A ROMANTIC MARRIAGE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1336, 26 March 1883, Page 2

A ROMANTIC MARRIAGE.

A correspondant writes to the Scott' : • ■ man of December 23rd" The beautiful Penelopo Smyth, who married His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Capua, brother ofthe celebrated Bomba, died on. Wednesday last at the Royal: ; Villa of Martia, near Lucca." Miss Smyth was the daughter of Mr Cfrice ■ ■ Smyth of Ballynatray, Country Water- = ford, and the Prince of Capua took place in 1836,. She was left a widow in 1862, with two children, Francesco Ferdiriando Carlo, Prince of Capua, and Ytttoria Augusta ;P<3nelope. The marriage was attended »by some romantic incidents, The Times ■ of May sth, .1836,. contained the report of an application 1 which was' made 011 the previous day to the Court of Faculties at Doctors'.Commons,for;a license to solemnise or re-solemnise a marriage between the parties according to the forms of the Church of England, but was stopped by a cawat entered by Count de Ludolf, the , Sicilian Envoy, on the part of King Bomba,, tho Prince and the lady having eloped from Naples. The application came .before the Court, which, it was believed, had not sat for a, century previously,,in the shape of a suit by an act 011 petition. The case was argued at some, length. The proctor for King: Bombas Minister urged that'by decrees of the Sicilian Kingdom no valid marriage could be . contracted by a prince of the blood royal-witHout the Consent ofthe reigning sovereign; that the marriage cotemplated in this case- had been expressly forbidden by the King • that the Prince of Capua had only recently arrived in England, where he had no place of abode, and that consequently the petition should be rejected. On the other side it was arguedrthai; both the parties, were of, age, and 'ljjtd fulfilled the preliminary requirements / of English law, that one. of them was a British-born subject, and that'no'lawful impediment existed to bar the union. To this it was replied that the grant of a license was a matter of grace and fa,vor, and that this was not a 'caso in which such a dispensation from the ordinary form of law should be. concer ded, The Master the the Faculties (Dr Nicholl), after : taking a day to consider the matter, refused thelicense. The banns were afterwards published in the ordinary way, and although, they were forbidden, no cause; against the marriage was shewn, and it was celebrated at St George's, /Hanover Square. The Prince and Miss Smyth appeared ■to have .'spared no pains,, to insure the validity of the marriagej which had been performed three times before—once in Rome, by Cardinal Weld, once in .Madrid, and once . Gretna Green.