Commoner who tried to push King off the throne (UK)
Anthony Hall argued that he was the 23rd descendent of Henry VIII and tried to convince mass crowds at a series of public meetings in the Birmingham Bull Ring that he was rightful heir to the throne. He started raising eyebrows in Whitehall and Buckingham Palace after making “scurrilous” attacks on the King, including a threat to shoot him.
George V, the Queen’s grandfather, was forced to intervene to make sure that Hall’s campaign came to an abrupt end, preferably in an asylum, while making it clear that the Palace’s involvement should never come to light.
But “King Anthony”, who was born in 1898, served in the police in Shropshire and died aged 49, thwarted attempts to prove that he was mad: two doctors gave him a clean bill of mental health.
The story unfolds in correspondence to the Home Office and the Palace released today at the National Archives. Hall traced his ancestry to Thomas Hall, the bastard son of Henry VIII, who died in 1534. He also claimed that James I of England was a changeling and could not have been the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, because he was “goggle-eyed”, his head was too large for his body, his tongue too large for his mouth and his legs were so rickety that he could not ride.