The New Murrey and Blue blog

The Three Estates offered Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the crown when his brother’s bigamy was exposed, thereby bastardising his sons. Something very similar happened as recently as 1997, although there was DNA involved and not a bishop.

Anthony, 3rd Baron Moynihan, died in Manila during 1991, after an eventful life that had included five marriages, but only the first three were legally dissolved, in that his fourth wife’s signature was forged on the divorce papers, as the Family Division of the High Court determined in 1996. Daniel, born to his father’s “fifth wife” was illegitimate because the fourth Lady Moynihan was still alive at the time, however her son Anthony was shown to be illegitimate because he had a different Y-chromosome to his assumed father, as forensic evidence trumps the Statute of Merton.

The barony was determined to have passed to the deceased’s half-brother Colin, former Olympic rowing cox, Member of Parliament and Minister for Sport, who was admitted to the House of Lords in May 1997.