THE RIGHTFUL KING.

Patea Mail, Volume IV, Issue 342, 27 July 1878, Page 2

THE RIGHTFUL KING.

It is a curious fact (says a contemporary) and one that is not gene rally known, that King Victor Emmanuel was, by the strict law of succession, the rightful King of England. He was descended in a direct line from Charles I. The youngest daughter of the unhappy monarch, the Princess Henrietta Maria, married Gaston d'Orleans, the brother of Louis XIV. She died I caving two daughters. The eldest became Queen of Spain, and died childless. The youngest married the heir to the House of Savoy, and was the ancestress of the late King of Italy, After the Revolution of 1688, when the right to the succession to the British Throne was settled by Act of Parliament, the House of Savoy was excluded on account of the Catholic religion professed by its members. The House of Hanover, of which Queen Victoria is the representative, was several removes farther from the direct succession, deriving, as it did, its claims from James I, through Queen Eiibazelh' of Bohemia, and her daughter the Electress Sophia. A striking commentary on the consequence of human actions, is afforded by this story of a royal inheritance. When Charles I. espoused a Catholic princess lie could scarcely have imagined that by this act he was excluding his direct descendants from the throne of their fathers; and still less could his Queen have foreseen that any - descendant of her favorite child, so carefully trained by her in the tenets of her own religion, should ever overthrow the temporal power of the Pope, and be himself installed upon the throne.