Tag: a royal affair

A Royal Affair & More Exposed

~ neilwjsmith ~ Leave a comment
Mary Robinson (Gainsborough)

One night in 1779, accompanied by his minders, sixteen year-old George the Prince of Wales attended a performance of ‘The Winter’s Tale’. He was besotted by the beautiful young actress playing Perdita, Mary Robinson.

They met often. Then one night under the cover of great secrecy, Mary was smuggled into the Prince’s apartments. What happened that night, more than a year before the Prince’s eighteenth birthday and his freedom to do as he pleased, I wonder.

Could there have been a child from this, the Prince’s very first romantic encounter with the opportunity for this to have been possible?

Mary later wrote a moving description of their clandestine meetings:

“The moon was now rising, and the idea of His Royal Highness being seen out at so unusual an hour, terrified the whole group. After a few more words of the most affectionate nature, uttered by the Prince, we parted. The rank of the Prince no longer chilled into awe that being who now considered him as the lover and the friend. The graces of this person, the tenderness of his melodious, yet manly voice, will be remembered by me, till every vision of this changing scene shall be forgotten.”

On his eighteenth birthday the Prince was given his own private apartments at Buckingham House as well as rooms at Windsor Castle.

Now he was free to indulge in what became a life of assemblies, balls, masquerades, horseracing, gambling, drinking, clubs and women. Finally he was free (relatively speaking) from the strict moral constraints of his father.

His affair with Mary Robinson soon became an open affair.

They became the talk of the town.

But it wasn’t to last.

One day there was the letter “full of boundless affection and admiration,” the next day a letter telling her they would never meet again.

Why the sudden overnight reversal of his affections?

Was this just the Prince being himself?

Or was there another more secretive reason?

Mary was broken hearted. She later wrote sorrowfully of the time “he saw me in Hyde Park, he turned his head away to avoid seeing me, and affected not to know me.”

Could the reason have been that she was carrying his child this time?

I explore these tantalizing possibilities, and more, like a secret marriage and what may have happened afterwards.

Was it a true marriage, or not?

And were there children?

What if there were?

To read more go to my website HERE.

For amazing reviews of the book CLICK HERE

To order direct from the publisher with a 10% discount CLICK HERE.

To read my author’s story CLICK HERE.

Best wishes.

Neil

Have I Stumbled Upon A Secret Royal History Of Australia?

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The First Fleet entering Port Jackson (Sydney) Jan 26, 1788

What a co-incidence that an explosive Royal affair was going on in England at the very time that the First Fleets were leaving Portsmouth with a cargo of convicts for the unknown south land known to the Dutch as New Holland (Australia).

A very convenient co-incidence.

The First Fleets sailed from England between 1787 and 1791 bound for New South Wales, as Australia had been named by Captain James Cook, in the land called New Holland by the Dutch (who first landed here in 1606), which some two thousand years ago had been referred to by the Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolemy as Terra Australis Incognita, the Unknown South Land.

The name ‘Australia’ first appeared on explorer Matthew Flinders’ map (1801-3) of the first circumnavigation of the continent.

This marked the beginning of a quiet invasion of an already inhabited land by hapless settlers, mostly convicts (often guilty of the pettiest crimes) banished from a homeland of overcrowded jails and hulks on the Thames that cared not of their unknown fate.

They left behind their families and loved ones knowing they would never see them again. Two seventeen year-old girls were transported for fourteen years for stealing ten yards of printed cotton. It’s said one woman died of a broken heart even before her ship sailed.

On the other hand it’s said that many were pleased to be leaving the awful conditions of the jails and hulks behind for a new land of fresh air and open spaces.

All the same many would die in shackles on the terrible journey which took nine months or more around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Roaring Forties.

These human lives were of no great concern to those sitting in the Parliament in London or, for that matter, to those on or close to the throne of England.

Except, perhaps, those whose only concern was to remove an unfortunate consequence of a certain secret Royal affair.

What if this co-incidence was used to conceal the evidence on the other side of the world?

Did a British Royal, and then legitimate heir to the throne, set foot on Australian soil as early as 1788?

I explore the evidence in my controversial non-fiction book (not a historic novel) ‘Back to the Wall’.

Order your copy here.

Best wishes

Neil

 

Rare Book Exposes 200 Year-Old Mystery

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Early map of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)

Read more here

What royal secrets did the Reverend Robert Knopwood know?

He was the first chaplain of Van Diemen’s Land (as Tasmania was called) who sailed to New South Wales (as Australia was called) at the time of the First Fleets of mainly convicts from England came to create the first British settlement here.

He mixed with the highest society back in England including with those in the circle of the Prince of Wales.

As did a certain mysterious Dr Desailly and his wife who came to Van Diemen’s Land under strange circumstaces.

Rumours had it that Dr Desailly’s English practice had been at the court of George IV and that his beautiful wife had been a Lady in Waiting to Queen Caroline.

A vessel under special charter had brought them to Australia and they always had plenty of money which, it was said, was paid regularly from a mysterious pension with great secrecy.

What were they doing in this isolated antipodean outpost?

They were certainly not convicts nor did they hold any official position in the colony.

Was it because they knew too much?

About what?

I was in the middle of researching the background for my book when I came across an extraordinary find.

I couldn’t believe my luck.

Right there in my small country library I found a numbered limited edition copy of a rare book published 45 years ago by a bookshop in Tasmania, Australia, with the modest title of ‘The Chaplain: Being Some Further Account of the Days of Bobby Knopwood’.

In this old book the author, Mabel Hookey, speculates on a scenario pointing to a lost secret that sailed to Tasmania with Rev Knopwood and Dr Desailly over 200 years ago.

Quite unexpectedly, the author, Mabel Hookey, provided me with the perfect opening to my own book, a mystery that I had stumbled upon going back over 200 years to Regency England and the Prince of Wales, George IV.

In her foreword Hookey explains that “diaries and bundles of old letters and papers on which I have drawn for my subject matter were bought by my grandfather, George Stokell, at the sale of Knopwood’s effects.”

The author continues to say that for many years Knopwood’s effects were stored in a cupboard in her grandfather’s home and that while most had found their way to the Mitchell Library in Sydney others were still in her possession.

It’s from these lost papers that she offers an astounding proposition that pretty much matched the mystery which had fallen into my lap.

Her shocking royal secret begins my own book ‘Back to the Wall: A Fun Spiritual Adventure’.

To add to the mystery, when I returned to my library to borrow the book again to check what I had quoted, I found to my surprise that it was no longer on the shelves or even in the library catalogue, having sat there gathering dust for up to 45 years.

Then when I wrote to the publisher in Tasmania requesting permission to quote from the book I received no reply. I could find no record of any such bookshop either.

They had all, apparently, vanished.

And my true romantic adventure seemed to have become a paranormal mystery as well.

To order your copy CLICK HERE.

Reference: “The Chaplain: Being Some Further Account of the Days of Bobby Knopwood” by Mabel Hookey, published by Fuller’s Bookshop, Tasmania, 1970. Pages 177-9.