The Cabinet Office has announced the list of those whose claims to perform a specified function at the Coronation either by hereditary right or on right of their current office have been accepted. The list can be seen at People who will play historic roles at the heart of the Coronation Service announced. Other names will follow of those appointed to perform other ceremonial roles in the Abbey on May 6th.
One of the names on the list is that of the Earl of Loudoun, who, along with Lord Hastings, who is also on the list, has the hereditary right to bear one of the monarch’s spurs in the procession to the altar.
The Daily Telegraph reports on this successful claim by the Earl, and then goes on to reflect on another claim made by some on his behalf - the claim that he should be King of England and of Ireland ( or a part thereof ). The article can be read at Aristocrat with rival claim to throne will play key role in coronation
This argument emerged some years ago and was turned into a television programme. This is, as the article explains, based on the argument ( which is strongly contested ) that King Edward IV was illegitimate, that the Yorkist heir was his next brother George Duke of Clarence, and that through George’s daughter, Bl. Margaret Pole, the crown would descend to the present, fifteenth Earl of Loudoun.
Despite his having a Scottish title this would negate the Union of the Crowns, let alone the Parliaments with Scotland - which might bring some comfort to the SNP on its current distress. It might even mean that the Duke of Hamilton is the de jure King of Scots rather than the de jure King of Bavaria.
This story was made into a television programme in 2004 entitled Britain’s Real Monarch - which is inaccurate to start with because, as I point out above, the succession involved is not to a unified British monarchy but only to one of England and Ireland.
The genealogy involved is set out in a good video from Useful Charts (I have the odd quibble, but never mind for the moment ) and which then goes on to make a sensible assessment of the virtue of the claim, coming down against it. The video can be watched at Is Britain's Real Monarch Living in Australia?
The same conclusion is set out in a good video on the theory from the excellent and balanced History Calling channel which can be viewed at WAS EDWARD IV ILLEGITIMATE? | The life of Edward IV | The birth of Edward IV
Discussions of this theory tend not to see that at a time when a clear line of succession did not obviously extend beyond the monarch’s immediate family or those named in letters patent, as up to the 1370s, or an act of Parliament as periodically from 1406, the various options of male only, male preference or simple primogeniture were not codified. Whether the Crown descended like a peerage by writ or by creation, or by its own unique rules was not clear. King Richard II did not help matters by periodically indicating or threatening to designate one or other of his relatives as his heir despite there being others with probably stronger claims.
Thus the importance of the March claim via the daughter of Lionel Duke of Clarence can be exaggerated in contrast to that of Henry of Lancaster in 1399. Care was taken to legitimise his accession and he may well have genuinely believed his grandfather’s patent ( lost until the 1970s) placed him next in line as heir, even without confirmation by the parliamentary type assembly that recognised him as king in September 1399.
As to the future King Edward IV’s legitimacy the videos above give cogent arginine its favour. Had Richard Duke of York believed his wife had been unfaithful he would have been able to seek a dissolution of the marriage. As it was the Duke and Duchess went on to have many other children. That there may have been the odd whispers some years later about archer Braybourne proves very little indeed.
Absolute blood line primogeniture has never really obtained in this country. Thus King Henry VII’s claim was in part hereditary ( and posssibly implied recognition as heir by the saintly King Henry VI ), in part by right of conquest, in part the promise to marry Elizabeth of York ( but he did not do that until after he was crowned ) and by when he had obtained legal acceptance by Parliament. That act which established him underlies all subsequent monarchs, modified as it was in 1689, 1701 or 1936.
Useful Charts also has a video which looks at the possible consequences if the provisions of the 1543-4 Succession to the Crown Act - set out by Wikipedia at Third Succession Act - and which excluded the Scottish descendants of King Henry VIII’s elder sister Queen Margaret had been followed in 1603. As it was it was discretely forgotten, as had been possible since the convoluted Anglo-Scottish discussions of the early 1560s, which would have then doubtless required a change in the law. As it was the matter was left unsaid and publically unresolved . Had the Henrician Act been followed there would similarly have been no Scottish union, but the throne would have passed to the Seymours, and then via the Percies and Brydges-Chandos family eventually to the present Lady Kinloss or, if the marriage of Lady Catherine Grey to Edward Seymour Earl of Hertford is deemed invalid, through the Cliffords and Stanleys to the present Earl of Jersey.
The video can be seen at Who Would Be King of England Today According to Henry VIII's Will?
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