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Royal Pretenders

Bid to brand throne claimant mad

An ex-policeman who claimed to be an heir to the throne prompted enquiries to see if he could be certified insane, previously secret files have revealed.
Shropshire's Anthony Hall made speeches in the 1930s on his claim as the 11th male descendent of Henry VIII.

He was repeatedly arrested for use of "scandalous language" after speeches in Birmingham's Bull Ring, and was fined and bound over to keep the peace.

Details of the bids to silence him were revealed publicly on Friday.

Mr Hall challenged King George V to fight him, in court, for the right to the crown with the loser having "his head lopped off".

In June 1931 he issued a pamphlet, Open Letter to King George V, setting out his claim and his intentions, as King, to write off the national debt, create full employment and ensure free health care for all.

He would do all this alone, having abolished the government, and without claiming taxes from his subjects for the upkeep of his family.

But files released by the National Archives show his activities inspired correspondence at the highest level.

Mr Hall was known to the police having resigned from the Shropshire force in 1927 in uncertain circumstances.

The King's Private Secretary, Sir Clive Wigram, wrote in 1931: "His Majesty quite agrees that a stop should be put to his effusions but feels that it might not look very well for a man who is obviously demented to get six months imprisonment.

"Would it not be possible to keep him under observation with a view to his final detention in an institution, without actually putting him in prison."

'Not insane'

But a letter from Sir John Anderson at the Home Office explained that while Mr Hall was "eccentric and wrong-headed, he is not so obviously demented or insane that he could be dealt with without recourse to court proceedings".

Palace hopes of Mr Hall being written off as a lunatic were dashed when Mr Hall was examined by Dr Walter R Jordan, an "expert in lunacy", and Dr Hamblin Smith, prison doctor at Birmingham Prison, the records show.

While both thought his ideas outlandish, neither man was able to find clear evidence of his insanity.

Dr Smith said that "although sanguine" Mr Hall's schemes for paying off the national debt "do not appear, so far as I have yet ascertained, to be insane".

The intervention of World War II put an end to his claim to the throne. He died, still a commoner, in 1947.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west ... 222426.stm
I suspect we may get more details on this soon.
 
Yep, more from the Times:
Commoner who tried to push King off the throne
By Jill Sherman

Documents show that a man claiming to be a descendant of Henry VIII besieged the Royal Family

A FORMER policeman provoked panic in Buckingham Palace in 1931 when he insisted that he had a superior claim to the throne than George V.
Anthony Hall argued that he was the 23rd descendent of Henry VIII and tried to convince mass crowds at a series of public meetings in the Birmingham Bull Ring that he was rightful heir to the throne. He started raising eyebrows in Whitehall and Buckingham Palace after making “scurrilous” attacks on the King, including a threat to shoot him.



George V, the Queen’s grandfather, was forced to intervene to make sure that Hall’s campaign came to an abrupt end, preferably in an asylum, while making it clear that the Palace’s involvement should never come to light.

But “King Anthony”, who was born in 1898, served in the police in Shropshire and died aged 49, thwarted attempts to prove that he was mad: two doctors gave him a clean bill of mental health.

The story unfolds in correspondence to the Home Office and the Palace released today at the National Archives. Hall traced his ancestry to Thomas Hall, the bastard son of Henry VIII, who died in 1534. He also claimed that James I of England was a changeling and could not have been the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, because he was “goggle-eyed”, his head was too large for his body, his tongue too large for his mouth and his legs were so rickety that he could not ride.

“Now we know definitely that this man was an impostor and I will therefore call him the missing link,” Hall said at one of his meetings, which drew crowds of up to 800.

“In fact he is the cause of all the trouble because having proved that he was an impostor, it is obvious that all the kings who claim to be descendents of his are not entitled to their jobs and are not of jobs royal.”

In an open letter to George V on February 2, 1931, Hall first made his claim to the throne and asked the King to relinquish the “Imperial Crown”.

The Chief Constable in Birmingham raised the issue in correspondence to the Home Office on July 6, 1931, suggesting: “It is quite evident that this man’s mind is not steadily balanced and in the ordinary course no notice would be taken of him; but his references to the King are highly offensive and it might be considered desirable to stop this man behaving as he is doing.”

Further letters to a senior civil servant at the Home Office revealed that Hall “would have no hesitation shooting him as he would a dog. The King was a German, and had no right to rule this Country.”

On July 13 Sir Clive Wigram, George V’s private secretary, became involved, suggesting that a stop should be put to Hall’s “effusions”. He suggested to the Home Office: “Would it not be possible to keep him under observation with a view to his final detention in an Institution, without actually putting him in prison?”

Further letters showed that a summons was issued on Hall, calling upon him to find sureties or face imprisonment. Sir Clive sent a letter approving the proceedings but adding “so long as it is quite understood that His Majesty is in no way responsible for the initiation of them”. Hall was arrested on July 24 after making another “scurrilous attack” on the King in the Bull Ring and was then examined by two doctors.

The files include two letters from the two doctors who refused to certify him as insane. Walter Jordan, who examined him on July 25, said he was “unable to get facts definitely indicative of unsoundness of mind”. He concluded that his claim to the kingship was a case of a sort. Hamblin Smith, a prison doctor, said that he was also unable to certify Hall.

Hall was later found guilty of disturbance of the peace and fined £10.

Two weeks later, on August 12, Hall delivered his swansong in the Bull Ring before disappearing from Birmingham. “The police tried to get me certified insane and sent to prison for life,” he said. “Yes, without trial too . . . Well, people, I am going away for a while, but I shall be back later. Goodnight my friends, you may be my subjects one of these days.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 78,00.html
 
And additional snippets from the Telegraph:
Hall, 33, was a former Shropshire police inspector who had served as an ambulance driver at the front in the First World War and been victim of a poison gas attack at Ypres.

He maintained that he was descended in a direct male line from Henry VIII, apparently through a secret son born to Anne Boleyn before she became the second of his six wives.

He regarded James I as an imposter and he was scornful of the claims to the throne of George V and his German ancestors.

As he attempted to rally support in Birmingham and West Bromwich he told his audiences, who numbered as many as 600, that he would have no hesitation "in shooting the King like a dog".

He added that the king was "of pure German descent and must have a skin as thick as a rhinoceros. He should have been kicked out in 1914 when the Kaiser decided to have a bid for the Crown of England.

"If the renowned King Henry VIII was here today and knew that £500,000 was given to German dukes, he would have King George working in his kitchen and would spit in his face."

King Anthony proposed to pay off the national debt while simultaneously building millions of homes for the working classes, providing free hospitals and dental treatment and electrifying the railways.

The houses would be of Tudor robustness and a stateliness fitting to the dignity of the first nation of the world. A serious effort would be made to popularise portrait painting.

A ministry of pleasure would revive public pageants and encourage the manly sports of wrestling and boxing.

It would be an offence to sell beer that was not made with pure malt and hops.

He told his audiences that he had been the first policeman in Shropshire to obtain a conviction on a fingerprint; he hoped to be the first policeman to become King; also to become the first policeman to cut off the King's head.

......

It was 75 years ago today that Birmingham magistrates threatened him with two months in prison with hard labour, and that was enough to dampen his desire to reign.

His wife Ethel divorced him in 1938 for desertion and he died in 1947, leaving no male heir.
 
I'd like to know what merit there was in his claim to be descended from Henry VIII (a secret son born to Anne Boleyn before she became the second of his six wives???)
 
Must have been a secret to Harry, as he was desperate for a son, and would most likely have claimed a bastard as heir. (At least until Edward was born. Which was after he'd disposed of Anne for not producing a boy.)

More likely, if Anne did indeed have a son before she married Henry VIII, is that he didn't think it was his, but took it as evidence that she could produce a suitable heir.

Even so, I find it surprising that no illegitimate child of Anne's shows up in any of the succession disputes after the deaths of Henry, Edward, and Mary.
 
Re: Claim to be Heir to the Throne

He would do all this....without claiming taxes from his subjects.

That's more than enough for ANY government to declare a man mad, even a government as humane as that of George V.
 
A Times Journo said:
...King Anthony proposed to pay off the national debt while simultaneously building millions of homes for the working classes, providing free hospitals and dental treatment and electrifying the railways.

The houses would be of Tudor robustness and a stateliness fitting to the dignity of the first nation of the world. A serious effort would be made to popularise portrait painting. (eh? Stu)

A ministry of pleasure would revive public pageants and encourage the manly sports of wrestling and boxing.

It would be an offence to sell beer that was not made with pure malt and hops.
Did he become policy director for the LibDems instead?

I do like the idea of a Ministry of Pleasure though...
 
Re: Claim to be Heir to the Throne

Shropshire's Anthony Hall made speeches in the 1930s on his claim as the 11th male descendent of Henry VIII.

By 1931, wouldn't there have been a minimum of HUNDREDS of 11th generation (plus or minus) male descendents of Henry VIII, not only in Britain but in the US and Canada as well?
 
Re: Claim to be Heir to the Throne

OldTimeRadio said:
Shropshire's Anthony Hall made speeches in the 1930s on his claim as the 11th male descendent of Henry VIII.

By 1931, wouldn't there have been a minimum of HUNDREDS of 11th generation (plus or minus) male descendents of Henry VIII, not only in Britain but in the US and Canada as well?

You can bet your bippy! Thousands, even. On the very moderst assumption that the number of descendants increases at the same rate as the number of ancestors (barring incest, of course), you have

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16,384,...

There's room, in fact, for more than 11 generations in many lines, and some of those would probably have better claims than any particular 11th generation descendant unless he was in the direct male line all the way.

French Canadian women averaged 6.5 children each, versus about 6 in France, during the Old Regime, because Canada was healthier (bracing climate, farms laid out along the river slowing the spread of disease versus compact villages, a flatter economic structure, less VD). The descendants of a King might well prosper more largely than that.

I don't think 6 children each is a very improbable birth rate per fertile female in the vicinity of Henry VIII.

I'd like to see somebody prove there aren't descended from royalty.

There was a French gentleman from Normandy who proudly displayed a genealogy which proved that none of his ancestors went over with William the Conquorer in 1066. That's something of note. But his descendants have probably spoiled the claim since.
 
Re: Claim to be Heir to the Throne

littleblackduck said:
1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16,384,...

I was thinking of exactly those same numbers within the past two hours.

Before the coming of the Internet we couldn't trace my Mother's family back past 1848, when her great-grandfather fled the German revolutions of that year. But with the aid of the Internet we now have all the ancestors in that line back solidly to 1630 and almost as certainly to 1527.

[You have to understand that the majority of European immigrants to the United States simply weren't interested in genealogy and counted their family lines from the date they arrived in the new land. Made it rough for later genealogists.]
 
Re: Claim to be Heir to the Throne

OldTimeRadio said:
You have to understand that the majority of European immigrants to the United States simply weren't interested in genealogy and counted their family lines from the date they arrived in the new land. Made it rough for later genealogists.

Absolutely right -- my paternal greatgranny burned the records held in the local church once, and when the records were restored, burned down the whole church, just to hide whatever ancestors she and her family descended from.

Does make you wonder, eh?
 
I'm sometimes asked by European and British correspondents why Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics, Greeks and Turks, Serbs and Bosnians don't battle in American streets.

The answer's simple - they're descended from ancestors who were tired, tired, tired of all that nonsense. That's the REASON those families emigrated over here in the FIRST place.

Thus there was an Northern Kentucky eatery which advertised itself for years as "the Italian restaurant with the Spanish name in the Olde English building run by the German Jewish couple and owned by the Greek Catholic. Serving the very best in AMERICAN food!"
 
That's why Irish Americans gave so much money to the IRA then.
 
Ronson8 said:
Yep, intolerance by proxy.

irish american support for the IRA was hardly down to intolerence - it was rightly or wrongly because they heard about the very real oppression being heaped on working class catholics in the north of ireland (who yes they do see as kin) by the british backed orange statelet, and the IRA managed to present themselves as the best defenders of the catholic working class in the north.

calling it intolerence by proxy is very simplistic and unfortean imo, sure there was the romantic nationalist plastic paddy element to the support -but also a very real desire to see very real injustice and bigotry done away with.
 
lemonpie3 said:
That's why Irish Americans gave so much money to the IRA then.

Point taken, but that doesn't change the fact that Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants don't battle HERE, where they LIVE.
 
But it's also simplistic to make the "troubles" a strictly Protestant-Catholic issue.

I've met Irish-Protestant-AMERICANS who've hung out for years in IRA/Catholic pubs in Northern Ireland, "and never have to pay for a drink."

"Of course they know that I'm a Protestant," one of them told me. "But they ALSO know that I'm a American and the direct descendant of those patriots who chased the British right out of Massachusetts. And do I ever have a fund of stories about American Colonists fighting the British!"
 
OldTimeRadio said:
But it's also simplistic to make the "troubles" a strictly Protestant-Catholic issue.

I've met Irish-Protestant-AMERICANS who've hung out for years in IRA/Catholic pubs in Northern Ireland, "and never have to pay for a drink."

"Of course they know that I'm a Protestant," one of them told me. "But they ALSO know that I'm a American and the direct descendant of those patriots who chased the British right out of Massachusetts. And do I ever have a fund of stories about American Colonists fighting the British!"
It's not so much because an irish-american protestant is descended from 'patriots' all though that might sometimes be the case - it's because sinn fein/IRA is a progressive organisation, it's not a racist one - they know that an irish american protestant has absolutely nothing to do with perpetuating the orange state. also republicanism has a proud history of protestant involvement that can be traced back to wolfe tone and the united irish men. the IRA is not against protestants but against british rule in ireland and those who seek to defend it.

so yeah, you're still right - it's not a catholic Vs protestant issue.
 
I've changed the thread title to drop this in as well:
Jersey man claims royal parentage

A 51-year-old man from Jersey is trying to prove he is the illegitimate son of Princess Margaret, making him 12th in line to the throne.
Robert Brown is asking the High Court in London for access to the wills of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret.

In a summons, he cites the Queen, the Attorney General and the executors of the wills of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret as defendants.

The Queen and her representatives have declined to comment about the case.

Succession rights

Mr Brown has also tried, unsuccessfully, to get information from the Department for Constitutional Affairs as well as the Prime Minister's and Cabinet Office.

He claims the case raises the major constitutional issue of the rights of illegitimate children in the line of succession.

If Mr Brown was the son of the late Princess Margaret, he could become 12th in line to the throne - between Zara Phillips and Princess Margaret's only son Viscount Linley.

Mr Brown insists there is a public interest issue on the grounds of openness and consistency and says he would not object to the wills being made public, if they had once been made private to protect an illegitimate child.

It is not known when it will go before the High Court's Probate Division.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe ... 280732.stm
 
I posted a link to this webpage on the Things that make you say WTF! thread in Chat. But it deserves archiving here, I think. The page appears not to have been updated for some three years.

On a related page, the author shares with us his somewhat unconventional views about Christ:

"The "Jesus" nickname - it means "the Gardener" - refers to his ability to grow plants in slits cut into the bodies of his victims. He was totally reviled by normal people for his delight in the abuse of children and women and also nicknamed "Toad Face"."

I am just slightly tempted to ring that doorbell!

http://drakenfels.tripod.com/claim.html

My Claim To The Throne Of Great Britain And Northern Ireland


The King's Party Revived - Friday 26 April 2002

"N R Bassett
Flat 2
16 Seymour Road
Crumpsall
Manchester
M8 5BG
Great Britain


Friday 26 April 2002

Re: UK Monarchy - King's Party Revived

Dear Editor

Back at the start of the last century, King Edward VII of Great Britain and his advisers had decided that his second-eldest son, later George V, was unfit to succeed him because he was congenitally physically defective and unable to breed. He was therefore cut out of the succession. With the assistance of the press baron Lord Northcliffe, the Green Dragon Society's leader in Britain and the lover of David Lloyd George, that second son murdered his elder brother and an aristocrat picked to succeed him and his father Edward VII to take the crown of the greatest empire the world has ever seen.

At that time the eldest surviving son of Edward VII, known to us as Winston Churchill, should have succeeded his father, who had adopted him legally at his birth. At that time all the witnesses but one to his adoption were murdered and the adoption papers were declared forgeries by George V's party, the Dragon's concupiscents.

Being Head of the Wiccan Council of the Realm, and in that succeeding his father Edward VII who had ruled de facto since declaring insane the mad and murderous Queen Victoria after her murder of Prince Albert in 1861, Winston Churchill was able to protect himself and the surviving witness to his adoption.

After ten years in hiding that witness emerged safely since George V's treason in ordering 60% casualties inflicted on the British working class on the Western Front had been uncovered. In December 1918 the British Army came home and executed David Lloyd George and Lord Northcliffe in the cellar of 10 Downing Street. George V fled to Balmoral, two of his stand-ins were assassinated and in 1926 after he had asked the Russian Ambassador for asylum for himself and his family he was himself assassinated in Buckingham Palace. Another stand-in took his place and eventually that stand-in died.

There is no biological connection between the genetically-spavined George V and George VI the father of the current Queen Elizabeth II who was imposed on the people of Britain after Winston Churchill's coronation as Edward VIII in December 1945 in Westminster Abbey by right as the eldest son of Edward VII and by the acclaim of 10,000 of his officers was overturned by the Dragon's forces controlling America represented by Averell Harriman.

"The King's Party" is how Winston Churchill described himself and his adherents and the King referred to was his father, the murdered Edward VII.

Today, I declare the King's Party extant once more and my personal intention of ousting the murderous and criminal Queen Elizabeth II and her Balkan war criminal consort and restoring as Monarch the true successor of Edward VII.

Regards
Norman Richard Bassett
drakenfels.org"

I Claim The Throne Of Great Britain And Northern Ireland - Friday 18 July 2003

"N R Bassett
Flat 2
16 Seymour Road
Crumpsall
Manchester
M8 5BG
Great Britain


Friday 18 July 2003

Re: Today I Claim The Throne of Great Britain And Northern Ireland

Dear Editor

On 26 April 2002 I declared the restoration of the King's Party, the party of the concupiscents of King Edward VII.

Today I claim the throne of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by right of genealogical descent from Edward VII via my grandfather, wartime Prime Minister General Winston Spencer Churchill, and my father Lt Colonel John Edward Hargreaves DSO. I say that the succession of Edward VII's son "George V" was void because he had been dismissed by his father's judgement and on competent medical advice as genetically unfit to bear the succession, being unable to breed successfully because of severe congenital deformities. "George V" usurped the succession by murder with the assistance of Lord Northcliffe, head of the Liberal faction and chief concupiscent of the Green Dragon Society in north-western Europe.

I declare my personal intention of ousting the murderous and criminal Queen Elizabeth II and her castrated Greek war-criminal consort Prince Philip and installing myself as the true successor of Edward VII.

DEATH to Setephis, also called the Green Dragon and the Winged Serpent of Midrath, in all its concupiscenses!

Regards
Norman Richard Bassett
Claimant to the Throne of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for our God
Webmaster of drakenfels.org"

I Seek Support - Sunday 20 July 2003

"N R Bassett
Flat 2
16 Seymour Road
Crumpsall
Manchester
M8 5BG
Great Britain


Sunday 20 July 2003

Re: Claimant To UK Throne Seeks Support

Dear Sirs

Today I seek the support of the 10,000 officers who pledged their allegiance to Winston Spencer Churchill at Westminster Abbey in 1945 when he was crowned as Edward VIII. I seek also the support of other persons they have recruited to our cause in pursuit of his orders to them.

DEATH to Setephis, also called the Green Dragon and the Winged Serpent of Midrath, in all its concupiscenses!

Regards
Norman Richard Bassett
Claimant to the Throne of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for our God
Webmaster of drakenfels.org"


Please check this file regularly for further information.

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A slightly more likely candidate for being an illegitimate son of Princess Margaret has been featured in a BBC Wales documentary. Webpage here


Wall of silence

A BBC Wales programme took a fascinating look at the history of the mysterious mansion beyond the Vaynol Estate wall, uncovering the truth surrounding tales of scandal and a royal rumour.

The seven-mile stone wall surrounding the Vaynol Estate concealed the unconventional and scandalous lives of Sir Michael and Lady Caroline Duff. Surprisingly, their adopted son, Charles Duff, their only child, did not inherit the estate, further fuelling local speculation about his identity. Locals talk about a royal link, some suggesting that he is the illegitimate son of Princess Margaret.

BBC TWO Wales took Charles Duff back to the family home for the first time in 25 years. During this emotional journey he talks about his upbringing, a childhood surrounded by celebrities, society figures and royalty, and reveals the truth about his real identity.

"I love this part of the world... but coming back to Faenol itself has mixed feelings for me," says Duff, who now lives in London and is a theatre historian at The Globe Theatre and in the US.

His father, Sir Michael Duff, godfather to Lord Snowdon, and mother, Lady Caroline, daughter of Anglesey's Plas Newydd, were both bisexual. It was a marriage of convenience. They both had many lovers, with artist Rex Whistler and one-time Prime Minister Anthony Eden among the beautiful Lady Caroline's list of partners.

"It was such a strange childhood because it was so cut off, enclosed behind that grim and forbidding keep-out wall," says Duff. "It was like being in a wonderful prison, I suppose, but it must have been very exclusive."

The house was frequented by politicians, royalty and socialites, as previously unseen private family film footage and pictures show, featuring figures such as the Queen Mother, the Queen, Lord Snowdon, Princess Marina, Cecil Beaton, Princess Margaret, Prime Minster Harold Macmillan and Lady Dorothy Macmillan. Many of the photographs from the private family album were taken by Cecil Beaton.

"There was a lot of dancing here," says Duff, standing in Faenol's pink hall for the first time in a quarter of a century. "We had a carpet which was rolled up, and people danced and played games. And I remember Princess Margaret exhausting us by dancing all night - she kept us up most of the night. It was a place of great conviviality and energy and joy and this is what it ought to be, I think."

But the fun and frivolity began to fade when Duff was in his teens, with the deterioration of his parents' relationship.

"There was a malaise going on with him, I would say," recalls Duff of his father. "By this time he thought that he had made the most ghastly error in marrying my mother and I think that he thought they must have lost their reason adopting a child. I think he felt everything that had gone wrong with his life had been because of this - and he started to demonise both my mother and myself. I think that once that started to happen, to be frank with you, neither of us could really do much right."

But, in spite of this, a social front was maintained, and at the Prince of Wales' investiture at Caernarfon Castle in 1969, Faenol played a central role, with 18 members of royalty gathered here, as previously unseen archive footage shows.

The programme features a reunion between Charles Duff and former Faenol staff, interviews with locals who reiterate the rumours and local opinion of the family and historian, and archivist Gareth Heulfryn, who tells how all the Faenol estate records were burnt when it was sold in 1984, adding to the air of secrecy.

The programme also features an interview with the current Marquis of Anglesey, Lady Caroline's brother.

"She was a wonderful girl, a great lady," he says of his sister. "For a time she was an actress when she was quite young and quite successful. They were very unconventional, those people over at Faenol."

So what about the true identity of Charles Duff? He discloses that he knows his true blood identity and addresses the local rumours of a royal scandal.

"Producing this documentary was truly fascinating," says producer Llinos Wynne. "Charles Duff was willing to speak so candidly about his unconventional and sometimes painful childhood at Faenol. We were given access to hours of private film footage as well as the family albums. Many of the family snaps in the album were taken by Cecil Beaton himself. These alone were such an insight into what life was like beyond that familiar wall, but coupled with Charles' willingness to speak so openly, it creates compelling viewing."
 
King Michael of Oz

Royal-watchers speculated that Harry's venture into the Queensland bush last year was part of his journey towards manhood - that blokey Nirvana where Blunnies and RMs rule and even visitors, like Premier Peter Beattie, sport an Akubra to reassure country folks they might be out of sight but not always out of mind. Well, we've got news for Harry - Michael Abney-Hastings of Jerilderie beat him to the bush around 40 years ago and ended up doing what real men do - driving a fork lift and enjoying a beer and pie with the lads down at the footy club.

If, having inched closer to a manhood that appears to elude many male Royals, Harry had opted to remain here for a while, unlike Councillor Michael of Jerilderie Shire Council, population 1908 souls and famous only for being the site of Ned Kelly's last heist, Harry wouldn't have struggled to make ends meet. The job offers for young Harry rolled in and he was even touted by one of Her Majesty's Queensland Ministers as just the chap to slip into an ambassadorial role for our beef industry.

No such offers for Michael, 14th Earl of Loudoun (a title in the Peerage of Scotland created in 1633), widow of Noelene, descended of the last of the Plantagenet Kings of England, Richard II, who arrived in Australia as Lord Mauchline (or more correctly Lord Tarrinzean and Mauchline, also created in 1633) after the usual British public school education to try his hand as a jackaroo. According to one story, aired on ABC TV last month, this was to have been Michael's 'gap year' before moving back to the Mother Country and on to other things. According to another, he arrived as part of the Big Brother Movement, which arranged for boys and men of solid British stock to migrate to the end of Empire to ensure the soundness of the Empire line.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
On a related page, the author shares with us his somewhat unconventional views about Christ

I keep a special file entitled "Ravings" and just the other day was bemoaning the fact that I'd added nothing new to it for many months.

So thank you very much.
 
Wagner the First, King of Britain

I'm sorely tempted to formulate and publish my own claims to the British throne.

Yes, I realize that my ancestors (on both sides) were almost all Bavarian farmers. The one exception I know of was an Alsatian violin teacher named Emil Saur. (I sometimes wonder if he might have been related to the famous French violinist Emile Sauret.)

I STILL think I could make a case as strong as some of these other guys!

PS: That's to be Wagner as in "wag" the dog.

"Vog" I don't know.
 
From the sounds of your ancestry, I think you've got as good a claim as the current incumbents... ;)
 
OldTimeRadio said:
I keep a special file entitled "Ravings" and just the other day was bemoaning the fact that I'd added nothing new to it for many months.

I do apologise, I've been rather busy. ;)
 
Re: Wagner the First, King of Britain

OldTimeRadio said:
I'm sorely tempted to formulate and publish my own claims to the British throne.

Yes, I realize that my ancestors (on both sides) were almost all Bavarian farmers. The one exception I know of was an Alsatian violin teacher named Emil Saur...
I STILL think I could make a case as strong as some of these other guys!
Where do I sign? If one of your forebears really managed to teach guard-dogs to play the violin, then you get my vote for King, for what that's worth.

Unless the Alsatians played really badly - that would just be insulting.
 
'Splash waits patiently for violins
.
..
...

I think those Alsations need a bit more training... And that introductory Bark was a bit off key
 
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