Arrest another ugly chapter in royals running foul of law

Historically, the arrest or imprisonment of a member of the royal family would have involved battles for the throne of England or the treacherous intrigues of courtly life.

Thursday’s arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in Sandringham may be less bloody than previous eras – involving fewer swords – but it does prove that, as in the past, a royal lineage does not protect against perceived wrongdoing.

The last king to be arrested was Charles I, who was tried in Westminster Hall in January 1649 after the royalists lost the Civil War.

Despite disputing the court’s authority, Charles was convicted of treason and tyranny. He was beheaded on January 30 that year outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, central London.

It brought to an end the age when the threat of execution was never too far away for royalty. From the Stuart and Tudor eras, when Lady Jane Grey, Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots and Catherine Howard were also arrested and put to death on charges of treason, royalty remained above the law until the princess royal was caught going 37km/h above the speed limit in 2001.

Princess Anne was convicted of speeding in her Bentley after being caught driving at 150km/h in a 110km/h zone in Gloucestershire. She was fined £400, ordered to pay £30 in costs and given five penalty points on her driving licence.

The next year, she became the first member of the current royal family to be convicted of a criminal offence when she pleaded guilty to a charge under the Dangerous Dogs Act.

The princess was given a £500 fine and a criminal record in November 2002 after her English bull terrier, called Dotty, had bitten two children in Windsor Great Park. She was also ordered to pay £250 in compensation and £148 in costs at a magistrates’ court in Slough.

Three-year-old Dotty was granted a stay of execution but a contingent destruction order was placed on the dog, meaning it would receive an automatic death sentence if it attacked again.

The only other modern royal brush with the law came in January 2020, when Zara Tindall was handed a driving ban after speeding through the Cotswolds in her Land Rover.

Princess Anne’s daughter received a “totting up” ban, as she already had nine points on her licence. The additional four points were added for travelling at 146km/h on the A417 in Gloucestershire, which has a 110km/h limit, in November 2019.

Tindall was also fined £666 plus costs and a victim surcharge of £151.

When Prince Philip was involved in a crash that left two women in hospital with minor injuries in January 2019, he agreed to surrender his driving licence, but faced no further action.

Once the royal family was clear of the threat of a vengeful king or of parliament, all they had to worry about was scandal – not uncommon during the Georgian or Victorian eras.

In 1769, Lord Grosvenor sued the Duke of Cumberland, King George III’s brother, for damages after his butler had caught the Duke allegedly in flagrante with his wife, Lady Henrietta Grosvenor.

The secret rendezvous at a St Albans hotel caused a national scandal when the lovers’ correspondence was published in the press as part of the trial reports. A jury awarded Lord Grosvenor £10,000 for damage to his marital property.

In 1806, Caroline of Brunswick, accused of having a child out of wedlock, was barred from the coronation of her husband, George IV. After ascending to the throne in 1820, the king, who was already illegally married to Maria Fitzherbert, sought to divorce Caroline, from whom he was estranged.

The so-called Delicate Investigation uncovered no evidence for the rumours, but it caused rifts in the royal family that led to Caroline – then princess of Wales – being barred from her husband’s coronation in 1821. She died three weeks later.

The royal family was engulfed by rumours of murder in 1810 after the death of one of George III’s son’s valets.

Ernest Augustus was asleep at St James’ Palace when he was allegedly attacked with a sword. The culprit was presumed to be one of his valets, Joseph Sellis, who was found later that night with his throat cut. Although the wound was deemed to be self-inflicted, the circumstances of the death – in which Sellis’s head had almost been severed – caused rumour to spread throughout aristocratic circles that the duke had played a part.

The royal family was plunged into a scandal known as the Cleveland Street Affair in 1889 when the Duke of Clarence, the eldest son of Edward VII, was rumoured to have slept with a young boy.

After detectives uncovered a male brothel, frequented by aristocrats, near London’s Euston station, rumours soon spread that the duke, nicknamed Cuffs and Collars because of his extravagant dress sense, was a regular patron. Some biographers believe he was bisexual.

As the trial approached, the king-in-waiting, aged 25, was packed off on a lengthy tour of India. He died of pneumonia three years later, before any concrete evidence could be found.

The Telegraph, London

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