A deathbed confession made by a Scottish minister in 1872 stayed hidden for more than 130 years before it became public. In 2006, the secret revelation surfaced, claiming that Queen Victoria had married her Highland servant John Brown. Reverend Norman Macleod reportedly told his sister on his deathbed that he had officiated a marriage between the Queen and Brown. Macleod’s sister kept the confession to herself for 13 years, and the claim only reached the public domain more than a century later.
The relationship between Victoria and Brown began through her husband. Prince Albert appointed the 22-year-old Scotsman to attend to the Queen during royal visits to Balmoral. The two reportedly got along immediately, but it was only after Albert’s death in 1861 that their connection deepened. By 1865, Victoria decreed that Brown was to remain constantly by her side.
After 1873, Brown began wearing a plain gold signet ring on the pinky of his left hand. He was also provided with a house on the Balmoral estate, and the pair exchanged deeply intimate gifts. For the new year of 1877, Victoria gave Brown a card inscribed with the words, “My lips may give a message better of Christmas love than even my letter. ” Another undated card carried the message, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.
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When Brown died suddenly on March 27, 1883, at the age of 56, following a brief illness, Victoria was reportedly overcome with a grief she compared only to the loss of Albert. The Queen had a cast made of Brown’s hand in stone, complete with his gold signet ring still on his pinky. She also began openly wearing Brown’s mother’s wedding ring, a piece she reportedly kept on her finger for the rest of her life.