Royal Bastards

by Roger Powell

  There were no other relevant references to Haddon or Gorbold births/baptisms, marriages or deaths/burials, although clearly there is scope for further research in India. We have come across no references to Clarence Haddon and we suspect that there will be little evidence to support his claim. Whether or not his mother was attempting to pass off her son Gerald as Clarence is not known, although to date we have seen no firm evidence of his existence.

  But be that as it may, Robert Lacey, the biographer, has rightly said that even if Clarence Haddon’s claim had been proved, it would have made no difference to the succession of the royal line. Many royals have had illegitimate children over the centuries, as we have seen, but although many of them may have been given money, it was never argued that they had any right to the throne, other than in the case of the Duke of Monmouth. A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman drew a veil over it all by stating ‘This is not something we could comment on’.

  Chapter XVI

  Windsor Loose Ends

  George, Prince of Wales, later King George V (1910) (1865–1936): The Mylius Affair (1911)

  George V is alleged to have had a number of liaisons before and after he was married to Queen Mary in 1893 and later (1910) settled down on the Throne. It has even been suggested that he was the father of the notorious Sir Anthony Blunt, although we have seen nothing to substantiate this.

  However, in 1892, George’s elder brother Albert, Duke of Clarence, known as Eddy, had died unexpectedly aged only twenty-eight, leaving George as heir-in-line to the throne. About this time, an ugly story started circulating widely alleging that whilst serving in Malta as a naval cadet between 1889–91, George had married morganatically Mary Culme Seymour, an Admiral’s daughter, and that he had had several children by her. As George had then been about to marry his brother’s fiancée, Princess Mary of Teck, which was duly accomplished the following year, it was argued that George had ‘foully abandoned’ the woman whom he had married in an earlier year, and the offspring which it was said that she had borne, in order that he might contract this bigamous marriage with the then Queen (Mary) under the Royal Marriages Act.

  Shortly after succeeding to the Throne, these allegations appeared in print on 19 November 1910 in the Paris based The Liberator, which described itself as ‘A Journal devoted to the International Republic’, Edward Frederick Mylius from Notting Hill in London was arrested on 28 December 1910 and charged with seditious libel. It was alleged that he was the person responsible in this country for the publication and distribution of this left wing magazine and certainly 1,000 copies were delivered to his premises on 23 November 1910.

  The hearing took place in the King’s Bench Division of the High Court before the Lord Chief Justice, on 1 February 1911 and attended by the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. The Attorney General, who led for the Prosecution, opened, followed by evidence from Detective Inspector James McBrian, Admiral Sir Michael Culme Seymour and from his elder daughter, (Mary) Elizabeth, the alleged bride, by then happily married to a Captain Trevelyan Napier. This was followed by evidence from her two brothers, Captain Michael Culme Seymour, RN and Captain George Culme Seymour, 60th Rifles, from the Crown Advocate of Malta, who had brought with him all the registers of marriages which had taken place in Malta between 1886 and July 1893; and Sir Arthur Bigge, one of the King’s Private Secretaries. The defendant did not give evidence or call any witnesses.

  The judge’s summing up drew attention to the fact that Prince George and Elizabeth Culme Seymour had only met once in 1879 when she was aged seven or eight, that neither of them were in Malta during the years in question and that Mrs. Napier had stated that she had only been married once in 1899 and that was to her husband. After only one minute’s deliberation, the jury declared Mylius to be guilty on all three counts. He was sentenced to the maximum penalty of one year’s imprisonment, after which the Attorney General read out a statement from the King who denied the allegations.

  After serving his year’s sentence, Mylius appears to have been unrepentant and in 1912 claimed to produce further evidence in a pamphlet published in New York. However, John Bull published an ‘unqualified condemnation of Mylius – final and conclusive refutation of a foul slander’ dated 10 February 1912 showing conclusively that the Prince was in Gibraltar between June 9th to 25th, the period during which the alleged marriage took place. But by then Mylius had been discredited and the press and public had lost interest in him. So ended this odd chapter, which, whilst not spawning any Royal Bastards, did give rise to a large volume in the Royal Archives, containing 152 pages of press cuttings from 166 different newspapers, at the end of which is a cartoon of a sovereign piece depicting St George slaying the dragon and entitled ‘The Sovereign that rings true’.

  David, Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII (1936) and Duke of Windsor (1894–1972)

  In Philip Ziegler’s biography Edward VIII, he suggested that in fact the Duke was impotent following a severe bout of mumps. Others have claimed, with what authority we know not, that the Duke ‘was not very well endowed in that department’. Nevertheless it does not seem to have prevented him from consorting with Parisian prostitutes during World War I, nor indulging in a string of affairs afterwards, many arranged by ‘Smiler’ Harry Tyrwhitt-Wilson. One of his biographers commented: ‘Indeed, during the whole of his youth the Prince was criticised for his over indulgence in the sexual act.’Yet when the Duchess of Windsor was asked why she had no children by her husband, she joked about his disability saying ‘The Duke is not heir-conditioned.’

  Among these affaires de coeur were those with Lady Rosemary Leveson Gower (born 1893), to whom he proposed, the younger daughter of Cromartie, 4th Duke of Sutherland; and Marion, Viscountess Coke, daughter-in-law of the 3rd Earl of Leicester and fifteen years his senior. As with his grandfather, most of his lovers were respectably married women, who, rightly or wrongly, passed off all their offspring as the children of their husbands. It is therefore very difficult for us to determine paternity as there is nothing other than circumstantial evidence to rely upon. None of the Duke of Windsor’s illegitimate issue were officially recognised or remembered in his will, and and in all probability his wife Wallis Simpson, who admitted ‘that he had had a lot of girls before me,’ was at pains to play them down.

  In some cases, the authorities seem to have been all too keen to remove every trace, as in the strange case of Michael Bower Spencer or Berkeley. In fact the allegation here is so weak and uncorroborated that it would not have been mentioned atall, were it not for the fact that it was told to us by Cecil Humphery-Smith, the well known genealogist, who was directly involved. For on 11 February 1970, an interview was held in Canterbury between Humphery-Smith and Michael Bower Spencer, who claimed to be a son of David, Prince of Wales (to whom apparently he bore a striking resemblance).

  At that time Spencer told Humphery-Smith that he was living at 227 Bloomfield Road, Bath and claimed that he had been educated at Dauntsey’s School, near Devizes in Wiltshire (which has not replied to our enquiries). A birth certificate for a Michael Bower Spencer shows that he was born on 1 March 1928, the son of Sidney Harold Spencer, a commercial traveller of Bath, by his wife Dorothy Marion née Upward, (born 1896) and they had been married on 21 April 1924.

  Later on, Spencer, described as an agriculturalist of Limpley Stoke, was married on 14 February 1957 aged twenty-nine, to Margaret Jill Filer, aged twenty, spinster, of Rosewell Farm, High Littleton, Somerset, the daughter of Leonard Joseph Filer, a farmer, but none of this had any Royal ring to it whatsoever. The following March, at Humphery-Smith’s request, Michael dictated more than half a dozen tapes about his life and family background which were duly transcribed on to thirty-three pages of typescript, which in due course were sent to a trustworthy journalist, who appears to have died without trace.

  Nevertheless, at 11.45 on 9 April 1971, Special Branch arrived suddenly, with a Sergeant Vicars in charge, demanding that Humphery-Smith should hand over these tapes, which he d
uly did, and he was warned that he would be in breach of the Official Secrets Act if he were to mention this matter to anyone. For the last thirty-five years he has said nothing.

  In these tapes, it was Michael’s view that his surname at birth was really Berkeley and that he was the son of Caroline Berkeley (whoever she was) by the Prince of Wales. If true, it is probable that he was farmed out to foster parents – the Spencers – and he alleged that Mrs. Spencer had previously fostered children in 1920s and 1930s but showed no signs of being pregnant herself in 1928. Michael also alleges that he and they had received funding from an unknown source on a regular basis until he became 21 in 1949 (or possibly direct to Coutts Bank 1928-59). However, we lack any corroboration for any of this, even though there are not dissimilar precedents in this book. But above all, the actions of Special Branch do indeed raise a great many questions in themselves.

  Nothing seems to be known about the alleged mother, Caroline Berkeley, whom Spencer alleges was confined during the significant months of 1928, having earlier been flirting with the Prince of Wales. Spencer also confirmed that he had been under surveillance by Special Branch from the age of eighteen (1946) and that they even paid off his bills. He also said that following the recommendation of one Bruce Ogilvie, at Danny Park, Hurstpierpoint, he took the transcripts to the Queen Mother’s Equerry, one Piers Leigh (presumably 5th Baron Leigh – born 1935). Spencer would now be seventy-eight years of age and if he reads these words, it might perhaps encourage him to come forward and inject some certainty into the situation.

  There is also a reference to an Australian half Aboriginal woman named Barbara Chisholm, who claimed that she was a grand-daughter of Edward VIII. Allegedly she was the daughter of Tony Chisholm (1921–87), an Australian grazier, who was the son of Mollie Little, the wife of Roy Chisholm. According to Lord Louis Mountbatten, Mollie was smuggled aboard HMS Renown for an afternoon, during the Prince’s world tour in 1920. She is alleged to have met the Prince in Sydney Town Hall the day before, when he accidentally stood on her foot. When he apologised profusely, she wittily replied, ‘Sire, tread on the other toe, its jealous!’ They talked for a while and got on well. She was good looking, witty and flirtatious and the Prince asked her to visit his ship. Nine months later a son was born, named Tony, who is said to have had an ‘uncanny resemblance’ to his alleged father, although not so petite. Tony was brought up and educated by the Chisholms, who were a wealthy family, owning a large station near Alice Springs and it is said that later on, he had an illegitimate daughter, Barbara, by an Aboriginal servant, although no evidence for this is forthcoming. Nevertheless, the story does feature in print.

  However there are two rather more serious contenders.

  (William) Anthony, 2nd Viscount Furness (1929–95)

  William Anthony Furness, or Tony as he was known, was born 31 March 1929. His mother was the glamorous socialite, Thelma, who had married in 1926 as his second wife the much older Marmaduke, 2nd Baron Furness, the shipowner and shipbuilder who was created 1st Viscount Furness in 1918. They were divorced in 1933 when Tony was aged only four. Thelma was formerly the wife of James Converse and the twin daughter (along with Gloria Vanderbilt), of Harry Hays Morgan, the US Consul General at Buenos Aires.

  Tony’s father was officially Marmaduke Furness whom he succeeded as 2nd Viscount on 6 October 1940, aged only eleven. In her book ‘A Lion in the Bedroom’, Pat O’Cavendish O’Neill stated that Tony’s father was vile to him and often said that as Tony was the bastard son of the Prince of Wales, he did not want to leave his money to him. In the end Tony and his stepmother did get half each, although Thelma sued her predecessor for some of it too. His elder half brother, Christopher, who won the Victoria Cross, had been killed in action in France five months earlier in May 1940. His father was described as a shadowy figure in Tony’s life and Tony always said that he did not feel attached to his comparatively recent titles and took no steps to perpetuate them by marrying and having an heir. Indeed that was the least of his preoccupations.

  However, two years after Thelma had married her second husband, she met the Prince of Wales and in 1928 she was accompanying him to Kenya on safari. Nine months later, she gave birth to her only child Tony, whom many people, including Tony himself, considered to be the Prince’s son. However, there was never any official acknowledgement of this and Tony, to his chagrin, was left nothing in the Duke of Windsor’s will. Moreover when he had visited the Duke of Windsor in New York following his mother’s death in 1970 so as to return the letters that the Duke had written to his mother, he was treated very formally and curtly. However, there has been mention of a letter written by Thelma to Queen Mary acknowledging the Prince of Wales’s paternity, but the Royal Archives say that they have no record of this. It is hardly surprising that all this uncertainty and rejection left its mark upon Tony, making him rather a sad, lonely and complex figure, psychologically.

  By virtue of his official paternity, Tony became heir to the income estimated at over £500,000 per annum from the considerable shipping fortune amassed by his father and grandfather, although much of it was tied up in trusts that he could not break. As Thelma had been baptised a Catholic, Tony was brought up as a Catholic and was educated at Downside and in the United States, being devoted to both his American mother and aunt, Gloria Vanderbilt. However, in later life, and particularly when he had left England to live a reclusive life in Montreux, Switzerland, Tony used to have above his bed, a portrait of his mother, allegedly by Singer Sargent, which he had facing the wall, because, as he said, ‘She was an adulteress.’

  Tony Furness took his membership of the House of Lords seriously, playing an active part in the Inter Parliamentary Union and as a member of the Hansard Society. But at heart he was always rather a rebel and refused to conform to rules not of his own making. In any event, his interests were unusual and diverse. For instance, he fostered cultural links with Mongolia, founding the Anglo-Mongolian Society, of which he was chairman, in 1963, and Tibet, being a Vice President of the Tibet Society. He also took an active role in the world of West End theatrical management, backing a number of unsuccessful productions and even forming his own company of theatrical producers, Furndel. He also held directorships in a wine shipping business and a pharmaceutical firm.

  Perhaps his most enduring interest was in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, also known as the Knights of Malta – the international Hospitaller order dating back to 1099. This he joined in 1954, becoming Secretary and later Secretary General of the British Association. He gave over much of his office in St James’s Street as the headquarters of the Order for almost a generation until 1979 when he became a tax exile. He was promoted many times within the Order finally becoming a Bailiff Grand Cross of Justice in 1988. For this he had taken the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Quite how he reconciled his vow of poverty with living the life of a tax exile and of a devoted gourmet is hard to understand. How too he fulfilled the exacting nobiliary requirements of this final promotion within the Order, having regard to his rather short and commercial Furness pedigree, is again hard to explain, unless he was acknowledged by the Order as the son of a Sovereign, as would seem likely, and for which there are special exemptions. Roman society abounded in stories of the affair between his mother and the Prince of Wales long after Tony had succeeded his father. The Chigi family (who had produced a Grand Master) were most certainly aware of it and, for the son of a sovereign, whether officially acknowledged or not, there are special exemptions and precedence for the recognition of inherent noblesse. Tony served as a member of the Sovereign Council of the Order in Rome and as a member of the Board of Auditors there where he was known as Fra’ Anthony Furness.

  Tony suffered from much ill health during his life, being invalided out of the Welsh Guards after six weeks and later suffering from diabetes. He died unmarried at the Order’s hospital, The Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in London in May 1995, leaving a capital fund of £20 million. London�
�s St James’s will never be the same without his stately progresses from Boodles to Overtons in a black suit and a black hat carrying a black walking stick and wearing the blackest of dark glasses. Except for his increasing size, a number people claimed to be able to see in him a distinct resemblance to the Duke of Windsor, although to others it was not at all obvious.

  Timothy Ward Seely (b. 1935)

  Timothy Ward Seely was born on 10 June 1935 and his mother was Vera Lilian Seely, the third and youngest daughter of late Col Charles Wilfred Birkin, CMG (of the family of Baronets of that name). Thus, more notably, he is the second cousin of Jane Birkin, OBE, actress and pop singer, best known for her song ‘Je t’aime moi non plus’ which was banned by Pope Paul XII.

  However, it has been stated by many different sources, including several from Nottinghamshire (such as the late Stephen Dobson), that Tim (as he is known) is the illegitimate son of Edward, Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII and later still Duke of Windsor, although his entries in Burke’s and Debrett’s Peerages show him to be a member of the family of Seely, Baronets, (whose motto is ‘I ripen and die yet live’) and from which the Barons Mottistone and Sherwood also descend. They record that he was the second and middle son of Major (Frank) James Wriothesley Seely, JP, DL, MFH, High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire (who died 1956) by his wife Vera, whom he had married in 1925. Other children born to the marriage were: Michael (1926–93), a racing journalist, Clare (1929–57), Cherry (1931–92) and James (b. 1940), but no aspersions have been cast about their paternity.