The New Murrey and Blue blog

On Thursday, we published a presentation by “Useful Charts”, showing how the English throne may have descended had Henry VIII’s will been followed after 1603 as it had beforehand. Of course, the family in question may have fared differently anyway if Lady Katherine Grey, her Seymour husband, and son and Arbella Stuart, the latter’s wife, had not been imprisoned, just as Michael K. Jones’ Britain’s Real Monarch line would not have seen the Earl of Warwick, his sister the Countess of Salisbury and nephew Henry Lord Montagu executed or Montagu’s son eliminated as they were.

Anyway, here is another alternative line – the Jacobite claimants who were dethroned in 1688 and failed to regain it at Culloden today in 1746. Many of you will remember from Royal Marriage Secrets (ch.14) that Charles Stuart’s informal marriage to Clementina Walkinshaw, that would have been valid under Scots law (” by cohabitation with habit and repute”) wasn’t because the couple didn’t live in Scotland, thus their daughter Charlotte was illegitimate. He had no other children and nor did his brother Henry, a cardinal, so we are looking in a different direction. The full alternative line leads through Sardinia and Bavaria to Liechtenstein.

It is interesting that the late Princess of Wales is a descendant of Charles II but this is through the illegitimate Duke of Monmouth (RMS, ch.13) who has many descendents senior to her by male-preference primogeniture. This would have no bearing on the next succession but one.