He died in Kensington in 1751, having married at St Martin in the Fields in 1745/6 one Margaret Saunders who was probably related to Thomas Saunders, standing wardrobe keeper to George I and George II. She married secondly at St George's Chapel, Mayfair, John Holcroft, and died in 1785, her administration being granted to Charles Marsack her 'natural and lawful son'. By her second husband she had a daughter Margaretta Holcroft (1755–1785) who lived with William Roome and had several illegitimate children by him who spread the story that she was the daughter of Margaret, Comtesse de Marsac.