The Carnarvon Earls and Countesses Illegitimate Secrets

William Cross, author of several books on the Carnarvons of Highclere Castle revisits the family’s Illegitimate Secrets

With Archbishop Welby’s revelations this week it seems a good time to declare that bastardy is for sharing – perhaps the Carnarvons of Highclere could take a leaf out of the right holy example.

The Carnarvons of Highclere Castle were very nicely rewarded for staging TV’s Downton Abbey - the much milked period romp now ended. Highclere still mascarades proudly as Downton. However, the family’s incumbants hang their heads like the bird in the Python's dead parrot sketch about the most spectacular of the Castle’s real life storylines involving Prince Victor Duleep Singh ( 1866-1918), pictured above, the eldest son of the last Maharaja of Lahore. Victor saved the Herbert family line from extinction by helping out his old chum George Carnarvon, 5th Earl in fathering Porchey, the 6th Earl of Carnarvon.

The Peerage of Great Britain is riddled with bastards, some peeresses inevitably strayed, getting pregnant without a need to mention any affair or that their husband was not the father of their child; other ladies ( as Almina) were obliged to lie down with a surrogate whilst others were expected to commandeer an heir from another gene pool as their husband was too ill, too diseased or just unable to perform; moreover, some toffs were/ are sterile, impotent, or exclusively homosexual.

Noteworthy is that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s true paternity is mentioned today in Peerage News, he has Royal Scottish blood through his mum and real dad ( who is determined by DNA as being , Sir Anthony Arthur Duncan Montague Browne, KCMG CBE DFC (1923-2013), Winston Churchill’s last private secretary.) One wonders if the same nobility, power and glory would have been attached to finding out that his old man was a tax dodger, which one other nobleman, the present Prime Minister David Cameron only discovered this week, as well as £30,000 worth of investments that slipped his mind to declare in the MPs register of interests.

Aside from Mr Cameron’s dilemma, as the illegitimate descendant of a mistress of King William IV ( as well as having one of the Sawyers of Highclere as an ancestor) he shares the sleezy, aristocratic smugness of Highclere today as they cannot come clean as it means losing face. The Carnarvons cannot admit to the Duleep Singh legacy, since this would freeze out the present line of inheritance to the Earldom.

A shy school teacher in the West Country named Alan Herbert with his intact blood line from the Carnarvon 4th Earl’s children by a second marriage to Elsie Howard is the proper contender to the title. Nothing is legally possible for the disinherited Herbert – until the death of the present Earl. -so says an insider in the House of Lords. That plot might make an interesting sequel to Downton Abbey, please note Lord Fellowes!

Whilst Highclere coffers continue to swell from Downton’s collateral effect and the Carnarvons bask in reflected glory at the programme’s fiction dressed as fact one recalls the fairy-tale – happy ever after plot of Downton illegitimacy that culminated in Series 6 with Lady Edith’s bastard child Marigold being accepted into the fold. Jolly decent show with Edith cleared as a fallen woman without a stain on her wedding dress and is married off to a Marquis. Hypocrisy as fiction, hypocrisy as fact, that’s Highclere, oops Downton Abbey.

In Highclere’s ghost written publications on the 5th Countess, Almina, they are quick to assert the bastards that suit them by drooling in heady print that the millionaire banker Baron Alfred de Rothschild ( 1842-1918) ( pictured above ) fathered Almina, the indefatigable 5th Countess of Carnarvon. The 6th Earl slipped this inaccuracy into his lewd, unreliable memoirs, but omitted to declare his own corrupt blood line except to mention that Prince Victor was his godfather.

Almina ( pictured above) was a Wombwell, not the homosexual Alfred’s daughter, but in a fit of temper told Porchey all about his real father, it was this that created the topsy –turvy mother-son relationship between them culminating in a chandelier being brought down from the ceiling at Highclere and a room sealed off for decades.

So, why are Highclere Castle’s serving Earl and Countess silent about the huge favour performed by Prince Victor Duleep Singh ( featured above ) that props up the Carnarvon family line to the present day? Why do the benefactors of the unreal Downton Abbey continue to snub their real life benefactors, the son of the Maharaja, first Sikh settler in Great Britain? Since the first edition of The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon, the Author's comprehesiive biography of Almina, was published in April 2011, articles in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail have raised the interesting question of whether the Carnarvons still have an ancestral line to declare in the shape of Prince Victor Duleep Singh. Since the 6th Earl’s first wife Catherine Wendell was messed up by her husband Porchey he may not be the only Prince to be admitted into Highclere’s stud book. On top of all this ( fuelled by ‘Downton Abbey’ mania ) attention has been given to the Carnarvon- Duleep Singh scenario on websites in Britain, USA and India making it an intriguing “What if?”

Why is it important? Well, since Victor’s father the Maharaja Duleep Singh, son of the great Ranjt Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, left no surviving blood family this pedigree makes Porchey ( pictured above) a little Indian Prince and the Carnarvons the inheritors and custodians of these huge heritage figures with millions of followers around the world. It’s something Highclere should be proud of, respect and celebrate. They could then welcome pilgrims to Highclere Castle as a Sikh shrine… as well ( or even instead of ) part of the irritatingly ubiquitous Downton Abbey fans, who wander around the grounds like sheep.

No less a chap than the Carnarvons’ right trusty cousin Prince Charles unveiled a statue to the last Maharaja Duleep Singh in the 1990s knowing full well that the ( above pictured ) 7th Earl of Carnarvon ( always known as Lord Porchester, then the Queen’s racing manager ) was descended from the same Indian gene pool as the Maharaja. Porchester told the Queen of his Sikh blood as this was the revelation unearthed by a Highclere insider that scuttled the much mentioned biography of Almina planned for the mid 1990s by one of Highclere’s guides. Her Majesty knows all about it, she was with Porchester when he phoned the biographer to tell him the show about ‘granny’ could not go ahead. The truth ( according to one Highclere insider ) was the manuscript was "too honest to be published".

Some Sikhs know all about the Duleep Singh seed too. It’s a curious issue that descendants going back to their first settler may be found within this notable British family with close ties to the British monarchy. The Author is acquainted with several important, highly-regarded British Sikhs who would like to see the Prince Victor- Almina- Carnarvon story presented in the media and with it the burning conundrum tested once and for all over whether the Carnarvons carry the Royal Sikh blood of their founding family. The definitive answer is, of course to analyse the Carnarvon- Singh DNA. There is no problem providing the Duleep Singh element of the sample as the hair of Prince Victor ( and his brother Frederick) is still preserved in a Sikh archive. The Carnarvons have always declined giving a drop of their blood - the Author is acquainted with a family who have a letter from Highclere refusing a request to test a link to an earlier generation.

The Carnarvons are the untouchables. The Author of this piece once worked for several months with a coterie of famous Sikhs and a well known producer/ director of TV documentaries to bring the story to the wider public. But after taking up various postures and carrying out key interviews the idea was ditched. Fear of tackling the subject without DNA, cold feet, lack of spunk, almost certainly it was that the clever lawyers who advised Channel 4 to take the proposed film no further – after all, the Carnarvon family are as powerful at using the media, and at dodging the truth as their other right trusty-cousins their Downton ooops Downing Street relations, the David Camerons.

ANY COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS POST PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR, WILLIAM CROSS, FSA SCOT.