The row over Prince Charles in Canada reminded me of the role of the Royal Family in personifying those timeless traditions which comprise the spine of British culture. One of these great Royal traditions, which has continued right down to the present generations, is buggering the valet.
31 May should be a national holiday in celebration of this great tradition. We should call it Bugger the Valet day. On 31 May 1810 Ernest Duke of Cumberland, fifth son of George III, was buggering his valet Neale. While Cumberland was fully engaged, another servant named Sellis impertinently entered the room. Naturally the Duke, having ordered Sellis to wait and be spoken to, took out his sword and ran Sellis through seven times. Sellis remained impertinent, and even after being stabbed the first time, had the temerity to grab a candlestick and hit the Duke hard on the face, inflicting a disfiguring wound. This of course is described in official histories (and I see on Wikipedia) as having been received in the Napoleonic Wars.
Over the years, seven journalists were imprisoned for publishing an account of Sellis’ death. The Duke failed to pay Neale the money he had promised him to lie that Sellis had attacked the Duke, and subsequently Neale talked rather a lot. The first journalist imprisoned, Henry White, died of disease contracted in prison. Henry White deserves to be remembered.
Cumberland was to marry a woman very widely believed across the German speaking world to be herself a murderess, Princess Frederica of Mecklenburg Strelitz, whose two earlier husbands had died, the second particularly unexpectedly and conveniently.
During the reign of King William IV, Cumberland was second in line to the throne after Victoria. Victoria’s widowed mother, the Duchess of Kent, was shagging her Private Secretary, Sir John Conroy. Actually every summer in Victoria’s teens they did their shagging in Townley House, which I can see now from my study window.
Ten months of the year they lived in Kensington Palace, and Conroy put Victoria into seclusion. Conroy was hated – he was far too middle class to be shagging a Duchess. There was a successful film by that awful far right “Lord” Julian Fellowes a few years ago called The Young Victoria. Conroy was portrayed as a caricature villain, and conventional historians have accepted the monarchist line that his seclusion of Victoria was to maximize his own influence of control.
What Conroy himself said, and is almost never published, was that he was keeping Victoria under very close guard because he was terrified she would be poisoned or otherwise murdered by the heir to the throne after her, her uncle Cumberland, and his wife. Where this is ever mentioned by historians, it is to ridicule it as a crazy pretext.
In fact Cumberland was a murderer, and Frederica very probably was too. Conroy was absolutely right to protect Victoria from Cumberland. What the establishment would not admit then or now was that there was a very real reason for Conroy to apprehend this danger. Ernest Duke of Cumberland had killed Sellis. His wife Frederica was reputed throughout Europe to have poisoned her second husband in order to marry Ernest and gain the possibility of becoming Queen of England. Only Victoria stood between them and the throne, in an age of high mortality.
When William IV died, Victoria became Queen but as a female could not inherit the other Kingdom of Hanover. Cumberland therefore became King Ernest of Hanover. He abolished parliament and persecuted those regarded as liberal, including the Brothers Grimm who he dismissed from their University posts.
Ahh, our beloved Royal family! Remember – 31 May is Bugger the Valet Day.
“Are you a fan of royalty, Anon?”
Not really, just pointing to another of Mary’s idiocies. I think Mary might be, though, judging by the time she spends following them.
John Goss – surprised to learn you are a fan of ‘V for Vendetta’ as you have described yourself as a Christian.
Fair comment. I thought the scripting was brilliant but then much of it appeared to have been taken from the book by Alan Moore.
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/392838-v-for-vendetta
The gratuitous violence was not to my taste and I would normally find something more appropriate, but I got seduced by a good script, which is most unusual.
Mr Scorgie
“Wrong again Habbabkuk, Quebec is a province of Canada it is not independent, so the research into the possible costs of independence is therefore hypothetical.”
_________________
‘Fraid not, Doug.
Independence for Québec is hypothetical.
Research into the possible costs of that hypothetical event is real, and not hypothetical. It is real because it has been carried out and therefore exists.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think you once said you were a lawyer. I hope your (hypothetical) clients don’t read you on here before they engage your services… 🙂
Mr Scorgie
“He could nip home for a shag at lunchtime”
___________________
Is that a recommendation from personal experience, Doug?
No Anon not a follower of the royals in any way just a critic of the system that keeps them in place. The EDP link was sent to me by a friend who lives in East Anglia. OK?
Great news out of Turkey today as a Turkish court issued arrest warrants for the four Israeli officials who ordered the attack on Freedom Flotilla I.
“A Turkish court has ordered the arrest of four Israeli officials in relation to the 2010 raid on the Mavi Marmara aid flotilla.
Nine Turkish citizens (one who was also an American) were killed by Israeli commandos who raided the ship in international waters on the way to Gaza with the intention of breaking the Israeli naval blockade four years ago.
A tenth Turkish man, who had been in a coma since being critically injured in the raid, passed away last week, becoming the tenth victim.”
http://www.worldbulletin.net/general/137373/turkish-court-orders-arrest-of-israelis-over-mavi-marmara
These men will spend their lives looking over their shoulders. According to lawyers who attended hearings in the past, they will not be able to leave Israel, they will not be able to travel without worrying about being arrested.
—
Greta Berlin, Co-Founder, the Free Gaza movement
Editor, Freedom Sailors
Original Troll alert – Mary’s back on Israel/Palestine again!
Plenty more if you would like some! No shortage of stories of Israeli atrocities.
Just like the updraught created by the helicopter, a little storm has blown up about a German tabloid BILD publishing a photo of Kate’s bare rear end. Another YCNMIU. The British press forever loyal monarchists refused to take it but the Mail spins it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2639702/Royal-privacy-row-German-tabloid-website-publishes-picture-Duchess-Cambridges-skirt-blew-Australia-tour.html
Will we hear ‘We are not amused’ from the Palace minders.
http://www.bild.de/unterhaltung/leute/catherine-mountbatten-windsor/und-kim-kardashian-schoene-kehrseiten-36136770.bild.html
Bild – Axel Springer AG – Big Beasts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_AG
The royals’ last spat with some irreverent foreign media persons. They do have a ‘brand’ to protect FFS.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/18/article-2203999-151318E8000005DC-2_634x621.jpg
All good for a laugh and don’t we need one.
Mary I have just taken a look at some of these links you provided
and this is my response-
as a Dutch/Australian grandmother who has a father who served in germany’s Hitler’s Youth Labour Force
with Dutch ‘royals’ in the ’embrace’ of Germany/as it is with the English -not ‘royals’
and as a young woman who returned to Germany’s BAOR with an Australian military husband-you know, to protect the ‘west’ from possible/probable Russian attack
‘Bild’ means ‘image’, literally
and then there is Bernhardt and the Bilderbergers
and then, there are those who own everything including Media-more ‘image’ makers
and You and I and a few others can see the whole she-bang as a sick, sick ‘image side-show’.
Spot on there Babushka. Interesting to hear of your background. Sorry not to replied to your other posts, I usually read Paul Craig Roberts (recently rubbished here by the trolls) but not that one. I will try to get round to it. There are more and more words yet the evil intensifies around us.
I have low energy levels at the present and the jobs are piling up. I really expected Habbabkuk to come round and help but if his horticultural knowledge is as flimsy as his other general knowledge=, he would probably not be of much help. More of a hindrance really as he is here.
FYI How sad and how vile of the Israelis. A good man is dead.
Respected Abu Dis doctor Dr Sameeh Wehesh died today aged 64, having become ill from breathing in the tear gas spread round the town by Israeli soldiers last weekend. He was now retired, having worked as the doctor in charge of the children’s section in Jericho hospital. He was well-known in Abu Dis for his activities in support of Palestinian prisoners and his support for the Abu Dis Youth Club.
Dr Sameeh was in his own house in Abu Dis when heavy tear gas filled it on Friday. He lived between the university and the road to the military camp and Israeli soldiers were shooting tear gas all round. He phoned another local doctor saying that he was having difficulty breathing but he couldn’t manage to get out of the house for help because of the tear gas. His situation got worse and on Saturday he managed to get to the health centre where he was found to have a low level of oxygen. He was transferred to intensive care but he did not manage to recover.
We send our deep sympathy to his family and our condolences also to the people of Abu Dis who remember Dr Sameeh as a strong and active member of the community.
http://www.maannews.net/arb/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=700189
Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association
Linking together for human rights
http://camdenabudis.net
Funny that when every electrical item in a household and your smartphone/tablet can record every aspect of a person’s life its a royal arse that gets all the usual muppets up in arms.
Priorities eh?
Yet another non-story as diversion.
Idiots.
Inside the Mind of Edward Snowden
In a wide-ranging and revealing interview, Brian Williams talks with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the global impact and debate sparked by his revelations
http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/exclusive-edward-snowden-tells-brian-williams-i-was-trained-spy-n115746
Was the use of the strange photograph intentional? It makes him look like a Mekon.
I gather, further up, that there’s some discussion going on about whether major works of US social realism should be included in the English curriculum according to Gove (the Authorised Version?) Victorian novelists seem to be the preferred alternative. One such, by the obscure, almost unheard of, novelist, Charles Dickens, commends itself: ‘Hard Times’. Which outlines the praiseworthy educational system employed for the children of mill workers in Lancashire: the inculcation of facts without any reference to their context, a stress on etymology, and universal learning by rote. An obedient and easily-exploited workforce was the intended result. A shame Dickens himself disagreed rather strongly with the system, but I am sure with inspired teachers, and a return to corporal punishment, pupils could be made to see its benefits.
I read The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies (which was then novel) for English Literature ‘O’ Level. God knows what the Goveites would say to that. Private school too…
Maybe the arch Atlanticist Gove is less concerned about promoting Brit Lit in our schools than kicking any US texts which question the truths of The American Dream into the long grass.
It would certainly play well with his NeoCon masters…
You may be right, Jives, but on the other hand, see:
http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/seven_norfolk_teachers_fly_off_to_china_on_fact_finding_mission_1_3614815
Comments worth a look, for the reaction on the street as well as Nevermind’s input…
But if you are right, I guess that means Gove will have to edit Dickens pretty severely.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17017791
And what of Benjamin Disraeli? Tory icon? Novelist and PM?
Sybil? Gove does not speak her name…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_%28novel%29
@Kempe
The Polynesians ‘discovered’ America. Date unsure as there are few sites on Pacific Atolls and Islands where sweet potato pollen might be stored and dateable. But sweet potatoes there are in the Pacific. There is even a temperate/sub tropical cutlivar from New Zealand called the kumera. I strongly recommend it either roasted or chipped. There’s another South American plant that now grows wild in Fiji name of which I cannot remember and there are South American mtDNA haplotypes in Polynesians.
Imagine, the people who developed an open ocean sailing and discovery culture and technology and who found every single scrap of vaguely habitable, empty land in the wide, wide Pacific (⅓ of the earth’s surface) and who could sail not just into but across the wind (you need the latter to sail to Aotearoa, Rapanui and Hawai’i from the Central Pacific).
This was however undoubtedly before the Chinese Great Fleet or the Vikings in Vinland and of course after the various waves of humanity who have flowed into that continent from Far East Asia both by canoeing down the coast and overland.
For Gove, with love:
Hark, I hear a joyful sound,
Freedom’s trumpet shakes the ground;
Freemen hear, and freemen dare,
Claim your rights,- your wrongs declare.
Tyrants hear, and tremble too;
Men who feast, but nothing do;
Useless gilded things, who say
You are but of common clay.
Hoary age and sturdy youth,
All imbibe the sacred truth –
That your Maker made you free,
And demand EQUALITY!
[Hymn 12, National Chartist Hymn Book; https://www.calderdale.gov.uk/wtw/search/controlservlet?PageId=Zoom&DocId=102253&PageNo=10 ]
I wonder if Michael Gove knows why the caged bird sings?
Here’s the lad himself. Apparently he was misconstrued…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10857133/Michael-Gove-Kill-a-Mockingbird-Id-never-dream-of-it.html
As he says, he’s an Americophile. But I still want to see Gradgrind exposed to juvenile scrutiny.
Seems there was no Royal buggery yesterday, only stories about the Duke of Edinburgh joking about wheelchairs and more common sexual intercourse.
I see what you mean about the DoE. He is so NOT funny but everyone falls about out at his remarks out of politeness.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-philip/10867253/Joking-Duke-of-Edinburgh-is-a-hit-at-disability-event.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/10846574/Prince-Philip-tells-family-planning-clinic-staff-At-least-youre-legitimate.html
Pity he did not practice some of the latter. Then we would have been spared the arms salesman and the young thespian.
Today the shock horror story was about one of the pages fainting at the opening of the Zombies Ride Again.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/queens-speech/10875224/Page-boy-faints-close-to-Queen-during-speech-to-Parliament.html
Refreshing. You have adopted the apostolic mantle of Flashman’s author. I will celebrate Bugger The Valet day – but not in kind or manner.
Regarding racism in this Meghan case maybe Royals should be presumed innocent, unless and/or until proven guilty. Like it is usual.
Or maybe that’s the reason why they block Prince Andrew pedophile investigation?
You know what is apparently most important as the royalist unionist warmongering record excess death virus promoting spaffing muppets carry on with the biggest heist And consequence free genocide?
The Royal Soap Opera’s latest upgrade into taking the mantle from the Kardasians.
That TeeVee promotion model has been proved and now is being undertaken by the same old same olds – no matter how young, fresh, hep and identitarian the latest iteration of cool royalty is.
That is not stepping away into a ‘normal’ life.
Thanks for the articleMr Murray, I really need to find some months of leisure and go through all your posts from before I came across your blog.
Vile, greedy family
Special proclivities.
No change there then.
Amazing!
??
“While Cumberland was fully engaged…”
I love the way you turn a phrase. Please consider writing some more ‘Yes, Minister’ fan fiction, but this time in the guise of one of the seven journalists trying to tell the tale of Cumberland, Neale, and Sellis while staying free of the Lord Advocate’s jails.
Regards from Canada