Dorothea Jordan Dorothea Jordan Dorothea Jordan (22 November 17615 July 1816) also known interchangeably as Mrs Jordan, and previously Miss Francis or Miss Bland, was an Anglo-Irish actress, courtesan, and the mistress and companion of the future King William IV of the United Kingdom, for 20 years while he was Duke of Clarence. Together they had ten illegitimate children, all of whom took the surname "FitzClarence". Dorothea (often called Dorothy or Dora) Bland was born near Waterford, Ireland, on 22 November 1761, and was baptised at St Martin in the Fields, Middlesex, on 5 December of that year. She was the third
Dorothea Jordan co. Kerry, 1695/961760), Vicar General of Ardfert and Aghada, and Judge of the Prerogative Court of Dublin, Ireland, and his second wife Lucy (née Heaton). The reports about Dorothea's maternal ancestry are very sketchy, although it is generally stated that Grace Phillips was probably the daughter of a Welsh clergyman (who lived in the early 1750s in Bristol) but he has not been identified with certainty. Before April 1774, when she was 13, Dorothea's father, who worked as a stagehand, abandoned the family to marry an Irish actress. However, he continued to support the family by sending them meagre sums