LIBEL ON THE KING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 234, 11 February 1911, Page 9

LIBEL ON THE KING.

REFUTED YEARS AGO. Some seventeen years afo (writes the Auckland Star) Mr: W. T. Stead, that most indefatigable of latter-day journalists, conducted an investigation on his own account which satisfied him absolutely that, there was not the least foundation for the story regarding the alleged Malta marriage. He had heard all the details of the romance minutely described on the authority of "somebody's cousin," who never materialised—the" ceremony celebrated by an Anglican chaplain in the presence of the whole ship's company, the wedding procession under the crossed swords, the delightful domestic life of the erring Prince and his victim; then the terrible shock of his brother's death, the command to marry Princess Mary, the tears of his mother, the stern resolve of the imperious old Queen, and then finally the banishment of the Admiral's hapless daughter to some secluded fastness in the wilds of Scotland, where ultimately she died insane. It is a very complete and circumstantial story, and Mr. Stead made up his mind, on pubblic grounds, that it ought to be sifted to the bottom. As usual, Mr. Stead went about his work in a very thoroughgoing fashion. He put the case, first, before Sir Henry Ponsonby, who was for so many years the confidential private secretary of Queen Victoria. The old courtier ridiculed the tale, but urged Mr. Stead to follow up the story instead of leaving it to future generations to worry oyer. Mr. Stead then approached a distinguished member of the peerage, and through him submitted to the then Prince of Wales, father of Prince George, a series of questions, "precise, categorical, and covering the whole ground from A to Z." From the Prince of Wales Mr. Stead received "a most definite and emphatic repudiation of the whole story." Where, asked the Prince of Wales, was the marriage register? Who was the clergyman? Would an Admiral tolerate the clandestine marriage of his daughter with a prince of the blood in defiance of the law, nnd without the knowledge of the Prince's parents? The Prince of Wales pointed out other inherent improbabilities in the tale, and ended by giving Mr. Stead his positive assurance that the story was "a lie from beginning to end, and also so ridiculous that it could not impose upon anybody who had the slightest knowledge of the Royal Family or the Navy or the Church." P,ut after Mr. Stead had satisfied himself, the Archbishop of Canterbury took up the quest. The Primate, being called upon to marry Prince George and Princes Mary, naturally felt compelled to go into the matter of the alleged Malta" marriage; and his investigations, in the course°of which he secured the evidence of all the officers of the fleet stationed at Malta at the time, led him to the conclusion that "the young man had never been married before, that he had lived an exemplary moral life, and that the whole story about the existence of any children resulting from his alleged relations with Miss S was absolutely without foundation. There were no'such relations, morganatic, illegitimate, or otherwise, and there were no children."