The Grampound Times
Easter 2007 (Edition 44)
Our community in Cornwall
THINGS ABOUT KINGS
I am grateful with every issue of “The Grampound Times” to MRS. BETTY MURDOCH, not only for her services as Hon. Secretary to the magazine’s Management Committee, but especially for the many contributions of articles, competitions etc. that she offers to me, many of which have clearly to be researched before writing can take place. The following article is a case in point and I hope you enjoy reading it as I have. It is entitled:
THINGS ABOUT KINGS
Louis XVI And Marie Antoinette might well have avoided the guillotine during the French Revolution if the Queen had not changed their original escape plan by insisting that the royal family should travel together in a larger slower coach instead of in separate faster coaches as had first been agreed. They were only 37 miles from the French border and safety when they were recognised and their escape blocked by pro-revolution troops. They were escorted back to Paris under guard and, as everyone knows, subsequently guillotined.
The King of Sweden is the direct descendent of a French lawyer whose son, Jean Bernadotte, rose through the ranks of the French army to become one of Napoleon’s marshals. Because the existing royal line of Sweden was dying out, Jean Bernadotte, who had impressed his superiors became, with Napoleon’s blessing in 1818 King Karl XIV Johan, thus finding Sweden’s present ruling house.
After his execution the body of Charles 1 st was interred without ceremony in the vaults of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle where it was to lie undisturbed for nearly 200 years. This had not been the royal family’s intention. At the Restoration of the Monarchy Charles II requested a reburial of his father in Westminster Abbey but then, to great consternation, it was announced that the body had mysteriously disappeared. However, in 1813, workmen in St. George’s Chapel, accidentally broke into the tomb of Henry VIII and Jane SeYmour where next to the coffins was that of Charles Ist. The royal physician, Sir Henry Halford positively identified the remains as those of Charles I, the lid was closed and the King laid to rest. But it seemed Sir Henry had a bent towards souvenir hunting - he removed the severed vertebra from the King’s neck, had it set in gold and for the next half-century he and his descendents used it as a salt cellar - until Queen Victoria heard about it and ordered that the bone be immediately returned to the royal coffin.
In London’s National Portrait Gallery hangs a painting believed to be of the Duke of Monmouth, the supposed son of Charles II. In 1685 Monmouth attempted to seize the throne, stating that Charles II had married his mother, Lucy Walter, in Holland, and that he, Monmouth, was the rightful heir to the throne. After the death of Charles II his rising against Charles’ younger brother at the battle of Sedgemoor was a disaster, he was captured and executed two days after being brought back to London. Just as his corpse was being taken for burial it was remembered that no portrait of him existed, a state of affairs that could not be permitted for a member of the royal family, however misguided. The head was therefore hastily stitched back into place, the body propped up in a chair and the portrait painted.
Britain’s Protestant Kings and Queens still bear a title given to them by the Roman Catholic Church, that of Defender of the Faith. Pole Leo X gave the title to Henry VIII in 1521 - thirteen years before Henry VIII broke away from the Papacy and made himself head of the new Church of England. This title, although originally intended as an honorary one, has been kept ever since.
The present British royal family’s surname was chosen by a commoner. Originally the family’s name was Saxe-Coburg and Gotha but during the First World War in 1917 it was changed as a gesture to anti-German feeling. The name Windsor was thought up by George V’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham.
The real King Macbeth of Scotland was very different from Shakespeare’s play. Macbeth’s claim to the Scottish throne was equally as good as that of his rival Duncan. Duncan was killed in open battle in 1040 and Macbeth, after he had seized the throne by force, went on to reign in Scotland for 17 prosperous years.
BETTY MURDOCH
© 2006 Grampound with Creed Parish Council