The memoirs of Prince John De Guelph, rex et imperator de jure of Great Britain and Ireland

Front matter

VOS^,

V V"

THE MEMOIRS

Chapter II

Casper Hauser Redivius — not quite — Comparing the Early Fate of John De Guelph with that of the Famous Foundling.

Page 19 Chapter III

Marriage of the first Princess Consort to H. R. H., the Prince of Wales — Facts About the Marriage— The Place of Meeting of the Prince of Wales as a Young Man Page 24

Chapter IV

The Royal Family Council at Buckingham Palace— The News of the Prince's Marriage has reached the Queen — Plotting at the Family Council Page 30

Chapter V

The Royal Tiff— Lively Scene in the Queen's Closet— The Queen wants to Manage the "Affair" all by herself and the Prince Consort objects — Details of the plot hatched by the Queen — The Marriage to Princess Alexandra Page 35

Chapter XVI

My Welcome to India in Striking Contrast to that of my Father's — My first Impressions of the Land of Famine — "India's Coral Strands," "The Valley of Dry Bones"— The Dying and the Dead — Shape my Future Life and I resolve to solve the Problem— Incidents of Early Military Life in India. . .Page 152

Chapter XVII

Military Life in Secunderabad — I attend Military School — I begin the study of Oriental Languages — Sorrow and Solitude—Ordered to Cannonore, Malabar Coast — Incidents of March — Elephant runs Amuck in Camp! — Diamond fields and ruby mines of India and Burma Page 165

Chapter XXXVI

Business in New York — I found The American Statist — Interest myself in American Politics — A Lady of Worth — The American Legislative Union — Public Health Society to Raise the Standard of the Public Health Page 325

Chapter XXXVII Conclusion

Prince John Thanks his Many Friends and Faithful Supporters in the British Empire, the Press and many Friends and Supporters in America — Was "The lady in black" the Discarded Wife— the Rightful Queen of England — my Mother, perxii Contents

mitted to view the Remains of her Husband— my Father, the King, who, moved by a False Sense of Duty to the Nation and the Coercion of his Mother, had Discarded boh Wife and Child?

Page 334 DIEU BT MON DROIT.

MAY GOD DEFEND THE EIGHT.

ADDENDA Pages 339-1,61

ILLUSTRATIONS

Prince John de Guelph Frontispiece

Lineal Successor to Late King Edward VII.

facing page Prince John de Guelph 143

Rex et imperator de jure.

Prince John as a Missionary 285

His Majesty King Edward VII 288

Queen Victoria 306

Late Rev. Geo. A. Carpender 430

TO THE OPEN-MINDED READER

Heke comes a story, a realistic romance, which simply, as such, compels a reading by its human interest and sets us thinking over the mysteries of life and luck. The writer of these lines had known nothing of the author of the book, nor had he ever seen him, when by sheer chance some of its printed pages came to hand.

A general prejudice against claims of this nature gave piquancy to the reading. After allowing it full play, the outcome of a fair consideration of the entire case is this :

The claimant verily believes in his claim, which fact alone lifts him out of the vulgar impostor class. He is not a nobody, with nothing individual to claim our attention but his claim. He has lived a large life, crowded with activities so varied, and in the main so clearly conducted toward the introduction of desirable reforms in the Home and Colonial Government for the better administration of the Empire in the interest of the people, and in the furtherance of universal peace, as proven by the official data cited, that his story would be good and instructive reading without its supreme attraction — the claim. Then, independently of these features, stands the powerful protest against those by whose sanction the most sacred and legal marxiii xiv To the Open-Mmded Reader

riage of love can be shattered, its victims torn apart forever, the offspring outlawed from its birthright by the mere sway of a sovereign's sceptre, the decrees of the Bible and the Common Law which governs the common people, who make and unmake kings, set aside at the whim of a despotic or degenerate or meddlesome crowned head, or for the equally convenient screen, "reasons of State."

The personal interest is overshadowed by these vaster issues which it illustrates, questions of vital moment to every citizen of professedly Christian countries. The Eoyal Marriage Act of George III is no mere antiquated legal bauble, for royal jesters to tickle their courtiers' heads with. In cases besides the one presented in this book it can become a gilded bludgeon when wielded with intent to kill — say trifles like hearts, sacraments, fortunes or just laws. Its interest is not only for British subjects. Our Eepublic is fast linking itself, fashion by fashion if not heart to heart, with European royalty and English aristocracy in the bonds of holy or other wedlock. American womanhood should have a say in a matter so serious for their exported daughters and posterity.

Over and above the romantic interest in this personal record and plea there is that without which no claimant can ask serious attention, that is a plain, strong, self-proving and temperate presentation of the case. These elements are here and command respect. The rest lies with the reader. He is invited to sit and weigh as he reads. The author has the advantage of not being a professional literary man. He tells his tale with the

To the Open-Minded Reader xv

artless candor of a child. His earliest recollections are simply recorded ; so, too, the adventures of his boyhood as a foster child who from the first had an inkling of a higher parentage. Then follow the strangely ordained series of experiences in the army, with real peril episodes in India, quick and seemingly unusual promotions ; then as an officer of rising grades in the prison there, with remarkable incidents, suggestive of the possession of a power, or temperamental gift supposed, but wrongly, to be the peculiar endowment of Orientals. In the healing art, ordinary church and educational work, and his acknowledged genius for "doing things" outside the routine of service duty, the author surprises by his versatility and pluck, for such things are heretical to your machinemade official.

In the later years his efforts have been to turn these practical experiences to practical ends for himself, a man's first duty, and then for his country and this country. Now, when such an one devotes his personal, private efforts to the extremely delicate duty of pursuing his search for what he honestly believes to be the bare justice withheld unjustly by persons, or by a "reason of State," in a country where all royal acts and "reasons of State" are commonly viewed as more than semisacred it is obvious that his path must be peculiarly an uphill one, and it is certain that all sorts of big and little stones will be sent rolling down upon him by the fortunate creatures who live away up.

This is the common lot of all claimants. So it xvi To the Open-Minded Reader

is not surprising to read of sudden interferences when business affairs are on the verge of successful completion and of majestic refusals by liveried servants to present perfectly proper messages to their masters, who, when they learn of flunkey presumptions, administer corrections. These are in the comedies of life and are good for our temper, but a public claimant almost necessarily dwells in the pillory. This is a whiff of the romance of life and serves a wholesome purpose. It is so cheap and easy to fling stones at a deaf and dumb man when bis back is turned and he is carrying his load of affairs in both hands that perhaps we should be as indulgent to the sort of people who think it fair sport as we are to the imps who make a midsummer day a fiery torment to the sick and aged, who have no rights, and, anyway, can not get out to hit back. Kings and commoners have their full share of these joys.

Looking not merely at but into this moving picture of a life, strangely shaped by the mysterious forces that bear no name, it would not surprise us if the claimant had pitched his story in a shrill key. He might have made it scandalous and pleaded that, its text being a scandal, the sermon should be to match. But, as already stated, the temperate, and not seldom dignified, tone and spirit of the whole commands respect. If every just claim was absolutely demonstrable, at any moment of time, through every item and document and circumstance from A to Z, laws and law courts would never have come into existence. Probably the extravagant verbiage of the jury bamboozler

To the Open-Minded Reader xvii

originated in the dearth of tacts in hand which reasonably prove facts past resurrection. The case here presented needs no vulgar screeching; it would be fatally injured by it.

The author had no lack of models and authorities, such as they are, if he had chosen the sensational method, so alien to kingly grace and noble blood. The press wields more than the power of kings in this our true Republic, and right royally does it use it in matters outside the Treasury and politics departments. If it has a failing it is its liability to mistake its sceptre for a shillalah. It can not whack this book as a book of royal scandal, which would be to advertise it as a "best seller." We have an over-sufficiency of little scandals of our own, but it is nice of course to keep up with the foreign fashions. The more curious, therefore, it is to see writers earn a respectable, certainly a genteel, livelihood by purveying to respectable, at least genteel, newspapers catering to high caste people a daily re-hash of new and decomposed scandals, royal, aristocratic, plutocratic, exclusively besmirching the adored old families of Europe.

The author who submits this book to public analysis does not belong to either of these classes. He does not invite us to sit down to a silver dish which, when we lift the cover, is odorous of slanderous scandal and rotten-ripe apples of Sodom. His claim to royal blood carries at least the stamp of courtly manners. Not so with the garbage gatherers who make their scanty living by it, nor with those who, by selling it at cheap xviii To the Open-Minded Reader

retail, rake in the millions which pay their entrance fee into the grand stand where they wear the badge of a dollarocracy not yet aristocracy. Leaving those who hunger for high-spiced, mythical "mysteries of the Courts of London" to these, their daily caterers, the present claimant is content that this budget of biography, facts, attestations and arguments shall speak for itself and for his claim.

More than this he does not ask; less than an open-minded reading will be a denial of every claimant's common right.

Novembek 1, 1910.

An Englishman.

Preface

BRITISH-AMERICAN PATRIOTISM AND JUSTICE

Patriotism and justice actuated by the all-pervading spirit of moral principle, and directed by the judicious exercise of the divine intelligence of the super-cosmic consciousness, are the magnetic corner stones upon which the British- American people have built the allied world-power Empire-Republic, the center of civilization and Christian enlightenment to which all other nations turn in friendship and peace.

The subject of these Memoirs appeals to the high moral sentiment and spirit of justice of the British- American people, in particular, and of the whole civilized world in general.

British loyalty to the Sovereign is proverbial.

The subject of these Memoirs appeals to British loyalty to protect the direct line of legitimate lineal succession to the throne, and to loyally support the legitimate heir-at-law of the late deeply lamented Sovereign, His Majesty King Edward VII.

As a Christian nation, England, in framing the laws by which the civil contract and religious sacrament of holy matrimony, and the right of inheritance, are regulated, based the said laws upon the Divine Laws in the Holy Scriptures, xix xx Preface

which are quite clear, and which no earthly Sovereign has power to change, for it is written, "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

A Sovereign who violates the law of God, and the nation, both collectively and individually, that countenances and approves or even tolerates such violation of the Divine Law by their Sovereign, stand equally guilty before God.

The direct line of legitimate lineal succession to the British throne is determined by the following law:

"If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated ; and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated;

"Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn;

"But shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath ; for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his." Deuteronomy, 21 : 15, 16 and 17.

Queen Elizabeth recognized and observed this law by reviving the Act 32, Henry VIII C. 38 (repealed in part by 2 and 3 Edward VI C. 23, and in whole by I and 2 p. and M. C. 8, but revived by the I Elizabeth I which enacts that "No prohibition, God's law except, shall trouble or impeach any marriage without the Levitical degrees."

Preface xxi

It can not be said that the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth were marked by a higher manifestation of Christian principle and moral sentiment than during the past fifty years. But, the indifference and apathy with which Christian England and the Christian world have countenanced the practice of royal bigamy, and the setting aside by Princes of the Eeigning House of their lawful wives, without cause and without due process of law, and the disfranchising and casting off of their legitimate offspring, in favor of plural wives and their illegitimate issue, is a blot upon the refined fabric of our vaunted Christian piety and advanced civilization; since the so-called and despised "heathen" would not stoop to such barbarous and unholy acts.

The harems of the followers of the derided "false prophet" are havens of domestic peace and felicity, when compared to the torture of mind, and body, and soul, of the repudiated wife of a "Christian" Eoyal Prince. The Buddhist Monarch, His Majesty the King of Siam, has for some years past been conducting a continued model lesson in England for the edification of the British Royal Family and the British public in the ethics of true morality and paternal duty to offspring.

The small army of sons of His Majesty, by his first and plural Queens, attending schools and colleges in England, has been frequently commented upon by the English press. Such, however, is the common misconception of the Christian world of their particular form of religious faith, and of the immunity with which their Kings may violate xxii Preface

the laws of God, that they are loath to accept the lesson of Christian love and paternal duty as illustrated by this so-called "heathen" King.

The ' * still small voice," the voice of the conscience, speaks to the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and to the Christian people of the great Republic of the United States of America and of the world, to demand that the barbarous custom of Princes in repudiating their lawful wives, and casting adrift their legitimate offspring be stopped, and that the direct line of legitimate lineal succession to the Throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland be protected, and that British loyalty and justice be shown to the eldest legitimate son and heir-at-law of His late Majesty King Edward VII.

John, Prince of Great Britain and Ireland.

SUMMARY OF THE CASE OF PRINCE JOHN

DE GUELPH OF GREAT BRITAIN

AND IRELAND vs. ROYAL

POLYGAMY

MAY GOD DEFEND THE RIGHT

I was born in Windsor Castle on the 8th of January, 1861.

I have resided in the United States of America for more than ten years.

With the assent of Queen Victoria, my grandmother, and with the consent of my father, the late King Edward, I assumed the family name of the reigning dynasty of Great Britain and Ireland: Guelph. Thus for many years prior to my advent to America I enjoyed the recognition and protection of my father as a legitimate member of the House of Guelph.

My mother, the first Princess Consort of King Edward, comes from one of the most historic of the noble families of the United Kingdom, her ancestors having come in the train of William the Conqueror, and she was considered to be the most beautiful lady in the Royal Court. She has lived in voluntary exile and has been engaged in preaching the Gospel and doing pious service in Asia.

The mutual attachment which sprang up bexxiv Summary

tween the heir apparent to the throne and the beautiful lady of his choice was frowned upon by the Queen and the sovereign will was brought to bear upon the young Prince in a manner calculated to make him amenable to the Queen's own plan in the choice of his future consort.

The Prince of Wales was required to attend the manoeuvres at the Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland, in the early spring of 1860.

It was about that time that my father took the opportunity to exercise his self-will and diplomacy, for which he was noted throughout his life, by marrying the bride of his choice — in order to escape the political alliance for which he was slated but which was repugnant to his refined nature.

When Queen Victoria was informed of the marriage she summoned her son and daughter-in-law, establishing the latter in apartments in Windsor Castle and sending the Prince on his travels across the sea to Canada and to the United States. From this fact it is to be presumed that if, in the marriage contracted by my father and mother, there had been one word omitted from the ritual, or any of the ecclesiastical or civil disabilities recognized by English law, the first Princess Consort, my mother, would never have been allowed to set foot in Windsor Castle, much less to live there as a guest to be confined in the royal residence. Hence the reasonable conclusion that their marriage was legal, and, consequently, the expected issue thereof legitimate. My mother was above reproach or suspicion, and her rank was sufficiently high to entitle

Summary xxv

her to be the Queen Consort in that it was the equal of that of some of the queens and crown princesses of continental powers of the present day and vastly superior to that of several former Queens of England !

The reason why this book was not published during my father 's life is twofold. I was naturally reluctant to embitter the last years of my parents' life by reviving these painful memories, and, secondly, because my father, on October 23, 1906, having found that it was inexpedient, at that time, to further emphasize his sovereign pleasure by royal "command" for due recognition of certain reforms introduced by me, and already supported by His Majesty, expressed his regret that he was ' 'unable to do anything further in the matter," intimating that it was impossible to force the issue without precipitating a national political crisis which would have caused a rupture in the reigning house and which he was naturally anxious to avert during his life.

Recognizing the fact that my father had no alternative but to obey the sovereign command of Queen Victoria in separating from his first Consort, my mother, and, further, that my father's exalted station as Sovereign of the Realm justified his desire that I should allow a matter of such vital political importance as the one in question touching the direct legitimate lineal succession to the throne to rest until after his death, I considered it to be my duty to him and to the Empire to respect his wishes, even at the expense of further self-sacrifice.

xxvi Summary

Foreseeing, toward the end of 1909, the approaching dissolution of my father, King Edward VII, the long pent-up sorrow of my life broke the bonds of silence, and I decided that the honors, so long withheld from my cruelly wronged mother, should be done her before her husband's demise.

Accordingly, in the month of December last, I wrote to the King, urging him as sovereign, consort and father to lose no further time in publicly acknowledging my mother. Then, also, I began to compile these memoirs.

Under date of January 10, 1910, I again wrote to my father, duly advising him of my intention to publish these memoirs, and, in order that he might be fully informed of my attitude while it was still in his power to exercise his sovereign prerogatives and a husband's privilege to right the wrongs inflicted upon his lawful wife, my mother, I sent him as much of the first draft of the MS. as was then finished.

The legal recognition and protection as a legitimate son which I enjoyed from my father since the time when he first made known my identity in 1893, persuaded me that, even should the King fail to rectify his matrimonial tangle ere he passed from life — an affair involving the question of direct, legitimate, lineal succession — his possible neglect, I said, to take decisive action ought to be considered as indicative rather of his Majesty's statesmanlike conviction that the adjustment had better be left until after his death, than to illfavor, either toward my mother or myself.

Summary xxvii

The King offered no objection to my memoirs, though there can be no manner of doubt that the far-reaching effect the publication of a book of this kind must, of necessity, have upon his second family and the British Empire at large, was clearly mirrored in that wise head of his. He also knew of my intention to cause the so-called Royal Marriage Act and the barbarous Act of William and Mary, the Bill of Rights, to be expunged from the statutes of Great Britain yet protested not.

My last letter to my father, under date of April 10, 1910, conveyed my final appeal that he take the necessary steps in the above important matter, but the condition of his health at that time, coupled with the political crisis in England due to the strained relations between the upper and lower houses of Parliament, made it absolutely impossible for King Edward to comply with my filial request, as I realize now.

My father having now been taken from me and from our loyal and devoted people, it becomes my duty as his eldest, legitimate son to right the wrong done my mother, and to put a stop to the practice of unholy royal polygamy, repugnant to the tenets of Christianity and the moral sentiment of all good people.

Even if I were the poorest subject of the United Kingdom, a son of the people, understanding the law as I now do, I would be in honor bound to make war on this Royal Marriage Act in order to enforce compliance with the constitutional law xxviii Summary

providing for direct legitimate lineal succession to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland.

Let me state beforehand that I bear no ill will to any member of my late father's family. In my correspondence with my half-brother George — known as George V of Great Britain and Ireland — George, the incumbent of honors, prerogatives and millions, my rightful patrimony, no trace of rancor, of annoyance, even, will be discovered. Being satisfied that justice is bound to triumph in the end, I read with satisfaction of the appointment of my uncle, the Duke of Connaught, to the vice-royalty of Canada ; let sister Louise (by half, I am sorry to say) glory in the empty title of Princess Eoyal, and let my other sisters, sisters-in-law and nephews enjoy their appanages from the nation and the family treasury — my family treasury. I envy them not, and, unlike Cousin d'Artois (afterward Charles X), who steeped his body naked in the yellow metal pouring from barrels of coined gold discovered in the Tuilleries cellars after Napoleon's defeat, the inevitable success of my present efforts will find me more worried, perhaps, but no less calm than at the outset of this campaign.

I repeat that I bear no ill-will to George, nor to our common sire. It was an infamous law that separated my mother and the father of her unborn babe; that tore the infant from her young breast; that cast both mother and child adrift — the one to go through life a heartbroken woman, a distracted mother; the other committed to the care of strangers, to be illtreated as a babe, neg-

Summary xxix

lected in youth, persecuted in manhood, a wanderer on the face of the earth, a homeless man, a prince without country, maligned, tormented, subjected to poverty through political intrigue and malicious interference with his business interests, falsely accused, beset for years by hired assassins and exposed to imminent and violent death a thousand times.

And the separation of my parents, ordered by Queen Victoria, is but one of the crimes sanctioned by this law that winks at the scarlet sin of royal polygamy. In 1884 the royal lady, my lamented grandmother, appealed to it to force Grand Duke Ludwig of Hesse-Darmstadt to expel his morganatic wife of a few hours from his domains. That H. R. H. was a German Prince and a sovereign availed him nothing since, first and last, he was Victoria's son-in-law, slated to marry my Aunt Beatrice — the Deceased Wife's Sister's bill permitting — and when on January 14, 1892, my oldest half-brother, the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, died rather suddenly, the present de facto King, then Prince George Duke of York, was ordered, under the same law, to separate from his lawful first wife and their children in order to wed Princess May, Clarence's betrothed.

Disregarding the Hesse case as without British jurisdiction, we have seen the throne of England twice dishonored, within fifty years from date, by crimes against helpless wives and children : Eoyal Princes cast off their lawful wife and marry again without procuring a divorce from their first wife.

According to the canonical and civil statutes xxx Summary

by which marriage is regulated in the United Kingdom, or in any other civilized country for that matter, such second matrimonial alliances are null and void, because bigamous ; their issue, consequently, is illegitimate.

However, that royal wives, consorts of the highest in the land, are discarded, royal Princes and Princesses of Great Britain disowned; that the bar sinister is raised over Buckingham Palace, and the nation's wealth bestowed upon individuals, who, whatever their personal worth, have absolutely no claim on the public bounty, is not due to my remoter ancestor, the third George, and the actions of my grandmother, Queen Victoria, alone — the citizens of Great Britain and Ireland are equally guilty. Where my relatives sinned, they connived. Whenever, intoxicated with arbitrary power assumed over their immediate family, the sovereigns disregarded the constitution and every moral law, British subjects acquiesced.

That the King can do no wrong has been drummed into the ears of Englishmen so persistently; the story that Mr. Pitt went down on his gouty knees before the King ; yes, and my Lord of Marlborough, too, and their Graces of Canterbury, as well as statesmen and conquerors — all this is so popular in our isles that loyalty shrinks from inquiring too closely into rumors of sovereign acts inconsistent with the dignity of the crown and manly honor, inconsistent with proper regard for womanhood and the rights of legitimate offspring.

It is due both to the throne and to the people

Summary xxxi

to end this scandalous state of affairs. If I were but an humble subject of the great British realm, it would, as stated, be my privilege to contribute to this end — as the King de jure it is my sacred duty, and I now ask the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland :

First: To put an end, now and for all time, to the practice of bigamy by princes of the royal house, or the sovereign.

Secondly : To recognize the legal status of the first and only lawful wife of his late Majesty Edward VII, their real Queen Dowager, my mother, which act, as a logical consequence, guarantees recognition of my own rights under the laws of Great Britain and Ireland.

John, Rex et Imperator de jure.

Memoirs of

Prince John de Guelph

Chapter I Direct Lineal Succession And Eoyal Titles Of

JOHN II. REX ET IMPERATOR DE JURE OF

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND AND OF

THE EMPIRE OF INDIA

The lineal descent and succession to the royal title of Prince John de Guelph is determined under the provisions of the following laws, to wit :

I. (a) Under the provisions of the Marriage Acts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and (b) the Ecclesiastical and Civil Disabilities.

II. Under the provisions of the so-called Royal Marriage Act, the 12 George III C. II.

III. Under the provisions of the law governing legitimate genealogical descent and succession, by which legislative measures it is provided that legitimate offspring only possess the legal right to bear, and to transmit to posterity, the family name of the paternal house.