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heir to the throne being a daughter and so new Letters Patent would have to be issued.
As Lascelles told the King on 9 October, ‘As things stand at present, Princess Elizabeth’s
son would be “Earl of Merioneth”, her daughter “Lady X Mountbatten”…’ Letters Patent
were hastily issued to the effect that Elizabeth’s children ‘shall have and at all times hold
and enjoy the style, title or attribute of Royal Highness and the titular dignity of Prince
or Princess prefixed to their respective Christian names’. One matter, however,
Elizabeth’s surname, was glossed over and was to cause considerable controversy in the
future. According to the King’s Assistant Private Secretary, Edward Ford, ‘the effect of
the Proclamation by George V of 17 July 1917 was that all descendants in the male line
of Queen Victoria, other than female descendants who may marry or have married, shall
bear the name of Windsor but Princess Elizabeth having married no longer has the name
of Windsor, but is in fact Mountbatten’. 10
On 14 November 1948 at 9.14 p.m. Elizabeth’s first child, a 7lb 60z boy, HRH Prince
Charles Philip Arthur George, was born at Buckingham Palace. The baby’s father, who
had become impatient waiting for his appearance, was on the squash court with Mike
Parker when Tommy Lascelles, moving at an unaccustomedly rapid pace, came in to
announce the birth. No name had yet been chosen for the child, but genealogists had
already worked out that he was fifth in descent from Queen Victoria, thirty-second from
William the Conqueror and thirty-ninth from Alfred the Great. He was the most Scottish
prince since Charles I and the most English since Edward VI. He was descended on both
sides from the Electress Sophia through whom the Hanoverian House of Windsor’s title
to the throne was established under the Act of Settlement in 1701; his Scottish ancestry
included Robert the Bruce and Mary Queen of Scots, while through his maternal
grandmother his Welsh bloodline could be traced back to Owen Glendower, and, again
through her, to the most ancient Irish names including the Ui Neill high kings. Her
ancestry also included the granddaughter of a plumber, John Walsh. From every point
of view, the baby was truly a prince of the United Kingdom.
Elizabeth was enchanted with her son, particularly his hands – ‘fine, with long fingers,
– quite unlike mine and certainly unlike his father’s,’ she wrote; (they were unkindly
later described by a journalist as ‘like sausages’). ‘It will be interesting to see what they
become’ (later Charles was to display an aptitude for the cello). Queen Mary
immediately set herself the task of finding out which of his immediate ancestors the
child most resembled. Poring over old photograph albums of Queen Victoria, she decided
that he looked like Prince Albert (when he grew up, however, Charles would resemble
his Mountbatten rather than his Saxe-Coburg ancestors). For the child’s christening
Queen Mary gave him, with her usual sense of dynastic propriety, a silver gilt cup and
cover which George III had given to a godson in 1780 – ‘so that I gave a present from
my great grandfather to my great grandson 168 years later,’ she recorded in her diary.
History does not record her reaction to the new Prince’s parents’ choice of his first
name. Charles, the favoured name of the Stuart dynasty, has been a particularly
unfortunate one for British monarchs. Charles I lost his throne and his head; his son,
Charles II, regained his crown only after a chequered career in exile. His great-nephew,