 Many years later, in 1875, Claire Clairmont claimed to Edward John Trelawny, a biographer of Shelley, that just before her death Harriet left her children with her sister Elizabeth, and believed herself to have been abandoned by a new lover, 36-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Maxwell, who had been deployed abroad, after a landlady refused to forward his letters to her.However, Shelley himself never alluded to Harriet's alleged affair with Maxwell, and he offered no proof to the courts during his custody battle with Harriet's family that Harriet had been unfaithful to him with anyone, even though rumors about Harriet's alleged other lovers had been promoted by William Godwin and others, and even though such a claim would have helped his case.On 30December 1816, barely three weeks after Harriet's body was recovered, Shelley and Mary Godwin were married.