The door of a gaunt house in a drab street in North London opened a few cautious inches a baldbrowed, tall man in an open shirt and dark trousers looked warily through the chink and said:
"Yes. I am King Anthony of England. Come in, sit down, and I'll light the fire."
You will find his record as Anthony William Hall. He served in the Army during the war, and in the Shropshire police for eight years, during which he rose to the rank of sergeant, states the "News Chronicle."
He has written text-books on police procedure; he has inherited money and set up an export business in Canada; and now—
He is addressing from one to five meetings a day to try to prove to Britain that he, and not George VI., is the rightful King of England.
He goes further back than the Jacobites, who claim Rupprecht of Bavaria, heir to the House of Stuart, as their sovereign. He claims descent both from the Tudors and the Planta-genets. Incidentally, he also claims the Crown of Ireland... you see, his mother's maiden-name was "Eire."
He believes the tradition that James I. of England and VI. of Scotland was a changeling, and actually was a child of the Earl of Mar. Thus, the Act of Settlement, establishing William of Orange on the throne, is invalid, for William's claim was derived through his Stuart wife, Mary. If Mary was a Mar, the claim falls to the ground.
He claims that Henry VIII, had a child by Anne Boleyn before he had divorced Katharine of Aragon; this child—a son—he believes was brought up by a farmer named Hall, in Sussex, and he can trace his ancestry directly back to this lad, known as John Hall. John dare not press his own claim at the time because Elizabeth was on the throne when he came to manhood. He adduces the fact that Edward VI. was never created Prince of Wales.
He claims that illegitimacy is no barrier to inheritance, as Saxon Harold, William the Conqueror and Henry VII, all had a bend sinister in their escutcheon, and Henry's claim as Lancastrian was admittedly through a bastardy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.