Davina Morley, who was known as Davina Sheffield in 1976 when she dated the future King Charles III while he was Prince of Wales, has died at 75 after a brief illness. Her three sons were at her bedside when she died on September 2, and her family confirmed the death on Friday, September 11. The British press of the day had widely tipped her as a possible royal bride.
Born Davina Mary Sheffield on March 1, 1951, she was the younger of two daughters of Captain George Berkeley Sheffield, a Grenadier Guards officer and himself a younger son of the baronet Sir Berkeley Sheffield. Her mother, Agnes, was a daughter of the first Lord McGowan — Harry McGowan, the Scottish industrialist who led Imperial Chemical Industries for two decades. There was no royal blood in the family and no ancient aristocratic lineage, yet its social standing was real: the Sheffield line traces back to King Charles II, and Samantha Cameron — born Samantha Sheffield, wife of former Prime Minister David Cameron — was a cousin.
Burglars murdered her mother at the family’s home in Oxfordshire in February 1976, an attack described as a “brutal murder.” Her mother was 62. Her romance with the prince was reported to have grown stronger over the months that followed.
Debutante Days and a Chance Meeting
She joined the debutante season after leaving school, and by her early 20s she had taken a job in a dress shop. In late 1974 she traveled to Saigon, in South Vietnam, to volunteer at an orphanage for young boys, and photographs from 1975 show her at work there. Only weeks after she arrived, the advancing Vietcong forced her out. She rode confidently, too, and photographers caught her at the Cotswold Hunt cross-country riding event in 1979.
Lady Jane Wellesley, a daughter of the 8th Duke of Wellington, introduced the two over dinner in 1974; her own short-lived romance with the prince had come the previous year, in 1973. Sheffield was already seeing someone and hesitated at first, according to Penny Junor, a biographer of Charles. The prince invited her to Balmoral for the August Bank Holiday, and reports had her passing the so-called Balmoral test there by rising early enough to see the shooting party off.
The Romance Plays Out in Public
The cameras found the pair over and over through 1976 — at Smith’s Lawn, at the Guards Polo Club in Windsor, carriage-driving at Windsor, and side by side in the prince’s open-top Aston Martin. According to Anthony Holden, another biographer of Charles, she was the one girlfriend he was happy to be pictured with in public. Charles was then commanding the Royal Navy coastal minesweeper Bronington, and he was said to have pinned her photograph inside his locker. He was reported to have dated some 20 women in the decade before his marriage.
Accounts from the period had the prince deeply taken with her, and his family warm toward her. “She and Charles were wonderful together,” a friend told the Daily Mail. Royal author Michael Rhodes described her as “a great match” for the future king. Of all the women linked to Charles before his marriage, she was regarded as the most plausible future queen, and by October 1976 press reports held that an engagement announcement was imminent.
The courtship ended over a disclosure by a former boyfriend, the Old Harrovian powerboat racer Jake Beard. The Telegraph’s obituary says in its standfirst: “When Jake Beard revealed that he had had a ‘full sexual relationship’ with Davina, Palace protocol forbade a royal marriage.” Reporters from the News of the World tracked Beard down and drew from him an account of living with her at a cottage he owned near Winchester.
Marriage and a Life Away From the Cameras
She married Jonathan “Jake” Morley in 1981, the same year Charles married Lady Diana Spencer. An Old Etonian and a brigadier-general’s son, Morley worked as a commodity broker in the City of London. Friends and royal correspondents have described him as the “love of her life.”
The couple made their home on a large estate in Yorkshire, far from the press attention that had trailed her through the 1970s. Jake Morley died in April 2022 at the age of 80.
Her three sons with Jake Morley — Thomas, Dominic and Sebastian — survive her, as do two stepsons. Her family said a celebration of life service is being arranged for November.
A royal insider, in comments published September 14, told New Idea how Queen Camilla reacted to the press coverage of the old romance. “Camilla was profoundly upset to hear Davina described as Charles’s soulmate,” the insider said, adding: “It was a shock to hear another woman be described as his ‘soulmate’. For the past 30 years, Charles has told her in no uncertain terms that she was his ‘soulmate’.”