Though Paul Burrell was exonerated in court of pilfering 310 items from Princess Diana, the shadow of the 2002 arrest and trial continues to follow him, leaving lingering questions in the minds of many.

Was Burrell simply helping himself to these possessions, or had Diana entrusted them to him? The trial at the Old Bailey was abruptly halted when the Queen, via her lawyers, revealed Burrell had informed her he was safeguarding the items. Subsequently, Burrell agreed to return most of the belongings to the Spencer family.

Burrell is not alone in facing such allegations within royal service.

In the 1880s, Marie Downing emerged in the remote expanse of North Dakota, accompanied by numerous trunks filled with court dresses, jewels, and assorted valuables. Having journeyed to the furthest point on the route to Canada, Marie was far removed from her previous role at Buckingham Palace.

Marie had served as Queen Victoria’s dresser, and according to her account, the Queen had been so fond of her that she gifted Marie numerous items as tokens of appreciation for her dedicated service over eight years.

Like Burrell, Marie’s husband held the position of royal butler. They had enjoyed the luxuries of life in Victoria’s residences. Yet, they found themselves in a remote and frigid locale with just 200 inhabitants, where winter temperatures plunged to minus 40 degrees.

Marie had found a place which was beyond the reach of British law.

Royal butler Paul Burrell may have been cleared in court of stealing 310 items belonging to his boss Princess Diana

Marie Downing was Queen Victoria’s dresser and apparently the Queen loved her so much she bequeathed many, many items of clothing and personal adornments

But then, strangely, nobody came looking for her.

And so her story, which she was to tell again and again over the next 40 years until her death in 1933, was never challenged or contradicted. Had Queen Victoria actually given Marie so much finery that she was able to sell off portions of it to buy extra land and pay her grocery bills?

Or had she helped herself?

It’s a story with which Paul Burrell, ruefully, will find all too familiar. But Marie’s good fortune was that she was never interviewed by police or brought before a court – and instead lived, in the wilds of northern America, a local celebrity who’d lend out her dresses and other royal items giving her a status that nobody could match.

Marie had joined the royal staff at Windsor in the 1880s and, her needlework being so fine and manner so beguiling, she was singled out by Queen Victoria to become her principle dresser. She also spent time as a companion to Empress Eugenie, widow of the ousted Napoleon III, while she lived in England.

Queen Victoria, like Eugenie, held Marie in high regard and presented her with numerous gifts, such as a beautiful watch as a ‘form of rebuke’ after she had once arrived late on duty.

Indeed Victoria valued Marie so greatly that she apparently twice refused her permission to leave her service – she wanted to marry her sweetheart Harry Williams, butler to royal courtier Lord Stamfordham, but women of the Royal Household were not allowed to wed without the queen’s permission.

According to Marie, Harry grew bored with royal service and, hearing of opportunities in the New World he set his sights on claiming a piece land and farming it, set sail for America.

Did he help himself to her possessions, or did she give them to him? After a last-minute intervention by the Queen, who indicated through lawyers that Burrell had told her he’d kept the items ‘for safekeeping’

The young bride who sailed over from England became ‘the belle of the community in the eighties and nineties, with her elaborately embroidered and beautifully fitted gowns’

Marie followed many months later and on landing in New York was told by customs inspectors, much to her surprise, that ‘I had several more trunks than I claimed. Upon investigation I discovered the trunks were all labelled with my name – and I knew that Her Majesty had sent them.’

Victoria ‘had made sure that her favoured maid-in-waiting should have many reminders of the regal days she had left behind her,’ Marie said.

Did she really?

But you have to admire Marie’s pioneering spirit – when she arrived at the couple’s new home at Rolla, northern Dakota, she found it was a one-room log cabin with a hole in the roof.

Nonetheless from a life at ease and warmth in palaces and castles, she rolled up her sleeves and learned to stack wheat and drive a horse-team, ploughing the frozen earth. Slowly acclimatising to this shock transition, she became a local celebrity – not exactly difficult in a one-horse town with a population of 200.

‘Life in this social backwater was quickly enlivened by Marie’s tales of her time in royal service, as she opened her trunks and produced the royal treasures to show to her friends,’ writes the historian Helen Rappaport, who’s investigated Marie’s dubious claims.

‘Dresses, silks, laces, nightgowns of Irish linen with Victoria’s monogram, tablecloths, and silver cutlery, to name but some of them. The young bride from England became the belle of the community in the eighties and nineties, with her gowns of heavy silk, elaborately embroidered and beautifully fitted.’

Marie was singled out by Queen Victoria to become her principle dresser. She also spent time as a companion to Empress Eugenie, widow of the ousted Napoleon III

A dress worn by Queen Victoria for a Garter ceremony – survives today in the Prairie Village Museum in Rugby, North Dakota

Piece by piece, items were sold off to buy farmland or to pay for the meagre necessities of life on the Dakota frontier. Other things went to pay medical bills or to satisfy the vanity of richer local ladies eager to own something that had once belonged to Queen Victoria.

‘But would the Queen really have sent Marie “an elaborate gold-mounted saddle” for use in that rough-and-ready place after she apparently wrote and told her she had no saddle for the horse?’ asks Helen Rappaport, before answering her own question with a ‘Hmmm… ‘

Marie had brought with her a collection of jewels which had been sewn into royal head-dresses and collars, but had no sense of their true market value and sold off the diamonds and other gems for well below the market price.

A diamond brooch, ‘presented’ to her by Empress Eugenie, was sold to the Governor of North Dakota for his wife, as well as diamonds from a tiara.

And so slowly Marie’s priceless hoard of royal memorabilia melted away like Dakota summer snow. Some pieces were sold, others simply given away or lost, but one – a dress worn by Queen Victoria for a Garter ceremony – survives today in the Prairie Village Museum in Rugby, North Dakota.

Back in the 1880s, did Marie take this treasure-trove of historic possessions without permission?

Did Paul Burrell, in the 1990s, do the same? 

Two royal mysteries, over a hundred years apart. We’ll never know the answer to either.