Royal Bastards

by Roger Powell

  There is nothing recorded to suggest Tim’s alleged Royal paternity, except for the fact that Vera’s eldest sister was Winifred (Freda) May, who was born in 1894, married 1stly in 1913 (divorced 1931) Rt. Hon. William Dudley Ward and had issue of two daughters. She later married again in 1937 (divorced 1954) Peter de Casa Maury who died in 1968. Freda Dudley Ward, as she was known, was indeed closely associated with the Prince of Wales and was well established as his mistress for sixteen years from 1918-34, before being peremptorily dismissed. This was brought about by the Prince’s sudden instruction to the telephone operator to refuse all calls from her.

  In a telephone conversation with the author on 4 November 2002 about his alleged Royal paternity, Tim did mention that he had contributed towards a biography of the Duke of Windsor by John Parker, entitled King of Fools (1988) as well as appearing on the Terry Wogan Show and on the front page of the Daily Express on 21 and 22 March 1988. Although there is no mention of any Seely in the index of that book, there is an anonymous reference to him in the text which we quote verbatim:-

  ‘He [The Prince of Wales] once spoke vaguely of a spot of bother he got into with a Swedish woman around this time but would not be pressed on the ‘bother’ and in September of 1934, he left Wallis to continue the holiday while he returned to England by plane for a series of public engagements he was committed to. It was towards the end of the month and, with Wallis out of the way, he had a brief encounter with a past friend whom it is said, would be left carrying his child.

  He had renewed his acquaintance with the beautiful wife of an old friend, a wealthy gentleman with whom he had been on close terms in the twenties. The couple’s eldest son (Michael) has memories of those days when the Prince of Wales came to call. Once he came home and found both the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York relaxing in their parlour, two future kings under the same roof at the same time.

  The children would all become keen horsemen, like their father and one of them was the subject of pointed gossip on the local hunting field. It was said that he was the illegitimate son of the Prince of Wales, the result of a liaison between the mother and the prince on that day in September 1934 when they were reunited for such a short time. The story was repeated to the author (Parker) from several different sources during the course of his interviews and eventually, the question had to be put to the family.

  The mother and father are now dead but the eldest brother (Michael) said ‘Yes, of course I have heard the rumour, though it was never confirmed to me by my mother. She was a very beautiful and very romantic person and dearly loved His Royal Highness in her youth. She used to confide in me a great deal when I was a young man, particularly during the war when my father was serving abroad. Is it possible my brother is his son? It is difficult to say, I can’t remember her saying anything about it. I think it is something best left alone; let the dead be buried with their secrets’.

  The story of the family’s possible links with Royalty have at times been acknowledged by the man who is the alleged illegitimate son (Tim). His sister-in-law said: ‘It became a bit of a joke, and he would sometimes laugh about the Royal blood running through his veins.’ The man himself is an enigmatic character. He broke the mould of his family’s landed, country life and became an actor, though he retained a great passion for horses, hunting and racing. The author (Parker) discovered him at his London flat where he spends a great deal of time seeking work in his chosen profession. Is he the son of the Prince of Wales?

  He replied: ‘I could not say yes to that question without damaging the memory of my mother and I am not prepared to do anything that would tarnish her name. I agree, however, that I have physical and temperamental likenesses to the Prince of Wales, particularly – I am told – in the way of my short temper and flashes of arrogance.’ These were his own words, and descriptions of his own personality. There was a very definite resemblance to the prince, but for reasons of possible libel the author is unable to name him, or publish the pictures he has of the man. These and various documents are lodged with the publishers.

  A further interesting fact emerged during the author’s interview. When a television series on Edward and Mrs. Simpson was being cast, the alleged son had considered applying for the part of Edward because of his likeness, both facially, and in his general demeanour. So is he the son of a once-King of England? If he is, Edward himself did not want to be reminded of it. In 1955, when the eldest son and his father were sitting on the veranda of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo, the Duke of Windsor appeared with his duchess. He walked over, they shook hands and briefly exchanged greetings. The duchess could be clearly heard in the background remarking, ‘Who is that?’ and then she called, ‘Come on, David.’ The duke obeyed and any connection with a past life was severed then and there.’

  Tim now dismisses his cooperation with John Parker as no more than ‘a publicity stunt by an out-of-work actor’. Today he claims his Seely ancestry is his true paternal line. Nevertheless the dates correspond exactly and there is an undoubted physical resemblance and a childhood friend attests to his pride in his Royal ancestry.

  His mother, Vera, a notable beauty, was born in 1903 and was thus nine years younger than the Prince. Presumably she had been introduced to the Prince by her sister. Certainly she came to know him very well and was given by him a beautiful silver dressing table set and had a sketch of the Prince which hung in her bedroom. However, at the time of Tim’s conception, the Prince also had Thelma Furness and Wallis Simpson in tow, having rather cruelly rid himself of Freda just beforehand. It would seem that this affair, if such it was, was very short lived, for there is no suggestion that any other of Tim’s siblings have a Royal father. Vera died in 1970.

  After being brought up in Nottinghamshire, followed by Eton and RADA, Tim became an actor and was active in theatre as well as films. Certainly, his most memorable part was as Edward Young, alongside Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando in the epic Mutiny on the Bounty in 1962, directed by Lewis Milestone. However, his first film, The Poacher’s Daughter, was made four years earlier, when aged twenty-three, followed in 1960 by Julius Caesar and Please Turn Over. In 1979, after a gap of seventeen years, he starred in Agatha, in 1982 in Kipperbang, in 1984 in Singleton’s Pluck, in 1985 in Plenty, in 1990 in Strike It Rich, in 1991 in King Ralph, as King of England, and finally in 2004, aged nearly seventy in Vanity Fair, a total of eleven films.

  Spotlight, the Who’s Who of the acting profession, records little about Tim or his acting career other than giving us his height of 5’9” with blue eyes and the name of his current agent, Mint Management of London SE22, having earlier been Britt Management of Ramsgate, Kent. It includes a copy of his photograph where the resemblance is striking. Happily, the Internet, was more informative as to his actual career.

  Tim has married twice; firstly in 1960 to Anne Henrietta Maria St Paul, formerly wife of James Dugdale Burridge and the only daughter of Horace George St Paul Butler of Wooler, Northumberland. They had a son Hugo, born in 1961, now a wine merchant living in Nottinghamshire, who married in 1991 and has a son Toby born 1996 and a daughter India, born 1992. Later on, Tim was divorced and he married again in 2001, Camilla Cartwright who hails from Ireland, although they now live in Castle Street, Farnham, Surrey. If Tim is the Duke of Windsor’s son, as would seem likely, he would be, insofar as we are aware, the only Right Royal Bastard still to be living, besides also being a first cousin to the Queen. But is this a true life story, or a role that he and his mother have been acting? To determine which, a first step might be to see if Tim and his younger and only surviving brother, James, share the same DNA y genetic chromosome as they should do if they are full brothers, sharing the same father.

  Happily, Tim has told us that he does not object to anything that we have written, although he says that he would really prefer to lay it all to rest, once and for all. Nevertheless he did agree to participate in Granada Television’s programme ‘In Search of Lost Royals’, which has been based largely upon
this book. We are told, however, that no admissions have been made!

  Epilogue

  For the sake of completeness and because there has been a good deal of comment and speculation in the tabloid press in recent years, we here comment upon two allegations that have been made, which would either qualify or disqualify those concerned from inclusion in this book. We can state categorically that we have found no evidence whatsoever for these allegations and therefore find that neither HRH Prince Andrew nor his nephew HRH Prince Harry are eligible for inclusion.

  HRH Prince Andrew, Duke of York, KG, KCVO

  The first allegation is that the father of HRH Prince Andrew Albert Christian Edward, Duke of York (born 1960) was Lord Porchester (1924–2001) and not HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. Lord Porchester, a childhood friend of The Queen who went on to become her Racing Manager from 1969, later succeeded his father in 1987 as Earl of Carnarvon, and was honoured with KCVO, KBE and DL. Although we understand that it is claimed that there are some physical resemblances between the Duke of York and Lord Porchester, these are always subjective and unreliable. Gyles Brandreth, in his recent book, Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage, rightly condemned the claim as ‘simply preposterous.’ He went on to show that the alleged conception dates between 20 January and 30 April 1959 whilst Prince Philip was abroad in RY Britannia, simply do not ‘stack up’ with Andrew’s date of birth on 19 February 1960. Whilst the Carnarvons have known of this rumour for many years, they have always been very annoyed and embarrassed by it and no evidence of any kind has ever been forthcoming. Therefore, legally and from every other point of view, the Duke of York remains the second son of HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh.

  HRH Prince Henry (Harry) of Wales

  The second allegation is that HRH Prince Henry (Harry) Charles Albert David of Wales was the son of Captain James Hewitt, Life Guards, rather than of HRH The Prince of Wales. Again, we have seen no evidence at all to support this allegation. Although much has been made of Harry’s red hair, this is, after all, a characteristic of his maternal Spencer family as much as it may be of Hewitt’s family. Indeed we have always understood that James Hewitt first met Diana, Princess of Wales in the summer of 1986 at a party given by Hazel West, the Princess’s Lady in Waiting, almost two years after Harry’s birth on 15 September 1984. Moreover, both Hewitt and Diana are on the record in denying that he is the father, as recorded by her bodyguard Inspector Ken Wharfe in his book Diana – Closely Guarded Secret. Nor, we believe, should any conclusions be drawn from the fact that Harry has joined the Blues and Royals of the Household Cavalry of which Hewitt’s old regiment, the Life Guards, just happens to be a part!

  However, recently the waters were muddied following a television interview on Channel 5 with Rob Butler, broadcast on 22 September 2005, which Hewitt gave whilst hyponotised. It was during which Hewitt made a number of admissions. These included that he had first met Diana at a polo match at Tidworth in 1981 and saw her again a few months later which was when their relationship started, as had also been mentioned by Private Eye. This, of course, is three years earlier than all the accounts he had given previously, and if true, it would make the possibility of paternity more likely. However, it seems incredible that Diana would have embarked upon an affair within months of her marriage to the Prince of Wales which took place on 29 July 1981, which, after all, seemed to augur so well. Nor is it credible that it would have taken place during the time leading up to the birth of Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales on 21 June 1982 about whose paternity there never seems to have been any question.

  We do not find Hewitt’s hypnotic ramblings to be credible and we have heard nothing convincing, legally or otherwise, to indicate that Prince Harry is not the younger son of the Prince and Princess of Wales.

  Appendix I

  Bastardy

  By Cecil Humphery-Smith, OBE, FSA, Principal of the Institute of Heraldic & Genealogical Studies

  Children begotten or born out of wedlock were generally regarded as illegitimate, though Statutes of State have, from time to time, interpreted the meaning and, for example, a child born under an annulled marriage is deemed not to be illegitimate and the subsequent marriage of parents usually legitimated those children born before. Most European countries had regarded illegitimate children as virtual outlaws and in those countries where Roman law operated, there were no inheritance rights for the illegitimate child. It is presumed that unless there is any clear evidence to the contrary, a child is born legitimate within a marriage and it is insufficient evidence of another paternity to question the reputation of the mother. While natural parents are usually given custody of their illegitimate offspring, in law the mother would be given priority and while fathers formerly had no legal obligation to support, many laws have been introduced to change this in favour of the child and, ultimately, of the mother. The subsequent marriage of the parents of an illegitimate child may grant him all rights of the legitimate child in law, but in armorial matters he remains a bastard.

  ‘I am the son of my father……according to my mother!’

  Tristram Shandy in Lawrence Sterne’s novel of the name.

  Certainly there was a considerable stigma upon illegitimacy in all classes of the agricultural, trading and labouring classes, but as the Marquis Ruvigny states in his Plantagenet Roll, (Mortimer-Percy volume), ‘with few exceptions, none have descended to or are at least traceable among the trading or labouring classes’. All that this really means is that Ruvigny did not trace them.

  John of Gaunt and Edward I produced enough progeny to bring all their descendants into the lower echelons of English society within a century or two. Anthony Wagner in English Genealogy points out that there were nineteen settlers in New England before 1650, with established descents from Edward I, and at the best they were tradesmen. Samuel Pepys suggests that hardly one of them is not already branded on the hand for some criminal offence, and Daniel Defoe went out of his way to denigrate most of them. However, most provide gateway ancestors to royal ancestry, and among them are the illegitimate issue of the several members of the Royal Family of the past

  One of the earliest significant marriages to spread the royal blood was that of Sir Roger Kynaston to Elizabeth Grey. She was seventh in descent from Edward I through Edmund of Woodstock and eighth in descent from Edward I through Joan of Acre. Her mother was Antigone, the bastard daughter of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who died in 1447. Humphrey was son of King Henry IV. While the Beauforts were legitimated by Act of Parliament, Joan, who died in 1445 and was the granddaughter of John of Gaunt, married first in 1424 James I of Scotland, and secondly in 1439, Sir James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn, thereby carrying the English royal blood into many Scottish families.

  Clearly, the larger the families, the less could be done to assist the social progress of the younger children and it has often been said that the fourth child of the fourth child of an Earl is no longer interested in his blood or his armorial bearings, even if he should know that he has any. He would be far more concerned with making a success of a subsistence career, when he is apprenticed to some cum-brother of a craftsman’s guild. No doubt, therefore, most bastards of royal and noble blood have remained unknown, but many were acknowledged and provided for, descendants being innumerable. Several scholars have, for example, written about the descents from Henry VII’s bastard, Sir Roland de Velville, who died in 1553 (see page 177). He was the grandfather of Catherine of Berain, who died in 1591. Her progeny, by her three husbands, was so great in North Wales that she was known as Ma’m Cymru, though perhaps much more infusion of royal blood into the English people came through Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who died in 1147. While Catherine may be called ‘mother of Wales’, he, one of the many bastards of King Henry I, might be described as ‘father of England’.

  That the church took a dim view of illegitimacy is obvious from the number of records of penances inflicted by the ecclesiastical courts for the incontinence of parents. Th
is is not the place to go into the nature of the penances and punishments for fornication and adultery which, it is perhaps a relief to know, hard and shaming as they were, do not compare with the one that Christ himself stopped or those inflicted even today in Muslim countries. Judging by parochial records of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the birth of an illegitimate child seems to have been a fairly unusual event. The increase of movement of the populous following the destruction of the social services provided by the several religious orders at the dissolution of the monasteries, led not only to more profligacy but to the propagation of the tenets of the increasing number of Protestant preachers. By the seventeenth century, the occurrence of mention of illegitimacy in parochial records becomes more common, and commoner still by the eighteenth century. From the 1750s onwards there was no great consternation among the local populous in any rural parish to encountering the extent of the occurrence of bastards. Parochial concern seems to have been social, rather than moral, by that time. Before enclosure, which soon followed the dissolution of the monasteries, the general standard of living among the peasantry was relatively high, even by the end of the seventeenth century, some form of housing was readily available for the labourer. Then with the development of mechanical tools to assist farming, squatters were discouraged from the common lands and manorial lords began to destroy the cottages at about the same time as the population was rapidly increasing. No longer could scraps of land be taken to set up small farms, nor was copyhold readily obtained. The moral restraints of the Old Faith had long gone and tenements and cottages were largely destroyed because the poor were a charge upon the parish.