Original Article: "Roya Bastards" http://www.wars-genealogy.co.uk/royal_bastards.htm
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Sex, power, mystery and blood - gripping, untold stories about the British monarchy, and a sensational investigation using DNA to establish the Blood Line of the Royal House of Stuart.
Since 1066 when William the Conqueror (alias William the Bastard) took the throne, English and Scottish kings have sired at least 150 children out of wedlock. Many were acknowledged at court and founded dynasties of their own – several of today’s dukedoms are descended from them. Others were only acknowledged begrudgingly. In the 20th century, the trend for royals to father illegitimate children did not change - but the parentage, while highly probable, has not been officially recognised at all.
This book is a new, genuinely fresh approach to 'Kings & Queens' on British television. It is strongly rooted in four, focused themes about well-known monarchs. But we see them and their times through the unfamiliar perspective of their bastard children. Interviewees include many of the royal bastards' descendants. Beyond the personal narratives, this book sheds light on the perennially fascinating national obsessions of sexual habits; the links between politics, power and patronage; the class system; the press, gossip, sleaze, scandal and celebrity; the different expectations we have of men and women.
Two leading genealogists have already done the groundwork for the book - they have trawled public archives and gained access to private papers, including those kept by the royal family. Beyond colour and anecdote, their investigations have unearthed startling new material. And in the final analysis there is the DNA sequencing used to determine the DNA of the Royal House of Stuart.
Here are the major themes of the book.
Henry the Nineth? (or A Tale of Two Bastards)
Henry VIII famously divorced two wives and beheaded two others in his desperation for a son. In fact he already had one, young Henry Fitzroy, and as this book demonstrates he brought him up as a Prince and toyed with the idea of making him his heir. And while Catherine of Aragon endured her last, fruitless pregnancy, Henry took solace with one of her Maids of Honour, Elizabeth Blount.
Though Henry was born without fanfare in Essex at one of his father’s secret love-nests, the King soon brought the boy he called 'his worldly jewel' to Court and showered him with titles and honours. By the time he was six he was Duke of Richmond, ranking higher than any other duke. Ironically, young Henry's education was entrusted to 'My Lord, the Bastard' - Arthur Lisle, the illegitimate son of Henry's grandfather Edward IV, who was effectively the last of the male Plantagenets.
Henry and Arthur's intertwined lives were played out amidst the terror, carnage, sexual intrigue and national crisis of Henry's tyrannical rule, when few aristocrats would have safely bet on their own heads. Lisle was suspected of treason and banged up in the Tower for two years, suspected of plotting a Plantagenet restoration. Shortly after a Privy Council meeting in which it was suggested that Henry legitimise young Henry, the latter died in mysterious circumstances. Poison was suspected, with Anne Boleyn's family the prime suspects.
This book reveals that young Henry’s lived out his life in a vortex of intrigue and consequence. This is the central theme of a book which has the breadth to consider everything from Shakespeare's famously sympathetic portraits of bastards to Tudor methods of birth control.
'Come hither you little Bastard!'
Legendary libertine Charles II had fourteen 'official' bastards by seven different mothers. They included Nell Gwynn, who famously greeted their first child with the words 'Come hither you little Bastard!' while the proud father stood by. Many of Charles' mistresses were as promiscuous as their royal lover.
Barbara Villiers, according to the scandal-sheets and tabloids of the day, chalked up over a dozen lovers and thought nothing of two-timing the King. Meanwhile Charles' marriage to his Portuguese wife Catherine of Braganza remained childless - though Bombay, Tangiers and a massive dowry must have been some consolation.
This book explores the lives and loves of the King and his mistresses and tells the stories of some of their children. Key interviewees include some of the thousands of people, from all walks of British life, who are descended from Charles via his bastards. The book opens with the first ever reunion of descendents of Nell Gwynn.
Among those who will attend are a painter/decorator from Luton and a Kensington chartered accountant, who thanks to Nell Gwynn's charms, is today the Duke of St Albans and the 'Hereditary Grand Falconer of England'. DNA testing establishes the common paternal ancestry of these last surviving Stuarts.
Of all King Charles II’s bastards, the Duke of Monmouth was undoubtedly his favourite. Born in Rotterdam, the child of Lucy Walter, Charles' oldest flame from pre-Restoration days, "he was the King’s greatest delight" and according to one contemporary possessed "an air of greatness". But "his mind said not one word for him" and, like a chip off the old block, he grew up into as much of a rake as his father.
Eleven little bastards
This is also the story of William, Duke of Clarence (later William IV), his long-term live-in lover, the actress Mrs Jordan, and their eleven children (ten by her, one by London prostitute Polly Finch). Known as - indeed the original -'Silly Billy', George III's son mis-spent his youth acquiring what was said to be comprehensive knowledge of London's whorehouses. But his twenty-one year steady relationship (1790-1811) with London's celebrated comic actress Mrs Jordan was anything but a regency romp. This book uses evidence from the large hoard of letters, in the Royal Archives, written by the lovers and to their children, who were all given the name Fitzclarence. What emerges is an unrivalled portrait of an unconventional royal family, full of the minutiae of domestic life as well as grander passions, politics, partying and parenting. It's a story neglected because, though they had been welcomed at Court for a thousand years, time was running out for royal bastards. Queen Victoria would disapprove of her cousins as 'ghosts best forgotten' and herself became the chief symbol of a new era of moral rearmament, one that could be cruel and hypocritical to illegitimate children, however nobly born.
The indefatigable Mrs Jordan already had four bastards before she met the Prince and was the toast of the London stage for her wit and intelligence as well as her beauty. What is remarkable is that Mrs Jordan continued to work throughout her relationship with the Prince and was the family's principal breadwinner - the King being stingy with his son's allowances. Indeed, ultimately the relationship seems to have foundered over money as Mrs. Jordan’s acting career came to an end and their debts began to mount. In 1811 the Duke of Clarence coldly began a seven-year search to find a rich wife who emerged in the shape of a suitable German princess. Mrs Jordan died not long afterwards near Paris, alone, in poverty and misery.
The Prince's rebuff to his life-partner did not extend to their ten children. Indeed in 1830, aged 65, when he finally succeeded to the throne, he first of all tried to dispense with a Coronation on the grounds it was old-fashioned and extravagant, then insisted that, if it was to go ahead, his eldest son George, "Our dearly beloved natural son", should carry the Crown. The Fitzclarence children, however, were to have an increasingly unhappy time of it. They plagued their father for honours, appointments and above all cash, and bemoaned their lot when prudence, meanness and prevailing morals restrained the privy purse. In 1842, just five years after his father's death, George Fitzclarence shot himself at his house in Belgravia, using a pistol given to him by the Prince of Wales.
My Dad the King
Unlike earlier royal bastards, the illegitimate children that recent monarchs are alleged to have had are still largely shrouded in secrecy and have never been officially recognised. Perhaps the best kept royal secret of them all is the first full investigation into the paternity of a man whose physique, family history, and plenty of circumstantial evidence mark out to be the illegitimate son of a recent monarch. DNA tests will settle it one way or another. The details are too sensitive to put on paper.
The book will also consider the fascinating stories of two men who are likely to have been the sons of Edward VIII, who despite ‘not being very well endowed in that department’ had a number of mistresses apart from Wallis Simpson. One of Edward's alleged sons was the victim of Special Branch surveillance. When he recorded his family history on tapes, they were confiscated by the police in mysterious circumstances. He also claimed to be the recipient of a mysterious income, deposited monthly into a London bank.
