Richmond Enquirer

It is a singular fact that of the numerous children of the late King of Great Britain, not one of them has a legitimate child living, except the late Duke of Kent, who has left an infant daughter. Should the present King be taken away, the crown would pass to the Duke of York, and from him to the Duke of Clarence, &c. and ultimately, unless the Duke of Clarence should yet have an heir, or some other of the royal family be so fortunate as to have male issue, the infant child above mentioned will probably come to the throne. It is not unlikely that the anxiety of the ministry to divorce the present Queen, may arise from an expectation that the King would marry some one of the German princesses, and thus possibly prevent any difficulties that might hereafter arise in the succession of the crown.

It has even been hinted in some of the foreign papers, that in the event of a divorce of the present Queen, His Majesty would be invited by Parliament, to marry one of the Austrian Arch Dutchesses, of whom there are three or four single.

There is little doubt that the present King was privately married by a Catholic Priest to Mrs. Fitzherbert, before he married Caroline, of Brunswick. The Duke of Sussex was also married, at Rome, in 1793, to Lady Murray. A son, (Augustus Frederick.) aged about 26, and a daughter, were the fruits of this connection. Both marriages, however, were illegal, as being in violation of the statute of 1772, which, among other things, "to guard effectually the descendants of his late Majesty King George the II. (other than the issue of Princesses who have married, or may hereafter marry into foreign families.) from marrying without the approbation of his present Majesty, his heirs or successors; enacted, that no descendant of the body of his late Majesty, (other than the Princesses who have married, or may hereafter marry into foreign families.) shall be capable of contracting matrimony without the previous consent of His Majesty, his heirs or successors, signified under the Great Seal, and declared in Council (which consent, to preserve the memory thereof, is to be set out in the licence and register of marriage, and to be entered into the books of the Privy Council;) and that every marriage of any such descendant, without such consent, shall be void and null."

Of the five daughters of the late King living, but two have been married, and neither have issue. The Princess Royal was married in 1797, to the late King of Wurtemberg. She became a widow in 1816. The Princess Mary was married in 1818, to her cousin, the Duke of Gloucester.

We have just opened a late London Examiner which brings an extraordinary case before the public, in relation to a more remote branch of the royal family, than those of whom we have been speaking. The Editor states that he has seen a regular succession of documents, which have fully convinced him, that the late Duke of Cumberland, a brother of George III was actually married to a clergyman's daughter, previously to his acknowledged union with Mrs. Morton; that a child was born of this first marriage, which was of course legal, the Act of Parliament quoted above, not having been then passed; that it was solemnly agreed, for reasons of state, not to disclose the marriage and its fruits during the life time of the late King; and that the offspring of the marriage, if living, is entitled to the same princely honours as are enjoyed by the daughter of the late Duke of Gloucester, who married the Countess of Waldegrave....

The documents, the London editor says, are signed with the names of the Clergyman in question, who, it is to be observed, married his child to the Duke ;-of the late Earl of Warwick, as having been present at the marriage, and privy to the birth;-of the late Earl Chathan-and (not to mention another still more curious) of his Royal Highness the late Duke of Kent, who writes, a little before his death, that he will see his "Cousin" righted, if he recovers the illness under which he was then labouring. What renders these documents the more striking, is, that a formidable mystery of Junius is closely concerned in them : and certainly there is a passage in one of his letters, which would seem to be explained by the fact they profess to record." Since reading this article, we have turned over the pages of Junius, and find attached to No. 102, of his Miscellaneous letters, which was addressed to the Duke of Cumberland on his marriage with Col. Luttrell's sister, Mrs. Morton, who was the daughter of Lord Carhampton, a note which was first written by Junius, and inserted in Woodfall's Public Advertiser, announcing this marriage. In this note Junius says-" It is now, happily for this country, within the limits of possibility. that a Luttrell may be King of Great Britain." The letter to the Duke, to which this note is added, is dated Nov. 13, 1771; and the communication, was most likely published about the same time. In letter 67, however, of the regular series of Junius, in which he is singularly bitter upon the Duke on account of this marriage, he says upon his own vehement ipse dixit, that "a Luttrell shall never succeed to the crown of England." This public letter is dated Nov. 22, 1771. It is fair to conclude, therefore, that in the intervening time between the dates of these letters, that Junius had discovered the previous marriage of the Duke to the clergyman's daughter, and the offspring of that marriage. It was the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland with Mrs. Morton, and the marriage of the then Duke of Gloucester to the beautiful daughter of a cook, that occasioned the marriage settlement act before mentioned and quoted. But to return to the newly discovered documents. We learn further from the Examiner, that the intricate knowledge of, and strong personal interest in, the affairs of the Royal Family, implied in these papers, would also go to account for much of the personal virulence of Junius, and, it may be added, the personal security which he enjoyed: for it is not one of the least mysterious things about that writer in the iron mask, especially to those who know the gossiping and prying nature of courts and interested coteries, that even royalty itself appears not to have been able to get him hunted out. But this is a secondary matter to the subject in hand. The Examiner says, " there is a lady living, not unknown, it seems, to the Royal Family, who says that she is the offspring of the marriage in question. Her identity would of course, be among the matters to be discussed ; but unless the existence of the child can be disproved at once, we cannot but think that there are unanswerable reasons on the face of the documents, for an investigation of the truth of what they assert. In the mean time the lady has resorted to legal advisers; and here the matter for the present rests. We must mention, however, before we conclude, that a debt for which she was arrested the other day, is represented by her as having been a debt of the late Earl of Warwick's; and she adds, that the Earl's family are responsible to her for a considerable sum. left her by the Duke, her alleged father, as his Lordship acknowledges in one of the documents. Another contains a special injunction of the present Earl to liquidate this debt " as she values the honour of the family ; but his lordship has not attended to it."