Talk:Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, 3rd Baronet

Actually, Ashdown-Hill, on a table on p.184 and in words on pp.180-8 specifies Laura Grace Culme-Seymour (1873-95) as the sister in question. Smlark (talk) 16:02, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Laura is just the one that Ashdown-Hill took an interest in, because of her mysterious death in Malta aged just 22. (The Maltese authorities say the death certificate is not available.) The contentious article by Edward Holton James in his self-published paper The Liberator for November 1910 makes clear that James did not even know which daughter he was talking about. It was public knowledge that Mary Elizabeth was alive and married to Captain Napier RN, skipper of the Royal Yacht, while Laura Grace had died 15 years before, so James wrote, 'The daughter of Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, if she still lives, is... [ellipsis in original] the rightful Queen of England.' https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/10093821 This also betrays a surprising ignorance of English law, since a morganatic wife can never become queen. Without the consent of Queen Victoria or Parliament, the imaginary marriage just wouldn't count. But then James was a non-practising American attorney living in Paris with a rich wife and indulging his hobby-horse of anarchism. Edward Mylius was the London distributor of James's paper and therefore the one who had to face the legal music. James said he would come to London to help with Mylius's defence but of course didn't, for fear of arrest. So James got off scot free, except that his uncle Henry, the novelist, a respectable resident of England (later appointed to the Order of Merit by George V), cut him out of his will in disgust. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:38, 5 February 2021 (UTC)