A FORMER boyfriend of the Duchess of York has walked free from York Crown Court after being found not guilty of beating up another of his former loves.

Kim Smith-Bingham, 50, spoke of his faith in British justice after he was acquitted of causing actual bodily harm to eventing rider Chantal Bond.

It took a jury 50 minutes to return its verdict at the end of a three-day trial into events following a pub function of the Middleham Hunt.

"I don't know what the tabloids are going to make of that," Judge Geoffrey Marson QC told Mr Smith-Bingham. "But you will leave my court without a stain on your character."

Mr Smith-Bingham, of Fold Court, Buttercrambe, denied causing her actual bodily harm and smiled at the jury's verdict.

In a statement delivered outside the court, the 50-year-old general manager of a horse masseur business, said: "At my very first police interview, I said I had faith in British justice," then left to follow his supporters, who had sat throughout the trial in the public gallery. His former partner was not in court to hear the jury acquit him of beating her up.

Both featured in a Sunday tabloid gossip column a couple of years ago at the start of their relationship when his marriage was breaking up.

He hit the headlines after it was revealed he had been the man in Sarah Ferguson's life. She was a teenager at the time and had yet to meet her future husband, Prince Andrew. Among those who gave character references for him at his trial were Judge Simon Hammond, from Leicestershire, who used to hunt with him with the Cottesmore Hunt, and David Batten, a bloodstock manager from Tattersalls, where he once worked.

During the trial, Ms Bond alleged Mr Smith-Bingham had attacked her without warning in the car park behind the doctor's surgery in Terrington. Both had spent the evening separately at a Middleham Hunt quiz night at the village's Bay Horse pub.

He told the jury he caught her vandalising his car and had to restrain her when she attacked him without warning.